Charmaine O' Brien

Charmaine O’Brien cannot remember a time when she has not been interested in food. As a child, she delighted in poring over her mother’s cookbooks and her adult work life has been centred around food. She has trained as a chef, run her own catering business and developed cooking classes for an institution for adult education. While taking a degree in psychology, she began travelling to India. It was the beginning of an irrepressible passion for the subcontinent, O’Brien lives in Melbourne, Australia, but she intends to be in India to begin research for a culinary travel book. She is the author of World Food: New Orleans and was awarded a Harry A. Bell grant from the International Association of Culinary Professionals in 2001.