UAE | Leisure
Up close and personal with Mistress of Curries
Madhur Jaffrey in conversation with Jane Hodges at Emirates Festival of Literature
- By Anupa Kurian, Readers Editor
- Published: 20:39 March 12, 2011
- Image Credit: Karen Dias/Gulf News
- Madhur Jaffrey talks about her childhood, the BBC cookery series, attending Mahatma Gandhi's prayer session shortly before he was assassinated and life in general.
Dubai: It was some face time with the woman who has become almost synonymous with popularizing Indian curry and cooking to the world. An actor, director and author of "17 pure books on cookery", Jaffrey talked about her childhood, the BBC cookery series, attending Mahatma Gandhi's prayer session shortly before he was assassinated and life in general.
She said: "My family is from Delhi ... they used to work in the Mughal court, were scribes. After the Mughals, they served the British and were awarded land ... outside the walls of the city. It was a large orchard."
Jaffrey grew up with an extended family, all of who built houses on this massive land along a river. She led a relatively idyllic existence of picnics, good food and radio performances as part of plays, only marred by the presence of her uncle who ruled the family.
"My middle uncle was a patron of the arts and dominated the family. He was married to a woman he loved (against the advice of astrologers who predicted her early death). They got married and she died. He then married another woman who he hated. He lived in one wing ... away from his wife. He was cruel to anyone who didn't fawn in front him. Nothing could be done without his approval. He was the God that figured in all our lives."
Into this period of her life was also woven in India's struggle for independence. Her father had joined the Congress and she was spinning khadi at the call of Mahatma Gandhi to boycott English cotton. She along with her family attended one of Gandhi's public prayer meetings. "It was most wonderful," she said. Shortly after that he was killed.
Life moved on and she found herself in London as a young drama student craving for her home cooking when faced with a diet of pale roast beef, listless cabbage and potatoes.
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"I am a self- taught cook. I did not cook at all till I was about 20 years old.
From London I would write to my mother for recipes. She would send me three-line recipes with no specifics. So I used to experiment. I would correct what I had mis-done. Eventually she sent me more recipes and I asked other members of family, too... that's how it got started for me."
As a young actor, she got to know Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, worked in their 1965 production Shakespeare Wallah. The story and screenplay was by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Jaffrey won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance. She had also started writing for magazines and newspapers on the arts and issues she knew about. However, it was an article on food that generated a lot of interest.
But, it was not until Merchant put his persuasive skills to work did she get her first break in the culinary world. He urged "the chief food writer of the New York Times" to write about Jaffrey. She got a full page, which led to a publisher approaching her for a cookery book and the rest is history.
A dream break but it has not come easy. She does her fair share of 18-hour days. Does that mean she plans to stop anytime soon. Well, the answer would most probably be what Jaffrey said when asked about the usage of salt in cooking: "Salt ... put salt till somebody asks you not to."
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