Indus Age is delighted to welcome Elana Benjamin — a Jewish-Australian writer of Indian-Iraqi heritage, whose unique cultural background deeply informs both her storytelling and her cooking. Elana’s writing has appeared in a wide range of respected publications, including Good Weekend, Sunday Life, The Sydney Morning Herald, SBS Voices, The Jewish Independent, and Tablet Magazine.

She is a proud contributor to Growing Up Indian in Australia (2024, Black Inc.), a recent anthology exploring the diverse experiences of the Indian diaspora. Elana is also the author of My Mother’s Spice Cupboard: A Journey from Baghdad to Bombay to Bondi (2012), a memoir that traces her family’s rich migratory journey and culinary traditions.

Most recently, her work Indian-Jewish Food was named a dual finalist in the 2025 Next Generation Indie Book Awards — recognised in both the Best Cookbook and Best Overall Design categories. Beyond the page, Elana brings her heritage to life through home cooking, blending flavours, stories, and identity with warmth and authenticity.

1. Your book,Indian-Jewish Food: Recipes and Stories from the Backstreets of Bondi, shines a light on the little-known cuisine of India’s Baghdadi Jewish community. What inspired you to preserve and share these recipes and stories now?

The catalyst for writing the book was that in 2023, my mother turned 75 and as her birthday approached, I had a moment of: oh, if god forbid something terrible happened to her tomorrow, all her recipes would be lost and I’d have no idea how to make most them. I cook all the time, but I rarely cooked Indian-Jewish food because my mother always cooked it for us, so I had no impetus to learn.

Obviously I could have just collected the recipes for myself, I didn’t have to write a public-facing cookbook. But the food is so delicious that I wanted to share the recipes with a wider audience, especially because a lot of the dishes can’t be bought commercially; they’re only cooked in home kitchens, or in the kitchen of the Sephardi Synagogue in Sydney or in Melbourne, or at the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue in Colaba in Mumbai.

The late food historian Gil Marks has a fabulous phrase, he writes about ‘spreading the culinary wealth’. And that’s what drove me to write the book, I wanted to spread the culinary wealth. The recipes aren’t just my mother’s; I also consulted with other women in the community, so the book reflects the cuisine of the Jews of India who came from Iraq and then dispersed to countries including Australia.

But there was also another reason that I wanted to write the cookbook. In August 2022, there was an article in Good Weekend magazine about  how Indian-Australians are our country’s fastest-growing migrant group. The article stated that “the first real trickle of migrants from India to Australia were doctors and academics in the 1960s.” But actually, Jews from India, mostly from Bombay and Calcutta, started arriving in Sydney much earlier than that, in the late 1940s, and most settled in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. At the time the shameful White Australia Policy was in force, and of course it applied to India’s Baghdadi Jews, and it definitely was a problem for some of them. But mostly, they were ‘white’ enough that they were able to immigrate to Australia.

But that article made me realise that if the Good Weekend journalist didn’t find out that information, then how would others know? So collecting the recipes was an opportunity share the little-known story of India’s Baghdadi Jews and our rich culture – but through food, which I knew had the potential reach a different and broader audience than say, a book or a lecture.

2. How did your own Indian-Iraqi Jewish heritage influence the way you approached writing this book—both in terms of food and storytelling?

Growing up, I didn’t see myself or my heritage reflected back at me during my schooling or in the wider community. So I very much wanted the storytelling to capture the richness of my Baghdadi Jewish culture, and my love for, and pride in, my heritage. I also wanted the images of the dishes to be beautiful and colourful, to mirror the joy of eating this delicious food – and hopefully encourage others to try cooking dishes they may not have cooked before.

3. Many readers may not be familiar with how Jewish dietary laws shape this cuisine. Can you share an example of how Kashrut influences an otherwise Indian dish?

One of the Jewish dietary laws is the prohibition of mixing meat and dairy in the same meal. I think the best example of how kashrut influences an Indian dish is tandoori chicken (which isn’t in my cookbook) – this dish is traditionally made with yoghurt, but mixing yoghurt (dairy) and chicken (meat) in the same dish is prohibited, so you couldn’t use yoghurt if you wanted to make the dish kosher. You would either have to omit the yoghurt or substitute coconut yoghurt or coconut cream, which are both dairy-free.

Similarly, a dish of beef vindaloo (which is in my cookbook) couldn’t be served with yoghurt or contain yoghurt. And it couldn’t be made with ghee, you’d substitute oil to make it dairy-free.

4. Eze Moses and his Bondi spice shop play a central role in the book. What made his store such a cultural and culinary hub for the community?

It was such a hub because from the 1950s until the early 1970s, Eze Moses’ shop on Brighton Boulevard in Bondi was the only place that spices (and later, Indian groceries) could be bought. And these ingredients were essential for new immigrants to cook the familiar food of home; it was important for food to remain constant when so much else had changed.

Although the White Australia Policy was finally (and thankfully!) abolished in the 1970s, early Indian immigrants were doctors and academics (as noted in the Good Weekend article I mentioned above), not spice traders and shopkeepers. So the new migrants trekked to Bondi from all over Sydney – and even further – to buy spices and Indian groceries. My favourite anecdote is the one from an Indian journalist and his doctor wife who arrived in Australia in 1972 and travelled to Sydney by coach to buy Indian groceries from Eze Moses, as there were no shops in their new home of Adelaide. Their round trip took more than 48 hours!

[For more information about Eze Moses, pls refer to pg 7 of the introduction to my cookbook.]

5. You’ve organized the book into five sections—Sides, Vegetarian, Fish & Chicken, Meat, and Sweet. Was there a section that felt most nostalgic or personal to you?

Definitely the Sweet section, as I have a sweet tooth and perfecting the recipes for dishes such as agar agar, kakas and date babas made me feel like I had mastered cooking my favourite childhood sweets, which I now make with love for my own children.

6. You’re both a home cook and a seasoned writer. How did you balance the technical aspects of recipe writing with the emotional and historical storytelling?

I actually enjoyed switching between the two. The left-brain recipe writing was very logical and methodical (and took me back to my training as a lawyer and my love of algebra, which is so methodical), but it also got a bit dry and boring after a while – which is when I’d switch to working on the storytelling parts of the cookbook, which were more creative and fun, but which I found trickier to write. If I found I was struggling with the more creative expression required for the storytelling, I’d go back to recipe-writing for a while… and so it went until I finished the book!

7. What was the most surprising thing you uncovered while researching and writing Indian-Jewish Food?

How delicious and easy to make nankhatai biscuits are. I wasn’t originally going to include this recipe in my cookbook. Rather, I’d wanted to include a recipe for almond babas instead, but no matter how much I tried, the dough ended up too soft so I had to exclude it. My mother encouraged me to include nankhatai biscuits instead, insisting they were so easy to make. I finally relented and they’re now one of my favourite biscuits and all my guests love them!

8. Your book was supported by Waverley Council and celebrated by figures like Alice Zaslavsky. How important has local and literary support been to the project’s success?

Absolutely vital. It wouldn’t have been financially viable without the grant I received from Waverley Council, and endorsements from Alice Zaslavsky and from Lisa Goldberg (from Monday Morning Cooking Club) have given the book gravitas – which was really important given that I’m not a professional chef.

9. As a contributor to Growing Up Indian in Australia, how do you see food intersecting with identity and belonging in migrant communities?

Food is such an integral part of identity and belonging in migrant communities, it’s a source of connection to others, and to the places we/our families came from. Also, taste and memory are closely linked – taste is one of the most effective sensations for encoding memory. So food is often a connection to shared memories with others, to our early lives, the places we’ve come from and the people we grew up with, which is really important for identity in migrant communities. Cooking the same dishes in our new homes creates a sense of belonging and a connection to those who came before us.

As Claudia Roden writes in The Book of Jewish Food: “Dishes are important because they are a link with the past, a celebration of roots, a symbol of continuity. They are that part of the immigrant culture which survives the longest, kept up even when clothing, music, language and religious observance have been abandoned.”

10. Finally, for someone new to Indian-Jewish cuisine, what’s one recipe from the book you’d recommend they try first—and why?

The nankhatai biscuits – because they’re so easy to make and so scrumptious. It’s impossible to cater for everyone’s food preferences and allergies/intolerances, but they’re also vegan, nut-free and dairy-free. They do, however, contain gluten.

For anyone who’s gluten-intolerant, I’d suggest the egg mahmoosa – again, it’s delicious and simple to make, and for me, I love the combination of egg and potato, it’s real comfort food. This dish is also nutritious and filling, you can add in whatever veges you have in your fridge, and it’s dairy-free and nut