When I flick through Elana Benjamin’s cookbook – – I’m filled with nostalgia. I can smell the food emanating from the apartment she talks about – Nana Hannah’s home. I can hear the squealing laughter, and I can taste the delectable aloomakalas (fried potatoes that are as unhealthy as they are delicious).
You see, Elana’s nana Hannah was my big nana – my great grandmother. What’s funny is that I have many of the same recipes that Elana has shared in her book, passed down by my nana Margaret. But despite most of them originating from the same source – Hannah – my recipes differ from Elana’s.
She explains why in her opening. “Documenting these Indian-Jewish recipes has not been easy. The cuisine has mostly been kept alive by hand rather than the written word.
This means the women in the community tend to cook by feel, intuition and tasting as they go.” Elana shares that her mum would often tell her to include “some” cumin powder and “a bit of” garam masala. As we chat over coffee I laugh because it’s exactly what my nana used to tell me.
“Just sprinkle a bit of turmeric in,” she’d advise. But what is “a bit”? When I got married, I told my nana that all I wanted as a gift were the dozens of Iraqi-Indian-Jewish recipes that I had grown up eating. I needed them written down so that I could cook them too.
Elana had the same thought when her mother turned 75. But while my recipes are confined to a display folder, lovingly written on pap.