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| What got you started with the whole culinary thing and food writing? |
| My family always
regarded food as a celebration. When I was living away at university,
the first thing my mother and grandmother would ask
on the telephone was "What can I cook you when you come home?" And
then it was a fight over who would cook what! They were both great cooks
-- but totally different sorts. Grandmother was a country cook -- the
kind who excelled in American fried chicken, white gravy, apple pie,
those sorts of things. But my mother was more the adventurous 1960s sort
of cook, who tried foreign dishes. I remember my father saying after
many such a meal, "Honey, that was good, but don't make it again." So
I amalgamated their two forms of cooking, into a love of good simple
food, and a passion for travel and foreign cuisine. Which is why the
easy dishes in "Thai Home Cooking" so suited my own preferences. |
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| What
do you have to do to be a good food writer? |
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| You
must have a passion for food, but also find fun in it. If you
don't actually love food, the results show -- which is probably
why diet recipes are so awful! A good food writer not only focuses
on the recipes, but also has an interest in where food comes
from, how it is grown, harvested or slaughtered, all those sorts
of things. These days food writing is much harder than in it
used to be. In the past, you could easily get by with a general
knowledge of just one cuisine, especially French, Italian or
Chinese. But nowadays, for example, you also need to know regional
recipe variations, Indian spices, and a wealth of Southeast Asian
herbs and vegetables. |
| How
does travel influence your perception of food? |
| Travel
and good food writing go hand in hand. Years ago, after my apprenticeship
in France, I lived in Washington, DC researching a cookbook series
for Time-Life Books. I realized almost immediately that the best
editors on the series were not chef- nor home economist- trained.
The best researchers were those who traveled regularly and had
eaten the most widely. |
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| What was your first cookbook that got published? |
| I had researched
several books for other authors prior to my first publication, and
after that, I was bitten! One of my guiding lights was
the late James Beard, the dean of American food -- he gave the first
television cooking demo in America -- and he paired me up with his friend
Gino Coffacci to write a book entitled "Desserts with Spirit!" or
puds with booze, as they would say in Australia. It seemed a mammoth
undertaking at the time, and afterwards I swore off book writing for
another decade -- although I continued to write regularly for magazines
during that time, and I also worked as a television food stylist. |
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| Tell
us what makes a good cookbook ? one that a publisher is happy to
put on bookstore shelves for you? |
| These
two questions might appear contradictory! What sells as pulp non-fiction,
versus the definitive, authoritative book are not always
the same thing.
Generally, however, publishers look for 1) the unusual, 2) a subject
of wide interest, and 3) expertise. Personally, I look for more than
just a collection of recipes. I like a long, thorough introduction, and
lots of information about choosing and identifying foods. Research information
is too often lacking in books these days. |
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| Are good photographs essential to the sales performance of a cookbook? |
| Surprisingly, the
U.S. market versus the Asian market differ markedly. American publishers
regularly eschew photographs, saying they make a
book too costly. And I can attest that when I published my first book, "Desserts
with Spirit!" I was cautioned by James Beard NOT to put photos in
it. "Nothing dates a cookbook faster than photos," he said.
But my mother's first comment on reading a cookbook is always "Look
at these beautiful pictures." She can see how the dishes actually
look -- which is exactly the brief for all my books with Periplus: one
picture one page one recipe. Actually Singapore and Australia lead the
world in photo books. Last year I was asked to lecture in America on
the pervasive influence of "Australian style." That country's
style of natural, direct lighting, white backgrounds and drop focus photography
really is being copied throughout the world. |
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| The recipes and ingredients you use in Thai Home Cooking are
laudibly authentic for a 'farang' (white foreigner in Thai). Are cultural
authenticity and technique important to you? |
| Since
English-language publishing is international in scope these days
you have to write for a wider market covering three or four continents
-- not just three or four countries. This means that in a specific
cookbook's market, availability of the ingredients becomes an
issue. But you can't "dumb down" the recipes. |
| They
must still be authentic! The fact that my book "Thai Home
Cooking" is sold throughout Asia means that the correct
or "authentic" ingredients must be called for -- yet
easy substitutions are suggested, not the other way around. I
often refer to the "Chinese cookbook syndrome" when
older books published in the West simplified the dishes and ingredients
beyond recognition. So
as market availability improves so dramatically in the U.S. and
England (not to mention Australia, which is probably the best
source of Asian foods outside of Asia itself!) those cookbooks
have dated and become passe. |
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| Does
having Sompon Nabnian as a co-writer help in the credibility of the
book? |
| One criterion for
this book in the "Asian Home Kitchen" series
is that a Thai national be listed as a co-author. I first considered
an expat Thai restaurateur to assist me, but early on decided that someone
living in Thailand would give greater credibility to the recipes. As
I had previously attended cooking classes with Sompon in Chiang Mai,
I approached he and his English wife Elizabeth to help. They regularly
guided me through the intricacies of Thai ingredients, while we communicated
regularly over email. |
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| Who is your favourite chef and which restaurant sets your heart racing? |
| That's a hard one,
because I tend to think the best food is created by great cooks, not
great chefs. Cooks nurture, while chefs impress.
Certainly the excellent quality of Australian ingredients plus simple
assembly place Sydney restaurants at the top of any list today. But street
foods and hawker foods are still largely my favourites -- and here Singapore
excels over all others! I guess I like these humble foods because they
remind me of the café road foods of my youth in America, where
the best publicity for good food was a mile of trucks lined up outside,
and the drivers inside eating. Sadly, that has gone -- not just because
of the advent of take-away fast food, but mostly because packet mixes
now seem to crop up in all sorts of dishes. "Home-made" soup
isn't, gravy mixes from a bag, factory-made pie pastry. Things like that.
Today when I travel to America and Europe, I like "time warp" foods,
the authentic dishes of my childhood. In the U.S., particularly, I am
first to line up at an old-fashioned steak house -- but it has to be
superb steaks, well aged and marbeled, not the chain restaurant sort.
Thankfully, good food in Asia doesn't necessarily equate with fancy surroundings.
Everywhere I travel here, simple food is equally delicious from a hawker
stall. In Bangkok, for example, foods served at expensive Thai restaurants
for "farang" are often not as good as food sold on the street,
such as at the Blue Elephant in Bangkok. That could kindly be called
a European interpretation of Thai cooking. Yet it still, inexplicably,
packs the crowds in night after night. |
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| You
must have enjoyed food all over the world. Do you have a favourite
cuisine? |
| How can I say anything else but Thai??? But I also love Vietnamese
cooking -- especially northern and central dishes, which tend to have
less sweetness than the foods of Saigon and environs. France was my first
gastronomic training ground -- and I still adore that country's peasant
dishes much more than fancy classic cuisine. But it is not just cooking
that makes a cuisine, but also the quality of foodstuffs available. Finicky
shopping is 40 per cent of a meal's success, while good cooking makes
up the rest. Growing up in America's Pacific Northwest, my family headed
to the Oregon coast for the freshest seafood. In the summer we went alpine
for mountain berries. This left a lasting mark. Again, that is why I
like Southeast Asia: the wet market still prevails, and you can buy fresh
foods daily from the source. |
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| What's the perfect vacation for you? |
| It is funny that you should ask, because stemming from interest in
my Thai cookbook I recently began hosting a series of food tours to Southeast
Asian destinations, marketed through my website www.globetrottinggourmet.com
or www.tgtg.tv for short. So I have been leading foreign groups around,
eating widely, with market walks and cooking demonstrations daily. They
are indulgent trips, in that I get to choose where and what we do. The
numbers are limited, the accommodation top drawer -- from small boutique
(I generally avoid the large international chains) to charming rustic
-- and the foods a delicious blend of hotel finery to hawker dishes.
These have been so much fun, that they seem more like the perfect vacation,
than work! I think I inherited from my father an insatiable appetite
to be on the move all the time. I loathe a beach holiday with nothing
to do but lay on the sand all day. |
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