Christina Arokiasamy
(Aro Keeya Samee)
Born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Christina Arokiasamy, is renowned for her culinary skills, as a spice expert and as an award-winning cookbook author. She was Malaysia’s first-ever official Food Ambassador to the United States and brings with her over 25 years of world class culinary expertise as a former chef of various Four Seasons Resorts throughout Southeast Asia.
Growing Up Among the Aromas
“As a school girl in Kuala Lumpur, I could always smell my house before I could see it. I was known as the girl with yellow hands at school because I helped my mother prepare ground turmeric at the nearby mill.” Cooking like the spice business, was a daily way of life for me and my family.”
The Professional Chef
In and after 2015 in collaboration with The Cooking Channel, Chef Christina hosted The Malaysian Kitchen, the program reaching over 80 million viewers nationwide USA; to showcase the exotic blend of flavors born of the spice trade and rich in tradition. Her efforts help place Malaysian cuisine as the top 3 flavor trends in America by The National Restaurant Association.
Her expert knowledge in spices appeared in Oprah.com, Huffington Post, CBS, NBC News, Fox News, The New York Times, The Food Network Magazine, Yahoo News and other International media.
Her love for this cuisine inspired her to write The Malaysian Kitchen: 150 Recipes for Simple Home Cooking published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt New York 2017. Her second cookbook was featured in People Magazine, The Advocate, The Seattle Times, The Publisher’s Weekly, WebMD, making headlines on seven Canadian Newspapers: The National Post, Vancouver Sun, Calgary Herald, The Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and other international media. The Malaysian Kitchen was awarded as Amazon’s Top 10 Cookbooks of 2017.
Her first cookbook The Spice Merchant’s Daughter published by Clarkson Potter New York, was listed as top ten cookbooks in the USA by NPR in 2008. Her cookbook earned a starred review on Publisher’s Weekly, and was featured on the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt New York Boston Publishers 2017
Sharing The Cultural Kitchen
Her passion for the cuisine roots from a life immersed in spices, blending many different cooking techniques from various cultures and being a 5th generation descendent of spice merchants—who have traded spices since the supremacy of the British East India Company.
Chef Christina Arokiasamy is unique because as a spice expert she shares her cuisine in so many ways, incorporating fresh spices such as turmeric, chilies, cumin, coriander and cardamom, and uniquely combining them with fresh aromatics such as galangal, lemongrass, ginger, tamarind and curry leaves to create new and deeply-layered flavors without the spicy heat of other Southeast Asian cuisines.
