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Madhur Jaffrey: the unconquered Queen of curry cookery

posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 01:49 AM

Author: Sanjay Kumar, Brighton

Everyone at IndiaOrganix loves Madhur Jaffrey. Our 22 year old tandoori chef worships her and think she's 'well tasty, innit'.

Madhur Jaffrey (Hindi: मधुर जाफरी madhur jāphrī; born August 13, 1933) is an Indian actress, who has also found fame as a food writer, introducing the Western world to the many cuisines of modern India.

She was born Madhur Bahadur in Delhi, British India and was educated at Miranda House (of the University of Delhi). After college, she worked for All India Radio. She then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated with honors in 1957. She then met and married Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey and moved to New York City. She and Saeed divorced in 1965. They have three daughters, Meera, Zia and Sakina Jaffrey. In 1969, she married Sanford Allen, a violinist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Madhur Jaffrey is said to have been responsible for introducing James Ivory to his partner to be, Ismail Merchant. She appeared in a number of their earlier films: Shakespeare Wallah (1965) (a role for which she won Berlin Film Festival's Best Actress award), The Guru (1969), Autobiography of a Princess, (1976) Heat and Dust (1983), directed by Ivory, and The Perfect Murder (1988). She starred as the title character in their film Cotton Mary (1999) and co-directed it with Merchant.

Jaffrey is the noted author of cookbooks of Indian, Asian, and world vegetarian cuisines, many of which have become bestsellers and several of which have won James Beard Foundation awards.

She has presented several cookery series on television, including Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery in 1982 (which was standard viewing for all British Indian families in the 80's), Madhur Jaffrey's Far Eastern Cookery in 1989 and Madhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India in 1995. She lives in Manhattan and has a home in upstate New York.

Ironically, she did not cook at all as a child growing up in Delhi. She had almost never been in the kitchen and almost failed cooking at school. It was only after she went to London at the age of 19 to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art that she learned how to cook, using recipes of familiar dishes that were provided in correspondence from her mother.

In the 1960s, after her award-winning performance in Shakespeare Wallah, she became known as the "actress who could cook" and was hired by the BBC to present a show on Indian cooking. After an article about her and her cooking appeared in the New York Times in 1966, she received a book contract that produced An Invitation to Indian Cooking, her first book. The recipes in that book came from her mother, although she adapted them for the American kitchen.

During the 1970s, she taught classes in Indian cooking, both at the James A. Beard School of Cooking and in her Manhattan apartment.

In 1986, the restaurant Dawat opened in Manhattan using recipes provided by her.

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