The Jewish Diaspora in Australia is celebrated in a book co-authored by three Melbourne-based Jewish women. Gaye Weedon and Hayley Smorgon talks to SBS Food  about the project as part of a series of interviews with Australia's top chefs and cooks.

“Every cuisine tells a story. Jewish food tells the story of an uprooted, migrating people and their vanished worlds.” Claudia Roden.

Click here for a selection of recipes from Cooking from Memory

Cooking from Memory opens with the story of Esther Abrahams, one of seven Jews aboard the First Fleet. Jews have played a part in the history of Australian settlement, and the nation’s adopted culinary habits from the very beginning. Cooking from Memory, published by Hardie Grant Books, celebrates the diversity of Jewish cuisine through the recipes and stories of Jewish Australians from all over the world, keen to keep their religious traditions while embracing their cultural surrounds.

After World War I and II, large numbers of Jews migrated to Australia brining their recipes and food traditions with them. The food of Georgia, Poland and Russia incorporates many of Jewish cuisines most famous dishes. In Cooking From Memory Polish food including kneidlach – chicken soup, matzo Balls and piroshki (spring rolls) appear alongside recipes for garlic laced roast chicken and russian borscht, and from Georgia beetroot salad and kharcho (lamb soup with rice) and lobio, a popular bean salad with coriander and chilli.

Keen to preserve their own family’s food traditions for future generations, authors Hayley Smorgon, Gaye Weeden and Natalie King spent two and a half years interviewing and cooking with Australian Jews from all four continents. The trio were constantly surprised by the diverse collection of recipes they gathered, and engrossed in the accompanying stories of hardship and loss, and of hope, love and success.

Incorporating the personal stories of the cook behind the recipes, the book explores each cook’s journey, their culinary memories and influences, and their feelings about life in Australia.

Stories and recipes from Japan, Libya, Argentina, Vietnam and South Africa, sit beside Israel, Uzbekistan, Morocco and Hungary. Finding Jewish recipes from around the world was an organic process says Smorgon, “most cooks came to us through word of mouth. People would recommend a great cook and we would track them down.”

Weeden says some of the most interesting encounters came from lesser known Jewish communities, “meeting Hannah Elijah, born in Bombay, really illustrated the marriage of traditions and culture,” explains Weeden, “speaking to her about her life and her combining of Indian heritage with Jewish traditions was inspiring.”

Likewise, stories of migration from Western Europe include French, Italian and Scottish recipes, presenting another side of Jewish cuisine not often considered. The lightness of French potage aux epinards (spinach soup) and asapargus with eggs and vinaigrette, followed by concorde cake - piled high discs of meringue smeared with rich chocolate mousse, are in contrast to the earthy redness of Hungarian criske paprika’s (chicken paprika) and a dessert of dense poppyseed cake with apple and walnuts. Penne with Béchamel sauce makes an appearance in a chapter on Italian Jewish food, while Scottish tweed kettle, a salmon hash popular in the 19th century also features.

The final chapter includes a glossary, which aids in deciphering terminology and lists Jewish holidays and celebrations, all closely aligned with, often symbolic, food.

“Jewish food is festival food, and many of the nationalities within Australia’s Jewish community also come from countries rich in tradition, symbolism and their own festival cuisine,” explains Weeden.

In Perla Caviaglia’s Italian Jewish kitchen symbolic recipes include pomodori con riso (tomatoes stuffed with rice). Rice is served on Rosh Hashanah, the many tiny grains symbolic of luck.

Japanese-born Yoko Ryan combines the symbolism of her birth culture with the traditions of her husband’s Polish Jewish heritage. Ryan serves soba noodles, a Japanese symbol of long life at New Year. While her Sabbath menu often begins with temaki sushi followed by her mother in law’s chicken soup, celebrating the cultures within one family, and symbolic of the diversity of Australian Jewish culture.