Madhur Jaffrey | |
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.jpg) Jaffrey at abook signing in 2010 | |
| Born | Madhur Bahadur (1933-08-13)13 August 1933 (age 92) |
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| Awards | See below |
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| Culinary career | |
| Cooking style | Indian andSouth Asian |
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| Website | www |
Madhur JaffreyCBE (néeBahadur; born 13 August 1933) is an actress, cookbook and travel writer, and television personality.[1][2] She is recognized for bringingIndian cuisine to the western hemisphere with her debut cookbook,An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973), which was inducted into theJames Beard Foundation'sCookbook Hall of Fame in 2006.[3][4][5] She has written over a dozen cookbooks and appeared on several related television programmes, the most notable of which wasMadhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery, which premiered in the UK in 1982.[6][7] She was the food consultant at the now-closedDawat, which was considered by manyfood critics to be among the best Indian restaurants in New York City.[8][9][10]
Jaffrey was instrumental in bringing together filmmakersJames Ivory andIsmail Merchant,[11][12] and acted in several of their films, such asShakespeare Wallah (1965), for which she won theSilver Bear for Best Actress award at the15th Berlin International Film Festival.[13] She has appeared in dramas on radio, stage and television.[14]
In 2004, she was named an honoraryCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in recognition of her services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom, India and the United States, through her achievements in film, television and cookery.[15][16] In 2022, she was awarded thePadma Bhushan from theGovernment of India, which is the third highest civilian award.[17][18]
Her childhood memoir of India during the final years of theBritish Raj,Climbing the Mango Trees, was published in 2006.[19][J 1]
Jaffrey was born inCivil Lines, Delhi, into aMathurKayasthaHindujoint family.[20][21] She is the fifth of six children of Lala Raj Bans Bahadur (1899–1974) and his wife, Kashmiran Rani (1903–1971).[22][23]
When Jaffrey was about two years old, her father accepted a position in a family-run concern, Ganesh Flour Mills, and moved toKanpur.[J 2] There, Jaffrey attended St. Mary's Convent School. In kindergarten at the age of five, she played the role of the brown mouse in a musical version of thePied Piper of Hamelin.[J 3] The family lived in Kanpur for eight years, moving back to Delhi in 1944.[J 4]
In Delhi, Jaffrey attended Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School[J 5] where her history teacher, Mrs McKelvie, encouraged her to participate in school plays. Jaffrey playedTitania inA Midsummer Night's Dream followed by the lead role inRobin Hood and His Merry Men.[J 6] Her brothers, Brij Bans Bahadur and Krishen Bans Bahadur, much older than her, went toSt. Stephen's College, Delhi. Every winter, St. Stephen's students put on a Shakespeare play that Jaffrey watched from the front row.[J 7]
A supporter ofMahatma Gandhi's demand forIndian independence fromBritish rule, Jaffrey spent some time each day spinningkhadi, delivering large spools of thread to a collection center in Delhi.[J 8]
In 1947, Jaffrey experienced the effects of thepartition of India.[J 9] At school, her classmates divided on the issue: theMuslim girls supported it while theHindus opposed it. On 15 August she watched the transfer of power atIndia Gate and got a glimpse ofJawaharlal Nehru andLord Mountbatten coming downRajpath in an open horse carriage. The massive migration that began almost immediately afterwards caused riots and killing in Delhi. The male members of her family guarded their house with hunting guns. At school, all her Muslim classmates left without a farewell. In 1948, a few days before Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead, she attended one of his prayer meetings atBirla House and sangbhajans. She heard the news of hisassassination on the radio, followed by Jawaharlal Nehru's address later that night, "the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere." She saw Gandhi's funeral procession and witnessed his cremation.[J 10]
At home, Jaffrey's family primarily ate food prepared by servants but supervised by the women of the family. They occasionally indulged inMughlai cuisine bought in the bylanes ofOld Delhi, likebedmialoo,seekh kebab,shami kebab,rumali roti andbakarkhani.[J 11] Refugees from Punjab who settled in Delhi after partition brought their own style of cooking.Moti Mahal, adhaba inDaryaganj, introducedtandoori chicken and went on to inventbutter chicken anddal makhani. Jaffrey found Punjabi food's simplicity and freshness enticing and routinely picked up some tandoori chicken from Moti Mahal for family picnics.[J 12]
At school, the subject of domestic science included learning dishes likeblancmange, whose bland taste drove Jaffrey to dismiss the lessons as preparing "British invalid foods from circa 1930".[J 13] However, for her practical examination, her class was asked to makea dish from an assortment of potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger and Indian spices in a pot over wood to be lit with matches. Jaffrey did her best but guessed that she failed the subject of domestic science altogether.[J 14]
Jaffrey regularly answered requests from the nearbyAll India Radio station for parts in radio plays or children's programs. As she was paid a small fee for each session, she considered this her first professional work.[J 15]
Meanwhile, her father had moved toDaurala as general manager of Daurala Sugar Works, a factory owned by family friends, theShri Ram family. Jaffrey and most of the family remained behind in Delhi to avoid disrupting the children's education.[J 16] Her elder sisters were at boarding school inNainital.[J 17] In the letters that they exchanged with their siblings and cousins at Delhi, they addressed each other only by their initials. This tradition cemented over time so that Jaffrey becameM for her circle of close friends and family.[J 18]
From 1950 to 1953, Jaffrey attendedMiranda House, a women's college, where she gained a B.A. degree in English Honours with a minor in philosophy.[J 14]
She took part in her college's all-women productions ofHamlet andThe Importance of Being Earnest.[J 19]
In 1951, Jaffrey joined the Unity Theatre, an English languagerepertory company founded bySaeed Jaffrey in New Delhi.[24] She auditioned for the role of the Queen's Reader inJean Cocteau's playThe Eagle Has Two Heads just four days before the opening and was cast in the role.[25]
After graduation from Miranda House in 1953, Jaffrey joinedAll India Radio, where Saeed Jaffrey was an announcer.[J 20] She worked as a disc jockey at night.[J 20] Saeed and Jaffrey fell in love, and dated at Gaylord, a restaurant inConnaught Place.[26]
During this period, Jaffrey metRuth Prawer Jhabvala, a British novelist who had moved toCivil Lines, Delhi, after marriage to Cyrus Jhabvala, an Indian architect, in 1951.[J 20] Jaffrey answered acasting call by Prawer Jhabvala and worked with her onAll India Radio plays. The protagonists of Prawer Jhabvala's first novel,To Whom She Will (1955), a young couple who work at a radio station in Delhi and fall in love, were based on Madhur and Saeed Jaffrey.[J 20][27] The novel was published in America the following year asAmrita (1956).[28]
In early 1955, Jaffrey was in the audience at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, for a programme of literary readings bySybil Thorndike andLewis Casson, married English actors who toured internationally in Shakespearean productions.[J 20][29][30] Later that year, theUnity Theatre put on a performance ofTennessee Williams' one-act play,Auto-da-Fé, in which Jaffrey played the rigidly moralistic mother to Saeed's young postal worker, Eloi. The last play that Jaffrey did with Saeed wasOthello, in which Saeed was cast asIago while Jaffrey played Iago's wifeEmilia.[J 21][31]
Jaffrey decided to pursue acting as a profession. She won a grant from the British government that she could use to pay for education at theRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).[32]
The head of theBritish Council in India was impressed by her performance inAuto-da-Fé and offered her a scholarship. Armed with these two sources of money, Jaffrey arrived atSouthampton on 6 December 1955 on theP&O linerRMS Strathmore fromBombay.[33]
Jaffrey joined theRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) withDiana Rigg,Siân Phillips andGlenda Jackson as her contemporaries.[34] She won a scholarship from RADA after an audition. This supplemented her earlier grant and scholarship. She picked up some minor acting roles onBBC television and radio. Her father sent her a small amount of money periodically, and her total income proved sufficient to live modestly in London.[35] She rented rooms from at least two different landlords before settling down in abedsit inBrent with a young Jewish family, the Golds, who allowed her to use their kitchen and their utensils to cook her own food.[36] Her landlady, Blanche Gold, was roughly her age. Blanche had one child and was pregnant.[J 20]
Jaffrey found the food served at the RADA canteen along with the Indian restaurants in London unappetising.[37][38] In an interview with NPR, she recalled the canteen serving "gray"roast beef and overcooked cabbage with watery potatoes: "I would look at it and say, 'How can I eat this?!'"[39] She wrote to her mother, begging her for recipes of the home cooked meals of her childhood. Her mother responded with recipes written inHindi ononionskin paper in letters sent viaairmail. The very first letter was dated 19 March 1956 and included recipes formeat spiced withcinnamon,cardamom andbay, acauliflower dish, andegg curry with hard-boiled eggs.[40] The first recipe that she tried wasjeera aloo (potatoes with cumin). She boughtpumpernickel from a neighbourhood Jewish bakery as a substitute forchapatis.[36][39]
In late 1955, Saeed Jaffrey won aFulbright scholarship to studydrama in America the following year. In spring 1956, he approached Jaffrey's parents in Delhi for her hand in marriage but they refused because they felt that his financial prospects as an actor did not appear sound.[41] Jaffrey got her father's permission to marry Saeed eventually.[J 20] In summer 1956, Saeed flew to London on his way to America and proposed to Jaffrey. She refused but gave him a tour of RADA where she pointed out English actors, such asPeter O'Toole, whom she thought would soon have a high profile in the profession. Soon afterwards, Saeed boarded theRMS Queen Elizabeth to sail across the Atlantic Ocean fromSouthampton toNew York City.[42]
In 1957 Jaffrey graduated from RADA with honours. Not knowing whether to stay on in London, join arepertory company or go back to India, she wrote to Saeed describing her dilemma. Saeed had just graduated fromCatholic University of America's Department of Speech and Drama and had been selected to act insummer stock plays atSt. Michael's Playhouse inWinooski, Vermont. Seeing Saeed troubled by Jaffrey's letter, ReverendGilbert V. Hartke, the department head at Catholic University, arranged for Jaffrey to teachpantomime at St. Michael's Playhouse at Winooski that summer.[1] Father Hartke arranged for her to go to Catholic University on a partial scholarship and work at the Drama School library in order to meet her living expenses.[43] After gaining her American work visa, Jaffrey sailed across theAtlantic on theRMS Queen Mary to join Saeed at Winooski.[44]
In September 1957 Jaffrey stayed inWashington, D.C., with Saeed, who had returned there to rehearse for the 1957–58 season with theNational Players, a professional touring company that performed classical plays all over America.[45] Midway through the tour, Saeed returned to Washington, D.C. fromMiami to marry Jaffrey in a modest civil ceremony.[46]
In September 1958,Ismail Merchant arrived fromBombay to attend theNew York University Stern School of Business.[47] Merchant had heard of Saeed from his theater days in Delhi. He himself wanted to produce plays and make movies. Saeed was then playing the lead atLee Strasberg'sActors Studio in an Off-Broadway production ofBlood Wedding, a tragedy by Spanish dramatistFederico García Lorca. Merchant approached Saeed with a proposal to put on a Broadway production ofThe Little Clay Cart, starring the Jaffreys. Saeed took him home for dinner, where he met Jaffrey, who was heavily pregnant with her first child.[11]
The following year,James Ivory, then an emerging film maker from California, approached Saeed Jaffrey to provide the narration for his short film aboutIndian miniature painting,The Sword and the Flute (1959).[1][J 20][48] Saeed brought Ivory home for dinner and introduced him to Jaffrey. WhenThe Sword and the Flute screened in New York City in 1961, the Jaffreys encouraged Merchant to attend the screening, where he met Ivory for the first time.[49][50][51] They subsequently met regularly at the Jaffreys' dinners and cemented their relationship into a lifetime partnership, both personal and professional.[52][53] The Jaffreys planned to go back to India, start a travelling company and tour with it.[J 20] They often discussed this idea with James Ivory and started writing a script in hisbrownstone on East 64th Street.[54]
The Jaffreys soon expanded their social circle to include other members of the Indian community in New York City who were involved in the arts. They regularly hosted large dinners cooked by Jaffrey, who was determined to master everything, includingbiryani andpulao.[J 20]
In 1962, Jaffrey and Saeed appeared inRolf Forsberg'sOff-Broadway production ofA Tenth of an Inch Makes The Difference. Their performance was described byThe New York Times drama critic, Milton Esterow, as "sensitive acting" that made up "the brightest part of the evening".[55] The pay for such roles was generally $10/hour.[1]
By 1965, the Jaffreys' marriage had collapsed.[56] Jaffrey arranged for their children to live with her parents and sister in Delhi while Jaffrey went toMexico for the formal divorce proceedings.[57]
Jaffrey visited to India for the shooting ofShakespeare Wallah (1965). After the film's shooting was complete, she lived in India with her children until Ismail Merchant decided that she needed to be at theBerlin International Film Festival because he had entered the film in competition there. In Berlin, she won theSilver Bear for Best Actress award. Sanford Allen, a violinist she had met when she was a guide at theLincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, sent her a bunch of roses on her win.[J 20]
In 1966 Ismail Merchant, in search of further publicity for the film, decided to cultivateThe New York Times food criticCraig Claiborne. He persuaded Claiborne to profile Jaffrey as an actress who could cook.[1] When Claiborne agreed, Jaffrey borrowed a friend's apartment in which to meet him since she felt she could not do so in the one-bedroom apartment on Eleventh Street that she shared with Allen.[58] She rearranged the furniture in the borrowed apartment and madestuffed green peppers,koftas insour cream and cucumberraita.[59]
In 1967, Jaffrey travelled to India to attend a black-tie premiere ofShakespeare Wallah in Delhi hosted by the British High Commissioner to India,John Freeman and his wife, Catherine. At the premiere she metMarlon Brando, an actor Jaffrey admired deeply for hismethod acting technique. Brando was in India to raise money for UNICEF and the film premiere served as a fund-raiser.[60][61] Later that year, Jaffrey shot scenes for Merchant Ivory's next film,The Guru (1969). She returned from India with her children. The family, along with Sanford Allen, moved into a 14th-floor apartment in aGreenwich Villageco-op.[62] To better provide for her children, she became a freelance writer for food and travel magazines, covering subjects as diverse as paintings, music, dance, drama, sculpture, and architecture.[1]
In 1969, Jaffrey married Sanford Allen, who at the time was a violinist with theNew York Philharmonic Orchestra.[63]
Jaffrey was instrumental in introducing the filmmakersJames Ivory andIsmail Merchant to each other.[12]
When Merchant and Ivory went to India to makeThe Householder (1963) they metShashi Kapoor and his in-laws, the Kendals.Geoffrey Kendal and his wife, Laura Liddell, had a traveling theatre company,Shakespeareana, that performed plays by Shakespeare pan India. Combining the Jaffreys' original idea with the real-lifeShakespeareana, Merchant and Ivory came up with their next filmShakespeare Wallah (1965).[64] Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was persuaded to write a movie star role for Jaffrey. Saeed was dropped from the project because the Jaffreys' marriage had collapsed.[J 20]
When Jaffrey travelled to India for the shooting ofShakespeare Wallah, her first shots were inKasauli, ahill station. The hairpin bends on the drive there caused hernausea and vomiting, leading the crew to despair that a person so petite and sickly could ever play a glamorous film star.[J 20]Kenneth Tynan, a film critic forThe Observer, described her performance as "a ravishing study in felinity".[13]
She went on to act in further Merchant Ivory films likeThe Guru (1969),Autobiography of a Princess (1976),Heat and Dust (1983), directed by Ivory, andThe Perfect Murder (1988).[citation needed] She starred as the title character in their filmCotton Mary (1999) and co-directed it with Merchant.[65]
Jaffrey has appeared inSix Degrees of Separation (1993),Vanya on 42nd Street (1994),Flawless (1999) andPrime (2005). She starred in and producedABCD (1999). She played a role in the horror short filmGrasp in 2002, written and directed by Brendan Donovan. In the 2009Psych episode "Bollywood Homicide," Jaffrey played an Indian grandmother whose food is too spicy for the main characters to handle. In 1985, she was in the Hindi filmSaagar where she played the role of Kamladevi,Rishi Kapoor's grandmother. In 1992–94, she appeared withBillie Whitelaw in the British television seriesFirm Friends. In 1999, she appeared with daughter Sakina Jaffrey in the filmChutney Popcorn. InCosmopolitan (2003), a film broadcast onPBS, she played a traditional Hindu wife who suddenly leaves her husband. She starred alongsideDeborah Kerr in the 1985 movieThe Assam Garden. In 2009, she appeared withAasif Mandvi inToday's Special, adapted from Mandvi's play about a celebratedsous chef who is forced to run his father'standoori restaurant inQueens.[66] In 2012, she played a doctor inA Late Quartet who diagnosesChristopher Walken's character withParkinson's disease.[67]
In 1962, she appeared inA Tenth of an Inch Makes the Difference byRolf Forsberg.[55] In 1969, she appeared inThe Guide, based on thenovel byR. K. Narayan,[68] and in 1970, she appeared inConduct Unbecoming, written byBarry England.[69]
In 1993, she appeared inTwo Rooms byLee Blessing.[70]In 1999, she appeared inLast Dance at Dum Dum byAyub Khan-Din.[71] In 2004, Jaffrey appeared inBombay Dreams on Broadway, where she played the main character's grandmother (Shanti).[72]
In April 2019, Jaffrey starred inNani, a rap music video byZohran Mamdani, then ahip-hop MC under the stage name Mr. Cardamom (after the spicecardamom).[73][74]
Jaffrey, who lives in Manhattan and has a home in upstate New York, is the author of many cookbooks ofIndian,Asian, and world vegetarian cuisines. Several of these have become best-sellers; some have wonJames Beard Foundation awards. She has presented a cooking series on television, includingMadhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery in 1982,Madhur Jaffrey's Far Eastern Cookery in 1989 andMadhur Jaffrey's Flavours of India in 1995.[75] As a result of the success of her cookbooks and TV, Jaffrey developed a line of mass-marketed cooking sauces forTilda.[76]
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.[59] It was only after she went to London at the age of 19 to study at RADA that she learned how to cook, using recipes of familiar dishes that were provided in correspondence from her mother.[J 22] Her editorJudith Jones claimed in her memoirs that Jaffrey was an ideal cookbook writer precisely because she had learned to cook childhood comfort food as an adult, and primarily from written instructions. In the 1960s, after her award-winning performance inShakespeare Wallah, Jaffrey became known as the "actress who could cook".[77]
After an article about her and her cooking appeared inThe New York Times in 1966, she received a book contract from an independent editor to write a book on Indian cooking. Jaffrey started compiling all the recipes learnt by her through correspondence with her mother and adapted for the American kitchen.[78] Due to a period of rapid consolidation in the American publishing industry, the book went toHarcourt Brace Jovanovich but got no attention there either. Jaffrey took the book to her friend,Ved Mehta, who in turn mentioned it to publisherAndré Schiffrin.[79] Schiffrin passed on the book toKnopf editorJudith Jones, who had championedJulia Child's cookbook at a time when no other publisher would touch it.[80] Judith Jones snapped up the book immediately, only asking Jaffrey to add serving suggestions and menus for people not familiar with Indian cooking. In 1973An Invitation to Indian Cooking was published, Jaffrey's first cookbook. During the 1970s, she taught classes in Indian cooking, both at the James A. Beard School of Cooking and in her Manhattan apartment.[81] She was hired by theBBC to present a show on Indian cooking.[77] In 1986, the restaurant Dawat opened in Manhattan using recipes that she provided.[8]
The social historianPanikos Panayi, writing aboutEnglish cuisine, described her as the doyen of Indian cookery writers, but noted that their and her influence remained limited to Indian cuisine. Panayi commented that despite Jaffrey's description of "most Indian restaurants in Britain as 'second-class establishments that had managed to underplay their own regional uniqueness'", most of her dishes too "do not appear on dining tables in India".[82]
Jaffrey has three daughters from her marriage toSaeed Jaffrey: Zia, Meera and Sakina. Saeed Jaffrey's autobiographySaeed: An Actor's Journey (1998) describes their relationship in the early years of his life.[88]
Zia Jaffrey is a part-time assistant professor of Creative Writing atThe New School in New York City.[89] She has written for newspapers likeThe New York Times andThe Washington Post.[90] Her work has appeared, too, in magazines likeThe Nation,Vogue, andElle. She is the author ofThe Invisibles: A Tale of Eunuchs of India (1996) that explores thehijra community, whom she first encountered at a family wedding in Delhi in 1984.[91][92] In 2013, she publishedThe New Apartheid, a book on South Africa's AIDS epidemic.[93]
Meera Jaffrey graduated fromOberlin College, Ohio, with a major in Chinese studies. She teaches in the Music Department of the Learning Community Charter School inJersey City, New Jersey.[94] In 2005 she traveled to China to shoot a documentary film,Fine Rain: Politics and Folk Songs in China, that explores China through its folk songs.[95] Meera is married to Craig Bombardiere and the two have a son, Rohan Jaffrey.[96]
Sakina Jaffrey picked up her love of Chinese culture from her elder sister, Meera. She graduated fromVassar College, New York with a major in Chinese studies and lived inTaiwan in her twenties. She is an actress, best known for her role as Linda Vasquez in the American television seriesHouse of Cards.[97] She lives inNyack, New York, with her husband, Francis Wilkinson, a journalist, and their two children, Cassius and Jamila.
Madhur Jaffrey is the aunt of the British journalist Rohit Jaggi and his sister the literary criticMaya Jaggi, their mother being Jaffrey's eldest sister, Lalit.[98][99][100][101]
Jaffrey is cousin to the lateRaghu Raj Bahadur (1924–1997), considered to be one of the world's top theoretical statisticians,[102] and his sister, the lateSheila Dhar (1929–2001) .[103][104] In her memoirsHere's Someone I'd Like You to Meet (1995), Sheila Dhar recounts her difficult relationship with her father, referred to asShibbudada in Jaffrey's own memoirs,Climbing the Mango Trees.[105]
These are sources directly from Madhur Jaffrey herself.
When I was a student in London and had written home begging my mother to teach me how to cook, one of the earliest letters I received from her was dated 19 March 1956, and said 'I received your letter. I am glad to know you have gained weight. I miss you and cannot wait to see you in your new plump state. Here is the recipe for the Khare Masale Ka Gosht that you asked for. Write and tell me how it works out...' It worked out very well!
The brightest part of the evening is the sensitive acting of Saeed Jaffrey and Madhur Jaffrey. Some of their colleagues, however, are not so skillful.
Although cooking has become an ardent pastime in the life of Madhur Jaffrey, her interest in cooking with a certain panache came about, as it has for many another young New Yorker, through necessity. The young woman is an actress who appears in the well-received Indian film "Shakespeare Wallah." (Kenneth Tynan, the London critic, called her performance "a ravishing study in felinity.")
Tilda is adding two new variants to its Madhur Jaffrey cook-in sauces range. There are currently eight varieties in the Madhur Jaffrey sauce range.
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