Reflections from the Family Cookbook Society

My siblings and I all grew up cooking. It was a way of contributing and gaining life skills that was expected of us.

With my mother being a good cook and having a competitive streak, as children we would take turns cooking dinner and would be judged by the rest of the family.

However, the thought of having a sizeable amount of family recipes, let alone Jewish ones, was not something I had considered until participating in Shalom’s family cookbook writing course when we were tasked with listing our family recipes.

Mum is the co-head of Newtown Synagogue’s community kitchen. With a roster of volunteers, we test out old and new recipes, editing them to make them suitable for the fleishig kitchen and for the large number of people attending the weekly Shabbat dinners.

It was the way food and cooking together connected our community that made me interested in attending the cookbook writing class.

We collated the recipes and tips from the volunteers into something that can be shared, highlighting the diverse community’s recipes. People bring recipes they serve on their own Shabbat tables, and learn new ones they try out at home later.

Through the classes, we did more than learn how to record recipes. We connected to our families’ histories and explored how to bring back the recipes in our lives that were either lost or too confusing to use.

The Jewish side of my family arrived in Australia in the 1870s and often did not live near a Jewish community, so very few recipes remain.

My two-time great-uncle had in fact lost the family’s pickle recipe when he fled Romania.

We will never be able to recreate that specific pickle exactly, but by researching what types of pickles Jewish Romanians ate, and asking family members what they would prefer in the new family pickle recipe I created something new.

“Definitely sour or half-sour, not sweet and it must have crunch” one responded, “plenty of garlic and heat” said another.

I was then able to alter the basic recipe I had used earlier to fit. We now have a tasty amalgam of old and new, a pickle-by-committee. It probably has more herbs and spices than a pickle might need, and it was too hot for our neighbour, but we enjoyed it and it’s a work in progress.

Dairy-free rhubarb or fruit coconut cake

This quick and easy cake recipe is one I have baked at shule a few times.

I made it dairy-free because the shule’s kitchen is fleishig and then made changes for the preferences of family members. I reduced the sugar and used shredded coconut instead of desiccated. T

he original recipe was rhubarb, which I love, but it is seasonal and can be expensive depending on the time of the year. I have found this recipe also works with green apples if you still want that tart flavour, and I also recently baked it with pears which have been cheap recently due to an oversupply. Particularly when cooking for large community dinners it is important to factor in costs and seasonal supply.

Ingredients:

• 1½ Cups self-raising flour
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1 ¼ cup shredded coconut
• 125g margarine melted
• 3 eggs beaten lightly
• ¾  cup coconut milk
• ¾ cup chopped rhubarb, apple, or pear
• 2 tablespoons demerara sugar
• additionally 2 stalks of rhubarb or sliced fruit to go on top of the cake, salt, vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Line a 20cm round cake pan.

Combine flour, sugar and coconut and a pinch of salt in a medium bowl. Form a well in the centre and stir in the margarine, beaten eggs, coconut milk and vanilla extract.

At this point you can either pour half the batter in the pan, then the rhubarb or fruit, then pour the remaining batter, or if in a rush you can simply stir the rhubarb/fruit into the batter and pour it in one go.

Arrange sliced fruit or 5cm chunks of rhubarb on the top of the cake, and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

Bake for 1 hour.

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