Author Rosemary Brissenden tells SBS Food about her life of travel and adventure unearthing South East Asian recipes for the rest of us, as part of a series of interviews with Australia's top chefs and cooks.

Click here for a selection of recipes from Rosemary Brissenden's South East Asian Flavours

The first edition of your book South East Asian Food was published in 1969, what was the inspiration for the book?

I first travelled to Asia in 1957 as part of a student delegation from Melbourne University, spending 3 months in Java and Bali. Each of us was billeted to a number of families, and I spent two to three weeks living with Indonesian families in their homes. I ate Indonesian food all the time. The food fascinated me, the further I travelled the more fascinated I became.

Did you learn to cook Indonesian food while you were on exchange?

The mothers and grandmothers of the family did the cooking and I watched. In 1957 they were using ingredients I had never been exposed to, that we simply didn’t have in Australia. When I came home I was devoted to Indonesian cuisine, so I looked for a recipe book and there wasn’t one. I had numerous friends at Melbourne University who were Thai, Malaysian and Indonesian. So I would watch them cook in the kitchens of their shared houses.

Your primary career was as an academic specialising in politics and international relations, have you always possessed a love of food?

I think my appreciation for food began at boarding school, where I was exposed to really awful food. From there I went to college at university where the food was slightly better. My biggest influence in the late 1950’s was Elizabeth David. Her books had started to arrive in Australia and her style of writing with her in-depth look at the way Italian’s eat was very exciting. Melbourne University is in Carlton so there was Italian food, right on my doorstep.

How did you begin writing about food?

I met the editor of The Australian, a brand new newspaper at the time, when I was a researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1958. He asked me to write a column about Indonesian cuisine, which I did. The columns caught the attention of a British publisher and I was asked if I would consider writing a book.

Your approach to writing is more scholarly than the recent spate of ‘5 minute’ dinner style cookbooks, as it delves into the history and traditions of each nation’s cuisine, was this intentional?

Yes. My background in international relations meant that I was very interested in the cultural and historical context of eating. People who use the book tend to be serious cooks with an interest in the history of a cuisine, and of the methodology. Many of the methods of preparing ingredients and modes of cooking were not widely exposed in the 1960’s when the book first appeared we didn’t have food TV to explain things.

At that time you had only travelled to Indonesia and been exposed to other South East Asian cooking in Australia, which must have been limited by ingredients, how did you gather enough recipes and culinary background?

More field trips. Thankfully I was learning Bahasa Indonesia so I could talk to people. On the first research trip I flew into Jakarta during the Gestapu Coup. I was heavily pregnant, there was no public transport, no phones, and all of my contacts - most were in the diplomatic corps were unreachable. I managed to get out of the city to the mountains and began researching there. From Indonesia, it was on to Malaysia and Thailand to watch people cook.

The first edition of the book was limited to Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The newer edition published by Hardie Grant Books in 2003 has been extended significantly, is that a reflection of the changing cultural landscape of Australia over time?

When I wrote the first edition the IndoChina war was on. I couldn’t get into Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. Since then the proliferation of migration, travel and availability of ingredients has changed the landscape. When I revised and extended the book I had been exposed to these cuisines both at home and in their native countries.

Had the culinary landscape changed much when you visited the same places 40 years later?

When I did a research trip in 1993 I discovered that most wives were working, particularly in cities like Jakarta, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. This was a big contrast to my first visits in the 1950’s when women didn’t work, the servants did the shopping and cooked together with wives. In Vietnam when I visited in the early 90’s local women’s groups were running cooking classes to teach younger women to cook. Many had not learned at the side of their mother or grandmother because they had been evacuated during the war.

How do you feel about the melding of many of these cuisines in restaurants – you often see signs, in Australia’s capital cities, for Thai / Malay / Vietnamese outside a restaurant?

In the 70’s when there was a burgeoning of Asian restaurants many immigrants opened as Thai restaurants and would have other dishes on their menu. At the time Australian’s weren’t specific, they liked certain Asian flavours, so a broad range of choice was an easier option for many restaurant proprietors.

In the 90’s suddenly there was a movement of well-know restaurant chefs doing ‘fusion’ food, which worked as a good learning curve, adopting ‘Asian’ flavours in a more inventive and accessible way. The Australian palate really took to that.

Do you think the fusion style is a threat to the traditions of a nation’s cuisine?

I feel very sad if traditions are lost, and if people don’t know the history of what they eat. That has driven me to write as I do, it is important to present a complete picture of a cuisine in its social, historical and cultural context, lest they all meld into one.

Rosemary Brissenden is the author South East Asian Food: Classic and modern dishes from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam,  published by Hardie Grant Books.

Photo: Heide Smith