Madhur Jaffrey: Mistress of Spices

Some people live to eat; others eat to live and then are those who have an absolute soul-connection with food. Madhur Jaffrey, the noted actress, cookbook writer and cooking expert, formed the foodie habit in babyhood!

“In our family, the moment a child is born, my grandmother would come with a jar of honey and would dip her little finger into the honey and write ‘Om’ on the baby’s tongue with it. And my mother always tells me, ‘You just opened your mouth and licked up the honey and when she put it again, you licked it up again.”

No surprise then, that decades later the tiny honey-connoisseur has become the international authority on Indian food, with 15 cookbooks and BBC television food shows to her credit and has a worldwide following. The prestigious James Beard Foundation has inducted Jaffrey’s very first cookbook, ‘An Invitation to Indian Cooking’ into the Hall of Fame.

Madhur Jaffrey was born in 1937 in a Kayasth family in Delhi that adored good food, and so got her exposure early to the wonderful and varied cuisine of the capital city. In the old days the men of the family had worked in the Mughal court and she says an ancestor was the finance minister at the court of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, so the Muslim influences in cuisine were there. Her family is from the heart of the old city, living in the semi mansion-like homes in the Dariba area.

Her grandfather, a barrister who worked with the Delhi High Court, was one of the old notables of the city and was titled by the British. In those days, the capital moved annually to the hills of Simla to escape the heat of summer, and for six months, the barrister and his entire extended family would move house to the foothills of the Himalayas.

“Everything – the servants, everything was packed up – seven or eight cars with all our baggage,” recalls Jaffrey. “And then we went up the hill, stopping for meals and picnics. As we went up the hairpin bends, my grandmother would take out her lime pickle as that was supposed to be very curative for motion sickness.”

In Delhi, her grandfather had bought a huge orchard outside the city walls and the homes were built on the banks of the River Yamuna. Says Jaffrey, “It was our river and we grew up calling it the Jumna.” In this magical orchard grew bheel (juaubes), mangoes, apricots, peaches and big tamarind and mulberry trees, besides all kinds of vegetables. All this bounty found its way to the table, cooked in a variety of delicious ways.

Growing up in these idyllic surroundings, Jaffrey was a tomboy who loved climbing trees and even insisted on wearing boys’ clothes: “ Our friends were our cousins – we had hundreds of cousins – and all the cousins of my age were boys. So I did everything they did.”

As a child, she certainly didn’t want to cook because that’s what housewives did. “I wanted to be a doctor because at the age of ten the only woman whom I saw doing anything was what we called a ‘lady doctor’,” she recalls. “ I think I was just impressed by the independence and the forthrightness and the doing quality of this woman.”

Another early influence was a Muslim-Jewish woman artist who painted as boldly as a Picasso even though she was teaching in a purdah school, which Jaffrey attended for a while. “I think I was attracted to independent women and what independent women could do – always,” she says. “ I felt they were showing me the path to what women could do. It wasn’t anything conscious – it was just a feeling I got from them that I wanted to be like them, not like the other women.”

What did her father think of her independent streak? “ I was the fifth child – by this time he had two perfect boys and two perfect pretty girls and then I came,” she says. “He thought I was weird and bold and odd, I’m sure but I think he liked that and so he encouraged all that in me. I was allowed to do anything – he was bolder with me, easier with me.”

Jaffrey, who had been dabbling in amateur theater, got scholarships from the British Consulate and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts to study at RADA for two years. Surprisingly, her family let her go alone in the 50’s and she traveled to London by ship. As a young actress in the UK, she accidentally hit upon her culinary career – because away from family and servants, she missed the delicious home food and had to learn to finally cook. She did this through airmail letters from her mother, detailing home recipes. Recalls Jaffrey, “ I made one of the recipes – hing jeere ke alu again and again. I couldn’t make rotis in those days so I ate it with Jewish pumpernickel bread that I could get in my neighborhood.”

How did she jump from merely learning to cook to becoming a culinary star? “ It was the weirdest jump,” she says. “ I slowly taught myself. I came to America and was acting in plays and cooking more and more, and entertaining a lot and still writing home for more and more recipes and learning from people around me.”

Around this time started her famous association with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, both young filmmakers dreaming of making great movies. It was while she was acting in ‘Shakespearewallah’ that Merchant, who was a master salesman, really touted her cooking abilities in order to promote the movie. The next thing she knew Craig Claiborne was writing about her in The New York Times.

Soon she was writing pieces on food for magazines like Holiday and she was being propelled to a culinary career. “The food I had grown up with – that’s all I knew but I realized I was very thorough – I tested and retested my recipes.”

She had books out in London, which were accompanied by cooking series on BBC and these really got her in the big league, and made her a household name in the U.K. These shows include Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery (1982); Madhur Jaffrey’s Far Eastern Cookery (1989); and Madhur Jaffrey’s Flavours Of India (1995).

“By introducing authentic Indian cuisine to the British kitchen, Jaffrey has radically altered the way British people cook, eat and think about Indian food,” wrote Nicola Foster. “Indeed it is fair to suggest that the recent ready availability of oriental spices and other Indian ingredients in British supermarkets is a direct result of Madhur Jaffrey’s television programs.”

In America, Jaffrey had a superb editor in Judith Jones at Knopf, who had also edited major cookbook writers like Julia Child. She did her first book with her in 1973, and since then has published 15 books, including ‘Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian’ which won the James Beard Award. Her latest is a memoir, ‘Climbing the Mango Trees’.

Her acting career also took off and she has won the best actress award in Venice for her role in ‘Shakespeare Wallah.’ She has acted in theater, television and films, and her films include ‘The Assam Garden’, Autobiography of a Princess’, ‘Heat and Dust’ and ‘Cotton Mary’, which she also directed. She says, “Once you are projected into the world of the known, then you get work anyway. I keep doing my films and my cookery books – I refuse to give up one or the other.”

She’s also very supportive of young Indian-American talent and has acted in several independent films like ‘ABCD’, ‘Chutney Popcorn’ and ‘Hiding Divya.’ She believes in these innovative film-makers and feels they will be the ones writing the scripts and telling the stories of the diaspora.

Jaffrey, who was married briefly to the actor Saeed Jaffrey with whom she had three daughters, has been married to the violinist Sanford Allen since 1969 and they live in Manhattan. Weekends are often spent in their upstate retreat, a de-sanctified church where family and grandkids unwind and relax.

Her book ‘From Curries to kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail’, a mouth-watering journey, traces the rebirth of these favorite Indian foods in countries from Singapore to South Africa.

Jaffrey acknowledges that Indian food is catching on: “Once you start eating spicy food, there’s no going back. And there’s nobody who does it better than we do. We are really masters of spices and that’s said without any embarrassment because we are. Our spices are so complex and we know how to mix them and match them.”

As an actor and a culinary expert does she feel there is ever a conflict between her two lives? She laughs: “I would always need to eat – many actors love food and are good cooks – it’s like the right side and the left side of the brain – people who tend to be actors tend to like good food!”

What are her favorite food choices when she’s feeling low – and when she’s in a celebratory mood? She says noodles are the comfort food she craves the most when she’s feeling low but when she feels like eating well but lightly her choice is dal chaval, Japanese sushi or grilled vegetables and fish.

She adds, “When I have lots of energy I will make a huge Indian meal – four vegetables and a daal and a meat and a fish, as well as complicated rice dishes. I love all food and I love food from every country. When we go out to eat, it’s usually a wonderful meal in Chinatown, Japanese sushi or a grand French meal. Other than that, I like to cook at home.”

Yes, for someone who didn’t even know how to boil an egg or brew a cup of tea, Madhur Jaffrey has reached the top of the culinary pyramid – and along the way she’s taught millions of novices around the world to cook, eat and enjoy great Indian food.

Related Article: At Home with Madhur Jaffrey

© Lavina Melwani