Capturing his life on a plate

Like many Jewish families, the Morrises often describe each other in terms of food. Grandma cooked traditional dinners to perfection but Grandpa always ate egg and chips. Mum was dependable with a brisket while dad was more enthusiastic — a “stunt cook”.

“It’s all we ever talk about,” says Rick Pushinsky, né Morris, a photographer whose professional name comes from the family’s original name, changed somewhere between Lithuania and London a century ago. “My parents are obsessed with cooking.”

Pushinsky’s latest project distills all those conversations into a book of laminated recipe cards the size of an iPad, illustrated with his own photography. Titled Just Not Kosher, it features 21 recipes — a three-course meal for each day of the week — from food-spattered clippings assembled and refined over 60 years. Although Steven Morris gets the credit for the recipes, on the project’s website he pays tribute to wife, Helen, who he says: “ tells me that I’m not the tidiest of cooks; I am often accused of dirtying every pan in the kitchen. She is, however, an excellent cook and much tidier than me. After 45 years of marriage, these recipes are as much hers as they are mine, and her versions are unassailably wonderful.”

The classics are all there; recipes for lokshen kugel, chopped liver, chicken soup and kneidlach are customised riffs on the familiar. But you’ll also find more exotic dishes, sprinkled with Gruyère and paired with polenta, inspired by holidays abroad. “I remember my dad bringing back lemongrass from the Far East in 1995,” says Pushinsky. “None of us had ever tried it.” Whether due to fashion or simply the rare consensus of everyone at the table, many of those recipes endured.