Top-secret cake recipes and a 'Garden of Eden'—nourishing the soul with homestyle Jewish cooking

Monday Morning Cooking Club's Merelyn Chalmers her family's story of survival, and piecing together hundreds of treasured family recipes from Jewish communities around the world, including her mother's top-secret yellow cake recipe.

Merelyn grew up tied to the apron strings of her mother, an Hungarian Jew who had survived Auschwitz and eventually ended up in Western Australia.

In Perth, she met a man who had his own remarkable World War Two survival story, after fleeing Poland and being conscripted into the Polish regiment of the Red Army.

For the couple, Perth became their Garden of Eden, where they raised Merelyn and her older brother in peace.

From her mother, Merelyn learnt how to make the perfect pastry in her pyjamas at midnight; how to fry schnitzel properly; and how to make a succulent roast for Shabbat.

And from her father, Merelyn learnt how to appreciate both an Aussie barbecue of snags and steaks, as well as the acquired taste of Gefilte fish.

Years later, Merelyn would join a group of women who decided to raise money for charity by putting together a cookbook filled with treasured family recipes from Jewish communities in Australia and around the world.

As a member of the Monday Morning Cooking Club, Merelyn finally convinced her mother to share her secret recipe for yellow cake, a chiffon cake that had become famous in suburban Perth.

A Year of Jewish Cooking is published by Simon & Schuster.

You can find out more about the Monday Morning Cooking Club online.

This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Nicola Harrison.

It explores cooking, cookbooks, holiday cooking, Jewish cooking, stories of survival, origin stories, Bondi, Shabbat, Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Pesach, Hanukkah, family recipes, secret recipes, charity, books, writing, Shoah tapes, Holocaust, Auschwitz, refugees, migration, first generation Australians, Kosher kitchen, Judaism, religion, cultural identity, children of immigrants, Communism, Stalin, Hitler, Soviet Union, Spielberg.

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