Madhur Jaffrey is the accidental cook. “I have always been suspicious of my cookery career,” she says, “in the sense that I feel it’s not my real career. I can cook but I’m an actress.” Indeed she is. Famed for winning the best actress award at the 1965 Berlin film festival for her performance as a haughty Bollywood star in Merchant Ivory’s movie Shakespeare Wallah. But she is also very much a culinary trailblazer; a profound educator who took generations of western cooks gently by the hand and introduced them to the joys, subtleties, and regional variations of the India of her birth.
Next month sees the publication of a gorgeous 40th anniversary edition of her seminal book Indian Cookery, updated to include 11 new recipes. The original was groundbreaking in so many ways. It accompanied a 1982 BBC sleeper series of the same name, made by the education department, and went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. In the process, it created the market for the TV tie-in. More importantly, it introduced readers to the essentials of spice roasting and flavour layering; to dishes like “aubergine cooked in pickling style” and “lemony chicken with fresh coriander”.
