While home cooks will be seduced initially by its delectable and easy-to-follow recipes, they'll declare fidelity to Monday Morning Cooking Club because of its stories.
Five years after a group of Jewish women in Sydney, Australia, began to meet weekly to cook and share recipes and traditions, six of them picked their favorites for this cookbook of more than 100 dishes (made accessible to Americans with conversions and a glossary of ingredients and terms). More than an "Australian" collection, the "sisterhood" represents a global cuisine with contributions from 60 cooks.
The migrations of the recipes' authors ranged from Ukraine, Germany and Austria to Burma, South Africa and England; each recipe includes a brief heartfelt tale of its origin. Stories of the Jewish diaspora pay homage to the recipes' creators, whose travels resulted in multicultural cuisine: one contributor has a Polish mother and a Hungarian father, who met in Australia and merged their traditions. A former Israeli soldier tells of easing tensions when she was guarding the border with Jordan by asking Palestinian women advice on making majadara, a lentil-rice dish.
Simple food rules the Monday Morning choices. Directions are clear and unfamiliar terms defined, sometimes with more stories. (Basil and Rocket Oil Tomato Soup? Oh, "rocket" is arugula! Schmaltz? "In cooking, it's chicken fat; on your body, it's too much schmaltz in your cooking.")
Lush photographs illustrate each recipe, and pictures of the six contributors suggest a family album. With recipes like "Fanny's Chicken Soup" and "Mum's Crumb Cookies," you'll feel like part of the Cooking Club, too. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, bookseller, Book Passage, San Francisco