Madhur Jaffrey, our feisty nani

On the heels of a viral video where she plays a rap grandma, the doyenne of the Indian culinary world releases a new book of Indian recipes for the Instant Pot

May 17, 2019 04:31 pm | Updated 06:13 pm IST

The desi diaspora icon recently made waves for portraying a ‘nani’ (grandmother) in a rap video

The desi diaspora icon recently made waves for portraying a ‘nani’ (grandmother) in a rap video

At 85, Madhur Jaffrey could well be my nani . Except that my demure grandmother was a far cry from the badass, beret-wearing, marijuana-smoking nani that Jaffrey portrays in a new rap album by Mr Cardamom — as New York based rapper Zohran Mamdani (filmmaker Mira Nair’s son) calls himself. A homage of sorts to Mamdani’s own grandmother, the video shows Jaffrey challenging the stereotype that nanis are weak and irrelevant.

As I watch her mouth the expletive-laden lyrics (possibly the only tame one is, “I am 85 years old, 85 years gold”), I wonder at the incredible journey Jaffrey has made, from being a protected child within a genteel, joint Mathur family to this stereotype-smashing nani .

“What made you do it?” I ask her over a call. “God alone knows,” she chuckles, before explaining how she thought of Zohran as her own grandson, how she was charmed by the fact that he approached her independently without asking his mother to intercede, and how she found him “chivalrous and sweet”.

“The role was not easy, I wondered how I would mouth those lyrics, whether I would even be able to move my lips so fast.” But as she got into the act, inspiration came fast and furious — the fierce kohl ed eyes (“I always liked Durga statues”) and even the cigarette (“I didn’t know how to roll it, so someone had to light it like a beedi ”).

The rapper Zohran Kwame Mamdani, known as Mr. Cardamom, top, with Madhur Jaffrey, in New York, March 22, 2019.

The rapper Zohran Kwame Mamdani, known as Mr. Cardamom, top, with Madhur Jaffrey, in New York, March 22, 2019.

Long before Padma Lakshmi

The video is now quite a YouTube sensation. It has brought back attention to what Jaffrey is first and foremost — an actor — even if we usually remember her as a cookbook writer. Her very first film, Shakespeare Wallah , won her a best actress award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1965, and she went on to collaborate on many Merchant-Ivory productions over the years.

That said, it is her career in food that won her much wider recognition in the UK and the US, where an entire generation of Indophiles was introduced to the country’s food through her cookbooks and TV shows. You could say that in the days before (the American author, actor and TV host) Padma Lakshmi, there was Madhur Jaffrey.

In 1973, her first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking became a bestseller. Since then, there have been 29 more, including the latest, Instantly Indian Cookbook (published by Alfred A Knopf) , a collection of recipes for the wildly popular electric pressure cooker, The Instant Pot. Jaffrey admits that she had never used the device before, in an interview with The New York Times . But she is now convinced that, used correctly, it works well for Indian recipes.

In her recently-released book, the cookbook author provides Indian recipes that work well for the wildly popular Instant Pot

In her recently-released book, the cookbook author provides Indian recipes that work well for the wildly popular Instant Pot

Making of curry

In the introduction to her book, Jaffrey tells her readers, “Many of the recipes have more ingredients than you may be used to using. Do not let that worry you. I did not want to dumb down India’s authentic tastes for this book.”

Instantly Indian is more nuanced in terms of recipes with complexity and provenance than many of Jaffrey’s early works: The BBC Food site, for instance, has an archive of her recipes with vaguely “Indian” food such as “easy vegetable curry” and chicken “ qorma ” with tomatoes that no self-respecting Lucknowi cook is likely to serve, and stir-fried prawns in a tomato-cream sauce which reminds me of “pink pasta” favoured by Indians who claim to eat Italian.

Even so, it leaves me with mixed feelings. As an Indian based in India, I cannot help but point out important nuances sacrificed as cooking processes seem shortened, and flavours intrinsic to classic dishes altered. For instance, a Hyderabadi egg recipe with tomato and tamarind — described as tomato kutt — shows up Jaffrey confused between the Hyderabadi kutt (which has no tamarind) and a pulusu -style egg curry from Andhra/Telangana (which has a lot more tamarind). In her description, she describes the kutt as a Hindu dish, when it is actually a courtly dish of the syncretic Nizami culture.

The recipe for lamb pilaf ( yakhni pulao ), a dish of my Mathur ancestors — and Jaffrey’s — starts off with making stock (she calls it soup, though) except that meat, spices, onions and so on are to be added to pre-existing stock! Instead of the meat and rice cooking together, she cooks them separately, and then layers them together.

Last year, while she was taking a hiatus from cookbooks, Jaffrey essayed the role of Maya Kamala, protagonist Sarayu Blue’s mother, in the NBC show, ‘I Feel Bad’. The sitcom may have been axed last week, but Jaffrey has a lot in the works, including another cookbook (“I really don’t want to announce it in case it changes a bit, ” she says)

Last year, while she was taking a hiatus from cookbooks, Jaffrey essayed the role of Maya Kamala, protagonist Sarayu Blue’s mother, in the NBC show, ‘I Feel Bad’. The sitcom may have been axed last week, but Jaffrey has a lot in the works, including another cookbook (“I really don’t want to announce it in case it changes a bit, ” she says)

Cutting a formidable figure

Within India, where home cooks are accomplished and can be exacting, a common criticism levied against Jaffrey is that her food is “Westernised”. That may well be. However, since her main audience has always been foreign, it is worth checking with people who grew up on her shows and books.

An Anglo-Indian friend in London, Aidan Kiernander, whose British grandmother still makes “curry” from a pre-Jaffrey 1950s recipe using, among other things, half a can of vegetable soup, says, “Madhur Jaffrey may be much maligned in the UK nowadays, but in the 1980s and 1990s, she was conjuring up exciting food for what was already a nation of curry eaters.” Kiernander, who has been leading street food tours in London for 15 years, says that as London’s desi suburbs began to get more “authentic” restaurants in the 1980s and 1990s, “Jaffrey gave an insight into how these tastes may be reproduced and what these weird and wonderful fruits, vegetables and spices were”.

British chef Manju Malhi agrees, saying that even though there weren’t many nuances, “her programmes were kind of pioneering in the sense that she introduced the UK to so called ‘Indian’ food”.

There were other cookbook writers who were very popular at that time, including the charismatic Khalid Aziz, a BBC presenter whose books are still considered to be bibles by many desi old-timers in the UK. However, Jaffrey’s “dramatic Shakespearean way” on TV, as Malhi recalls, made her compulsive watching. “She cut a formidable figure talking about Indian food. [But] now those days are gone and we have arrived at understanding finer nuances of the many varied cuisines of India,” Malhi adds.

Life over training

“Do you think,” I ask Jaffrey, "it would have been better if you had formal training in cooking because many chefs these days in India are studying why certain flavour combinations are used, how regional Indian food is based on Ayurveda, and so on?”

“I am glad I didn’t know how to cook, because I always looked at recipes from a beginner’s point of view,” she responds. “I would ask people to cook in front of me and ask detailed questions. That is why my recipes are easy for beginners and come out fine. Instead of the vague brown sauces that most restaurants served in the name of Indian food then, I tried to change the way young British or American people looked at Indian food and make them realise that they too can cook it,” she says.

Indeed, this is a singular achievement. Jaffrey’s role in popularising Indian food internationally remains a landmark. The feisty nani is ready to cook and serve some more.

Madhur Jaffrey’s Instantly Indian Cookbook , priced at ₹1,316, is available on amazon.in

***

Chef Manish Mehrotra, of the award-winning Indian Accent in Delhi (with outposts in New York and London) on why he believes Madhur Jaffrey is the “ desi Julia Child’:

When I started out, I used to refer to Madhur Jaffrey’s 1985 book, A Taste of India, all the time. It was 10 times better than all the cookbooks we had then. I still go through it. In my opinion the two women who have done immense service to the nation, with reference to Indian cuisine, are (food writer) Tarla Dalal and Jaffrey. They came at a time when there was no Google to find out more about a certain cuisine. It was just curry and naan in the West. Unfortunately, the perception of India as a land of snake charmers was still high. So perhaps you had to compromise a bit (with the technique) and add a few ingredients you wouldn’t otherwise, for them to understand it. Now, of course, things have changed. We hope Indian cuisine gets the recognition it deserves globally, like French and Italian and, to a certain extent, Japanese and Chinese.”

— Team Weekend

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