LUNCH WITH BS: Madhur Jaffrey

Boarding the gravy train

Indian cuisine's greatest ambassador to the West talks of 'food memories' and rues the fact that today's youth think the subtle yakhni pulao is a biryani.

In 1982, when Madhur Jaffrey, actress, food-presenter, author of over 15 cookery books and Indian cuisine's biggest ambassador to the West, started a series for BBC television (simply and somewhat old-fashionedly titled Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery), no one knew that it would kickstart a whole new era for the cuisine in the West. But it did. Thanks largely to Jaffrey's demystification of Indian food (as Indians ate it at home) and aided, no doubt, as much by her simple, precise style as by her natural warmth as an anchor and training as an actress, curry finally managed to shake off its murky tikka-masala-Bangladeshi associations, writes Anoothi Vishal.

Today, of course, with high-end restaurants such as Benares and Amaya (in London) and Tabla (New York) and many talented chefs on both sides of the Atlantic reworking nuances to fit in Western sensibilities, the popularity of Indian cuisine internationally is at an all-time high. In India itself, on the other hand, attempts at fusion (primarily limited to experimenting with the presentation) have not really worked at the handful of restaurants that dared position themselves as "modern-Indian". So, what is the way forward for our essentially complex, deeply traditional cuisine?

Jaffrey is in New Delhi from New York, where she is now settled, at the invitation of the Asia Society India Centre for a panel discussion, "Chopsticks & curry: The World's Love Affair with Asian Cuisine". An appropriate venue for this lunch would have been the Masala Art at the Taj Palace hotel, one of the few "Indian" restaurants in India to be doing things differently: instead of the Punjabi-Mughlai mishmash that most restaurants serve up, this one both cooks and presents desi more contemporaneously.

But Jaffrey has lunched there the previous day ("...liked some of the things," she tells me diplomatically) and thus suggests the hotel's "Chinese restaurant" instead, when I call her from the lobby. Now, Tea House of the August Moon is strictly Punjabi-Chinese. A couple of years ago, it did appropriate a measure of hauteness as a favourite of the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, but only for its "golden fried" prawns and I wonder what our guest, quite the culinary sophisticate, would make of it.

I don't have to wait long. Jaffrey, surprisingly petite, walks in escorted by a visibly-excited manager, who has been her fan ever since he read her books in catering college. She bears the air of a gentle aunt "" she could well be that, I remind myself, if I were to trace our family trees far back enough, but let me explain that in a moment. For now, we busy ourselves studying the menu and finally decide that we will go by the manager's recommendation of a dimsum lunch followed by a main course of steamed fish and rice. Very un-Indian-Chinese, for once.

"Do you like Indian-Chinese?" I ask her, as a way of easing into the conversation. But it is a legit question because what we've dismissed as Punjabi-Chinese till now has been making waves abroad and there are plenty of specifically "manchurian" restaurants all over North America, Australia, South Asia and even in Europe. "Some of the things are okay," she echoes her previous statement, "but no, not the sweet and sour". I try to encourage her to say a little more, considering the relevance of the subject to her topic of discussion that evening"""chopsticks and curry...", but am faced with a strangely tongue-tied presenter. "Umm... so what are you going to say today evening?" I prod. And, once again, to my despair, she is too to-the-point. "That would depend on what the others (panelists) say(!)"

Our dimsums are taking some time and I have now tried many strategies to engage our guest in a more animated discussion. From fusion versus purity ("how can you call gobhi-aloo Indian when neither of the ingredients are?") and the London food scene ("It has really changed... you have so many better restaurants now") to the most interesting example of fusion food she has come across during her travels. (She pauses to thinks and says the mandatory, "that's very tough to say" before, thankfully, telling me about her attempts to spice up the hamburger and then discovering on her trip to Pakistan that the flat chapli kebab was precisely that.) I go on to speak about her food shows and that if she were to do a new one today, how would it be different? And once again, I am met with a wall. She is developing precisely such a "different" concept in America but does not know what!

If this sounds harsh, that's not the intention. Jaffrey is not being deliberately evasive. Her characteristic warmth is very much in place and she is sincere. It's just that she doesn't seem to be terribly enthusiastic. So, I do the next best thing and keep away my notebook. This is not going to be an interview any longer, just a social conversation!

Meanwhile, our dimsums have arrived; they are quite good too, but after a brief chat with the manager about how Cantonese cuisine is becoming popular in India (he and I do most of the talking), Jaffrey seems to want to eat hers in silence.

That's good manners but hardly something that makes for a lively copy. So, I break the pause and tell her what I have been meaning to: "I have to tell you that I am a Mathur too," I blurt out, which means that I belong to the same small, tightly-knit "line of the inkpot and quill set" that she writes about in her memoirs, Climbing the Mango Trees, describing her childhood in old Delhi: shahr, as she and my own kin simply refer to it. It is then that her eyes shine. She smiles and says, "phir sub theek hai" in the chastest of Urdu accents that I have heard lately.

Our dimsums get replaced with some superb, very delicately flavoured fish and Jaffrey and I are now chatting about yakhni pulao, an equally subtle dish, a speciality of old Muslim families as well as of our own Hindu community (that has traditionally shared language, customs, cuisine and an interest in the finer things with the erstwhile Mughal rulers). "People just don't understand it these days," she sighs. Everything is a biryani to the new Indian, more robust.

She goes on to talk of her earliest food memories, honey on her tongue as a newborn, eating mangoes with masala sitting high up in the branches of a tree in her ancestral house, devouring chilas (gram flour pancakes), another traditional cuisine of the community ("I love all pancakes"), as also the belief that while any one can learn recipes, only those blessed with an immaculate "food memory" can create them. It's a concept that comes up in her book too, where she compares it to her musician husband being able to listen to music in his head when he reads the notes.

Now that we are conversing, I ask her how she made it so big on the culinary scene, even though she learnt how to cook only through correspondence with her mother? We agree that one reason surely is her training as an actress ("you learn how to be confident and comfortable with people...did you see me in Sagar, my only appearance here?").

But the more important ingredient in her success is her meticulousness in collecting recipes. "For instance," she tells me, "if I were to ask you for one, I wouldn't trust you to give it to me as it is. I will make sure that I watch you and learn all the little things that matter "" how many times to stir a thing, in what order to put the ingredients and so on." She almost never goes to restaurants to seek her recipes, always to people she knows. And that's what she plans to do on her next trip to India.

As our plates are cleared away, she asks me for my take on mustard oil, takes an expert's number that I offer, and charmingly says, "I hope you will have enough for your article" by way of goodbye.