Like mother used to make

​Ingredients:

1 1/2 lb curd cheese or cream cheese

4 eggs

I glass caster sugar

I teaspoon vanilla essence

​Crush enough plain digestive biscuits to cover the base of a buttered 20cm spring baking tin. Whisk cheese, eggs, sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla essence. Fill tin with mixture and bake in a fan oven at 160 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove from oven.
Mix the sour cream with 2oz caster sugar and dribble a teaspoon of lemon juice pour over cake return to the oven for 10 mins.

​David Draiman

My absolute favourite thing is her traditional chicken soup which she makes every for the Shabbat meal every Friday night. It’s real-life Jewish penicillin and always hits the spot. Mum uses a special Yemenite mix of spices called called hawaij which gives the soup a distinct flavour and which takes it above and beyond your average chicken soup. The recipe for the mix comes from my grandmother on my father’s side.

​​Louisa Clein

When we were kids mum used to make the most delicious chicken pie. In fact, she still makes it to this day and now my kids love it too. It was always fashioned from the leftovers of a roast chicken from the night before – usually on a Saturday, after the Friday night chicken. There was invariably a bottle of sherry near the hob when she made it and I’m fairly sure some of it went in the pie. What is sure is that she didn’t consult a recipe when she made it. Her cooking came, comes, from her heart and soul. I remember helping her roll out the pastry and cutting out little shapes to put on the top and, of course, painting it with egg to make it golden brown on the top.

​Simon Schama

My mum was a pretty terrible cook – so terrible, in fact, that I learned to cook for myself at university and since then cooking has been one of my great loves. (I was cookery writer for GQ magazine for some years). This said, she did a couple of things acceptably well and I have somewhat fond memories of them. One was klops (Yiddish meatloaf). On one memorable day the dish included a small but bloody piece of her finger. When I protested she claimed (un-halachically ) “but it’s kosher, don’t tell your father”.

​​Claudia Roden

A favourite recipe is konafa a la crème. It consists of kadaifi, a thin, shredded filo dough pastry commonly used in Middle Eastern desserts, and which we ate in Egypt. In London, we used to make it together and it was a bonding time with my mother. The pastry was spread with a cream made out of milk thickened with ground rice, mixed with syrup. The whole concotion was then covered with pistachios and eaten hot. To this day, I make the dish in the tray Mum used.

​Oi Va Voi, Steve Levi-Kallin

At Pesach, I remember my mother making almond macaroons and cinnamon balls dipped in chocolate. We’d eat them with tea served in bone china cups and saucers that only came out at Pesach. The tea set had belonged to my grandparents so we nibbled and drank with a sense of family history.

​​Ivor Baddiel

Unfortunately, my mother wasn’t a great cook. Her signature dish was roast potatoes that were burnt so badly they were often indistinguishable from the black baking tray they were roasted in. And yet, in my memory, they were, and will always remain, delicious. They signify my mother, home, family and the whole Baddiel madness. Then, for dessert, she would lovingly knock up her famous, Michelin-starred tinned tangerines. Or if it was Pesach, we may have been treated to coconut pyramids for which a generous review might have been, on the chewy side.

​Sarah Sackman

My favourite dish that my mum makes? No contest, really: the Sephardi Gibraltarian dish Bien Me Sabe which it translates as “tastes good to me”. As my family will attest, I’m no Nigella and I can’t tell you exactly how it’s made. But in essence, there’s a whole lot of eggs and almonds which are whipped together into a lovely, light creamy dish, with meringue on top. The dessert is served in a glass and it was, and remains, a family staple. We always have it on chagim, when relatives come  from far and wide. Each sweet spoonful reminds me of my grandparents and of course my mum who keeps the culinary tradition alive. Bendigamos! (The name of the Sephardi hymn sung after meals.)

​Rob Rinder

My mum and I have exactly the same taste buds: those of a 19th-century Chasid. And while she is a great cook, my strongest food memory is of us eating schmaltz herring and watching an old black-and-white film after shul on Saturday afternoon. Am I allowed to bring my grandmothers in, here? Then I shall. Frances, my dad’s mum, and whose house my brother and I would go to every Monday after school (Mum worked full-time), would make this wonderful chopped meat loaf. God knows what went in it, but whatever did was braised for hours and the result was heimishe heaven. Lotte, my maternal grandmother, who grew up in the East End, made a wonderful Shepherd’s Pie which she called poke-it-down pie.
​Felicity Kendal

I loved my late Jewish mother-in-law Josephine Rudman to bits. She was not renowned for her cooking, but her matzah balls were always famously floaters, and she also made the best tuna fish salad. You can add more mayo for richness, more apple for sweetness, or more celery for the fresh crunch. Go steady on the onions so they don’t overpower, but they are needed for punch. The salad should be the consistency of crunchy egg and onion – not too mushy, but not dry.

​Nana’s Tuna Fish Salad from Dallas

Serves 2

2 hard boiled eggs

1 bunch spring onions

The tender inside stalks of celery or 4 big stalks with the threads taken off

1 largish apple

Just over half a jar of tuna

2 large tablespoons of mayonnaise

4.5 large full leaves from an Iceberg lettuce.

Sea salt and black pepper to taste

​To garnish

Fresh chopped dill, parsley or chives.

​Chop the eggs and onions finely (think egg and onion)

Peel and core the apple and chop into tiny pieces, ditto the celery

Drain the tuna and break up with a fork

Mix all these together in the bowl, and add the mayonnaise