Madhur Jaffrey: Sweet Remembrances

A double threat, the Broadway actress and best-selling cookbook author dishes on Bollywood and recipes.

By Neil Parmar, published on May 01, 2004 - last reviewed on January 25, 2008

From sweet chutneys to spicy curries, best-selling cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey has introduced food lovers around the world to home-cooked Indian cuisine. But her rise to gourmet fame came only after she conquered her first passion: acting. When we caught up with Jaffrey, in her 70's, she was in the Broadway musical Bombay Dreams, set in Bollywood, the Tinseltown of India, where fantastical musicals with over-the-top dancing and dazzling costumes reigned supreme.

You grew up on an orchard near Delhi. What did you eat as a child?

As soon as I came home from school, I'd put on my chupals [sandals] and rush into the garden. Very often, I'd have salt and chili powder in my hand, and I'd get whatever was ripe—like tomatoes and mangoes—and dip them into this. There were all kinds of things to be eaten raw, which we used to pluck. We'd go straight into the garden and start eating like little animals.

You knew nothing about cooking until you left for London as a young woman to study drama. What changed?

In England, the food was really, really… not like I wanted it. It was so sad to be in this culinary desert! I wrote to my mother, "All I eat is chocolate." And, of course, she was horrified. So she sent me all these recipes in Hindi, and I started cooking. I would cook one dish again and again and again until I sort of mastered it.

What makes you a great cook?

I'm good at what I do because I was born with a good palate—like a critic of paintings is born with a good eye. If you're born with it, it's your luck. But then you develop it, and you get interested in it, and you are hardworking, persevering and you don't give up.

How are the recipes in your latest book, From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes From the Indian Spice Trail, different from what people eat in ethnic restaurants?

I don't particularly like going to restaurants, because that's a whole [different] class of food. I like home cooking, and I think that best represents the Indian world.

Why did you go to the U.K. to make your mark, rather than aspiring to be a Bollywood actress?

If I looked different and was a Bollywood-star type, I might have tried it. Also, as a young girl growing up there was this kind of rebellion against the status quo. I wanted the Marlon Brando kind of method acting. I wanted honesty and truth and intensity and all those other things that the Bollywood cinema [then] did not offer.

Do you prefer cooking or acting?

Oh, acting! I cooked because I thought I had to, and it's become a profession in spite of my best intentions. I feel that I've been hijacked into this career!