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To my readers, that you may come to love spices through the stories I tell and recipes I have penned.
Thank you for your support.
- Christina
It was the aroma. The exotic scent of spices: rich, alluring, and almost magical. A scent that would sometimes overpower the freshness in the air and sometimes subtly mingle with it to create a tantalizing bouquet. A scent that would always bring me back to my childhood.
Growing up enveloped in the aromas of her mother's spice stall in Kuala Lumpur, Christina Arokiasamy developed an artist's sense of how to combine and use spices in traditional and innovative ways. In The Spice Merchant's Daughter, she shares her family's spice secrets, expertly guiding and enticing home cooks to enliven their repertoires.
Christina weaves evocative stories of cooking at her mother's side with real-world practical advice gleaned not only from working in professional kitchens but also from tackling the nightly task of getting a home-cooked dinner on the table for her family of four using American ingredients. She shows how easy it is to build layers of complex flavor to create 100 tempting Southeast Asian-inspired recipes, including Lemon Pepper Wings, Spicy Beef Salad, Steamed Snapper with Tamarind-Ginger Sauce, Cardamom Butter Rice with Sultanas, and Coconut Flan Infused with Star Anise. She unlocks the transformative power of homemade spice rubs, curry pastes, and sauces, as well as chutneys and pickles, enabling home cooks to bring new depth and dimension to their favorite dishes.
The Spice Merchant's Daughter both inspires and empowers, awakening the senses and unlocking the alluring world of spices.
Reviews...
The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2008
... there is perhaps no better candidate to write about this cuisine [Malaysian] than Christina Arokiasamy, a formally trained cook of Indian ancestry whose mother was a Kuala Lumpur spice merchant. In addition to recording her fragrantly alive culinary memories, Ms. Arokiasamy delivers plenty of useful instruction about the blending and roasting of spices and herbs.
A Flavorful Cooking Adventure, The Boston Globe, September 3, 2008
Despite its "some assembly required" approach, "The Spice Merchant's Daughter" is one of the best culinary adventures I've had all year. Like the best adventures, it left me breathless and exhausted -- and ready to do it all over again tomorrow.
Book It: Fresh and unusual dishes prolong summer, Seacoast Online, August 31, 2008
An Indian raised in Malaysia, Arokiasamy's greatest culinary influence was her mother, a spice merchant who taught her all she knew about choosing, using, drying and mixing spices. And now, Arokiasamy, a cooking teacher herself, does the same for us. This well-organized, compact book opens with the Spice Pantry. Arokiasamy explains how to choose, use and store a variety of ingredients from familiar ones like ginger, cloves and fish sauce to less familiar, like Kaffir lime leaves and tamarind.
Learn the essentials of Southeastern spices, The Associated Press, August 12, 2008
Part memoir, part primer, Christina Arokiasamy's recent cookbook, "The Spice Merchant's Daughter" (Clarkson Potter, 2008), opens with tales from the author's childhood in Malaysia, where she helped at her family's spice stall.
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