The Town of Cowra, where Elaine’s parents settled in the 1920’s
controlling Lebanon for about three to four-hundred years, so there’s quite a big influence it has. The French – Lebanon was their mandate for quite some years, and so you’ve got the French influence. Italian also, and Egyptian cuisine – but what is beautiful about the Lebanese cuisine, they’ve taken these recipes, and just added them to theirs, which is really very interesting.
So you grew up in Cowra, in country New South Wales. What was it like for your mother, trying to cook Lebanese food traditionally in a kitchen in an Australian country town before the Second World War?
She managed quite well, but she used her imagination. For example, at the time something like tahini wasn’t even a known thing in Australia. We use it in a most beautiful sauce for baked fish – it’s called taratour – and this is just a little bit of garlic and salt and pepper and lemon juice with the tahini, made into a sauce. So what did she do? There was no tahini. So what she did was, she got peanut butter, and did the same recipe!
So back to Australia for a moment, as someone who was born in Australia of first generation parents, Mum and Dad who I know met in Australia but were, I think from the same village, weren’t they? That’s right, yes