Like many people in Australia, Cecile Yazbek’s life and work has taken her halfway across the world. Born in South Africa where as a member of a Lebanese family and community she was raised enjoying convivial feasts and traditional Middle Eastern food, she now lives in Sydney, and ran a cookery school until her retirement.

In the multicultural area where she was raised, there were also Indian and Malay-influenced dishes and so this book combines the various flavours that have shaped her cooking. Other influences too (health, the environment and social issues) have also affected her food philosophy and now Cecile has brought it all together in this delightful vegetarian cookbook.

Now please don’t stop reading because you've seen the V-word. These delicious recipes celebrate the meatless dishes of several cultures, adapting some, and with true Lebanese generosity, as a bonus interspersing them with chatty personal recollections, old photographs and observations that weave a web of understanding between cultures.

Dip into the text as you prepare vegetable kibbe, eggplant lasagne, tofu kebabs or Afrikaans speculaas biscuits ­– and a groaning table-full more. These recipes have been gathered from one woman’s lifetime of travelling and sharing good food with others, into this volume which will allow them to live for another generation in new homes.

-  Sally Hammond

 Mezze to Milk Tart, by Cecile Yazbek, published by Wakefield Press 2011, paperback, rrp $34.95, ISBN 978 18625 49210.