Baghdadi Jews from India, mostly Bombay and Calcutta, began arriving in Australia in the late 1940s. Many settled in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, especially Bondi.
Indian-Jewish Food: Recipes and Stories from the Backstreets of Bondi captures the spectacular – but little-known – cuisine of India’s Baghdadi Jews who immigrated to Australia in the 1950s and ’60s.
By incorporating Indian spices into traditional Iraqi dishes and following the Jewish dietary laws – which prohibit the mixing of meat and dairy – India’s Baghdadi Jews created a delicious cuisine that isn’t quite typical Indian.
The collection of recipes in this book is in five sections: Sides, Vegetarian, Fish & Chicken, Meat, and Sweet. Recipes include chakla bakla (pickled vegetables), cheese samoosas (cheese-filled pastries), chittarnee (tomato-based chicken curry) and chatpatay (chickpeas and potatoes in tamarind sauce).
The book also tells the story of Eze Moses’ legendary Bondi spice shop. Eze Moses was a Baghdadi Jew from India, and for many years, his shop was a magnet for all Indian immigrants – Jewish and otherwise.
About the Author
Elana Benjamin is a Jewish-Australian writer of Indian-Iraqi heritage and a home cook. Her writing has been published in Good Weekend, Sunday Life, the Sydney Morning Herald, SBS Voices, The Jewish Independent, Kveller, Tablet Magazine and the Jewish Book Council blog.
Elana is a contributor to the Growing Up Indian in Australia anthology (2024, Black Inc.). She is also the author of My Mother’s Spice Cupboard: A Journey from Baghdad to Bombay to Bondi (2012, Hybrid Publishers).