Madhur Jaffrey on seeing — or not seeing — anyone like you on TV ...and on what you should cook for your date

As a fan of Madhur Jaffrey, I'd read a lot over the years about her extraordinarily exciting life. So when it came time to interview her, I found all of my questions essentially stemmed from this one: did she really know what an impact she had on us? Particularly, the "us" that includes me: a community of first- and second-generation Canadians from India, Sri Lanka and the region whose families had spread out across the West in the latter part of the 20th century. People whom I suspect, like me, had found in Jaffrey's Indian Cookery TV show a rare touchpoint to home. 

My family immigrated to Toronto in the early 1970s, a time of significant migration. But even by the time Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery was airing on TVO in the '80s and '90s, the shops in Kensington Market were still some of the only sources for spices and ingredients my parents could rely on — 20-plus kilometers away from our home in Scarborough. (Today, spend any time in the many large, Asian-leaning grocery stores in Scarborough and you'll see strangers of different ethnic origins making discoveries together, excitedly holding out bunches of leafy greens they "haven't seen since leaving home.") So when Jaffrey was cooking with ingredients and spices that were familiar to our family, making dishes using the same processes — and doing it all in a sari — we took notice. We related. That was exceedingly rare; in a sea of commercials for Kraft Mac & Cheese and sitcoms where pizza was the default dinner, Indian Cookery was as welcome as it was welcoming. It might have been the earliest time the TV told me my family was, in fact, seen. 

Somebody asked me if Madhur Jaffrey was the Julia Child of Indian cooking. Only in some ways; they may both have introduced North America to a specific cuisine, but Julia Child wasn't a touchpoint, and she certainly wasn't out here representing. What she did do was make French cooking accessible. And Madhur, with dozens of cookbooks and cooking shows under her belt, has definitely made Indian cooking accessible to many. 

Today, her influence is only growing. Jaffrey was available to talk as she promotes her latest book Madhur Jaffrey's Instantly Indian Cookbook: Modern and Classic Recipes for the Instant Pot, and she was recently in Toronto as well to discuss the influence of Indian culture and food at a ROM Speaks event in support of the museum's exhibition Treasures of a Desert Kingdom: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India. 

The book is arguably her most accessible by nature, so I definitely made sure to ask her for tips for feeling comfortable making Indian food if it's new to you. But we also talked about how, all these years later, she still doesn't see an Indian woman quite like herself or her friends in movies, about why she never "dumbs down" Indian food in her recipes, and what she was making for her dinner party that weekend — a FOMO-inducing mental picture if ever there was one.

Congratulations on your newest cookbook, Instantly Indian, which I hear is your 30th cookbook!

Something like that. I can't keep count. Not that I can't count to 30 [laughs]. It's because of the way they've redone books, repackaged books… taken some of this and that, then added another third of original material...

I read that you started cooking while you were studying abroad — that you were missing the food you'd had at home, so you sent away for recipes to your mother. Do you recall what some of those first recipes were?

Oh yes, absolutely. My mother sent these recipes in air letters, and I used them as end pages for my first cookbook. So I remember them doubly and triply because of that. One was a recipe for a particular potato dish that we had in our family, and it was called hing jeera aloo — just potatoes cooked with cumin and asafoetida. The second recipe was for cauliflower with potatoes and the third one was a meat dish, a goat dish, which was called khare masala ka gosht, which is meat cooked with whole spices... garam masala spices like black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon and things like that — and ginger. That's all the meat is cooked in.

And were you intimidated to start cooking these recipes, since you weren't cooking that much at that point?

No, I wasn't. I was living in what they call a digs in England. I had a room in the house of a wonderful young Jewish couple. They were very sweet and kind, and they said, "You can use our kitchen as your kitchen anytime you want." So I did use their kitchen, and I started experimenting in it. I didn't know how to make any roti or bread of any kind, so I would make the potatoes again and again. This whole neighbourhood was a very Jewish neighborhood, and they had a great bread shop that had dark black pumpernickel bread, and I would eat the potatoes with the pumpernickel bread [laughs].

I imagine that you didn't always have all of the spices that you needed for these recipes. How did you learn to make the best substitutions? Is there a way to learn to be better at that?

Well, for curry patta [curry leaves], which a lot of people can't get, I usually suggest basil leaves — not that they are at all like curry patta, but at least they give a smell and a taste that is fresh, green. 

So I do suggest substitutes, but I think nowadays you can get everything online. There's really no reason not to have the ingredients, and what I tell people is don't make 20 dishes the first time you make Indian food. Make one! Or two, maximum, and just get the spices for those dishes, and keep making them till you're comfortable with them. Just don't overwhelm yourself. I think people start cooking Indian food and they want to make everything, and you don't need to. Add to your meal by putting out a raita or a little salad... cut up tomatoes and onion and cucumber — just a little salad like that. And that's all!

Having said that, are there ingredients really worth seeking out when making your recipes?

I would say that curry patta is worth seeking out. Once you keep asking for it, your market will start carrying it. You know that's the thing — it does change. I changed the market in England. When my series was running, people said, "Oh, the people want this!" So the spice companies changed and started carrying at least the cumin, the coriander and the cardamom, and stuff like that. So things began to change as demand increased.

Many have said that you were the first woman that they saw on TV who looked and dressed like the women in their family, and who was cooking food that was familiar to them. Did you have an awareness that audiences were connecting with you, and how did that feel?

You know, initially, I did not. I just thought, well, now I'm doing this on television and people are watching, which is great. 

But then people started writing letters, and I began to see how much it meant for them to see another, sort of, educated Indian. Not somebody that's like, you know… ohhh..... See, India has a way of hiding its poverty and being slightly ashamed about it. I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of. We have all kinds of people in India. But at any rate, I think people were hearing those kinds of stories constantly. And they weren't seeing people like themselves, who are ordinary, middle-class, working people. They weren't seeing that kind of person on television.

And then I appeared and suddenly they felt that they were being represented in some way, and not only those sort of aspects of India that people felt ashamed of. They were being shown, and people felt like "This is us!" This is all of us — we're not ashamed of any of this; this is our lives. This is how most of India lives. And why doesn't the world see it? I think that pleased them a lot, and they felt at one with the program. I remember getting letters saying, "I'm so proud to have you there because you represent us in a more real kind of way."

"Proud" was a word I was going to use. My family is Sri Lankan, and we're in Toronto, and we really felt that, too, when we were watching you.

By the way, Sri Lanka has wonderful food. I love the food in Sri Lanka.

I love it, too. In your introduction to your new book, you mentioned specifically that you did not want to "dumb down India's authentic taste for this book." Why did you choose not to dumb down the steps or to cut corners?

Because there were so many other Indian cookbooks that were doing that.

I thought, you know, I represent — have always represented — the kind of food that is authentic to India. And I thought, other people are [cutting corners] and that's fine; they will have the easy recipes, and if people want to make those they can. They have a choice now. They can make it taste like the real food of India, or they can make it taste like the semi-real food, which is fine. A lot of people are not eating everything in an absolute authentic manner; people are changing, and it's quite right to do that. As things evolve, they change, and they're becoming simpler and more Americanized in some ways. And people … if they can't make a chapati, they'll eat Indian food with bread or they'll get pizza dough and bake it. So that's fine; it's absolutely fine. 

But, on the other hand, if they want to really taste the tastes that I grew up with, that I think are real to India, then they can get that. And, to me, it's only a matter of putting three more spices into the same pot. Then you get a flavour, suddenly, that's very authentic to India… so it's your choice.

I would like to know what your go-to meals are. If you have a particularly busy or tiring week, what are the things you make?

I will make simple things like dhal and rice, you know, and a vegetable; we often do that when we're exhausted. Actually, the Instant Pot is very good for making both rice and dhal, so I suggest people try using two inner pots — you can dig one out and put the other one in — and it's so easy. The rice and the dhal can both be made. Then you can just stir fry a quick vegetable or even have a salad on the side. That's really quick, fast and satisfying.

I have some advice questions for you. Will you share something that you've made for, like, a new love... or is there something from your books that you would tell someone to make for a first date?

Ahhh… [laughs] who are you dating? It depends on who you're dating. Are you dating an Indian [laughs]? If you are, that's one thing, but if not, that's another. 

But I would say, a nice rice dish — rice with something. Like a tomato pilau, and then, maybe for a very simple thing, some very nice lamb chops. In fact, I'm making this for a dinner this Saturday. The main course I'm going to do is a tomato rice, and I'm going to do lamb chops, which you marinate for 24 hours with the usual stuff: ginger and garlic and, you know, cumin, coriander, chili powder — stuff like that. And at the last minute, before you put it on the grill, you put a little cream on it, then grill it. It gets a little sort of richness as you are grilling it.

It's simple, and in the summer, these days, of course, it's a great thing to put on your little barbecue outside. And then you serve it with this tomato rice and something like, you know, baby eggplants. I'm planning to serve baby eggplant with that, which I will stuff and cook. And because it's a dinner, I'm doing the mango soup, too. I would definitely do the mango soup, which is in the Instantly Indian book.

It sounds amazing. I also want to know: is there a dish you make for someone when you want them to feel very loved or comforted, or something you like to make for your children?

Let's see... I will very often make a sindhi fish dish for my children. Sindhi is fish like a pompano, which is cut up crosswise into one-inch-or-less slices, little steaks, and then you cook it in a mixture of fresh fenugreek, green coriander and garlic, ginger and a little tomato. You make a sauce with that, and then you just poach the fish in it — with lots of green chilies, of course.

It's absolutely delicious. That's the last thing I made for my kids.

Some people that know you primarily as a cook might be surprised to know that you have a long and impressive acting career. Even more might be surprised to see this new rap video you star in.

How would you sum up your many passions?

Well, I guess is it's only arts, actually. I'm interested in painting. I'm interested in sculpture. I'm interested in design — I love design of various sorts. So it's a passion for all of these things that I grew up loving, and I wanted to be all of them I wanted to be a painter, I wanted to be an architect, I wanted to be all of these things. But, acting, it was a natural for me, a release for me. I guess I'm, in my own mind, a very ... a person who doesn't express myself, always, properly, to my own desires, and is not happy with myself, maybe, and acting gives you the escape to become anything you want to be. You can become anyone you admire — anyone — you can just change yourself and become something else for a while. And that has been a great source of, kind of, relief for me, that I can just become someone else. And I love doing that. The whole act of transformation, the path to transformation, has been very intriguing and exciting. 

You watch people all the time, and you see how they're behaving, how they're standing, how they're talking. And you try and bring that into whatever you're acting as. When this rap video came along it was just, for me, a wonderful, different kind of character to be — somebody I had not played. I murdered my own kids as Madea and played Lady Macbeth, a conspiring killer, but I had not done this kind of older, angry woman with a core that desired to be free and young again, and who had such dreams that she could not express as an old woman because she was not allowed to. But suddenly she can, she can become herself in some way, anything she wants to be, as powerful as she wants to be, when nobody lets her be powerful because of her age. And I thought that character was very interesting.

(Madhur Jaffrey in the starring role in Mr. Cardamom's 'Nani')

Can you think of other roles that you have yet to play that you would like to?

Oh, there are millions and millions of women that I'd like to play. There have been no women portrayed in films or television that are like me. It's like people saying, "Where are the people like me on television?" I don't see that there's anyone like me around — a character, a character — that is somewhat like me around. They don't show them; the kinds of Indians that are shown are usually different. But it's getting better. It's getting better. Better roles are being written for Indians. 

But, on the whole, I still find them a little far from me, and from the sort of people I move around with and talk to. They're not quite the same.

For more with Madhur Jaffrey, keep reading — she answers our rapid-fire questions and reveals her celeb crush...

Life with Madhur Jaffrey

What is the best thing you ate in recent memory?

Recent memory… probably in Sri Lanka: idiyappam — made with red rice.

What's your poison?

My poison is wine, though I love good whiskey any time.

Do you have a favourite late-night snack?

We eat so late that there's no time for a snack.

How would you describe your look in one word?

My look? Old! [laughs] I dress in a Delhi style which is restrained but very careful. I like to wear real gold in my clothing and my saris. I like to wear lovely old jewelry. I like old shawls. I like the old-style elegance of Delhi. That is what I am, actually.

Do you have a celebrity crush?

Celebrity crush? I used to. It used to be Marlon Brando. But that was a long time ago. There are people, celebrities, whose work I adore, Meryl Streep being one. Nicole Kidman, I think she's a wonderful actress. But I'm too old to have those kind of crushes.

What is your favorite thing to do with some downtime?

Reading design magazines, working in my garden — I have a huge one. I grow everything in the country, and at the moment, everything is blooming, my rhododendrons are blooming and my garden is just starting, and I love all that. That's my spare time excitement.

What is your secret for good health right now? 

I think staying active both physically and mentally. I think that's what keeps people going. It's the minute people give up on both physical activity and mental activity, that's when they start to deteriorate. And to me it comes naturally. I don't have to force myself. I'm the kind of person who always works to the last minute, so I'll just keep working. And I just love that. I don't think I'll ever stop. I'll stop when I have to — you know, when I can't do anything. And I love researching. I love writing my books. I love acting. So as long as all that is coming my way, I'm going to be doing it. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Yasmin Seneviratne is a producer at CBC Life and the creator of Le Sauce Magazine. Follow her on Instagram @yasminseneviratne for things that make her happy and on Twitter @yasminATlesauce for things that make her real mad.