Madhur's Indian Memories

Indian food guru Madhur Jaffrey grew up picnicking on green mangoes in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her love of cooking and acting has made her an international star, but traditional food is still at the heart of her daily life. She talks to Hannah Stephenson...

When Madhur Jaffrey was growing up in a big family in India, she had two great loves - acting and food. She has since carved out hugely successful careers in both and is now regarded not only as a fine screen actress but also as a world authority on Indian cooking. Now, to add to her bestselling Ultimate Curry Bible and more than 15 other cookery books, she has written Climbing The Mango Trees, a memoir of her childhood in India, featuring a feast of reminiscences of growing up in Delhi and how the tastes, smells and colours have remained with her throughout her life. Her story is accompanied with a selection of family recipes.

Jaffrey grew up in a large, wealthy family - there were often 30 people at mealtimes and guests at celebratory feasts could easily number 1,000. "We all gathered around food," she recalls. "The rest of the time we were scattered about the house and grounds, in our schools and colleges. We all liked to eat and eat well so meals had an unusual importance. I associate them with delicious tastes and the warmth of a large, boisterous, loving home.

"I loved summer fruit so green mangoes from the garden, eaten with salt and chillies, watermelon from across the river and winter game cooked with cardamom and cinnamon are some of the foods I look back on with great fondness. We had quite a bit of variety in our diet but we did eat phulkas (wholemeal flat breads) with all our Indian meals. With them we were served meats, vegetables and dals, and, of course, a variety of chutneys and pickles."

Jaffrey, however, could not cook when she left India at 19 to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. "It was not required of us at home. We always had a cook who did much of the work with my mother supervising him. It was not cooking that interested me but eating well.

Cooking became a means to get to the best and tastiest food." She desperately missed home-cooked Indian food in London, so she wrote to her mother begging her to send simple recipes. Her mother obliged, so she learned to cook by correspondence.

Moving to London wasn't a huge shock for this budding young actress. "I had read British literature going back to Chaucer and had seen most of contemporary British cinema so nothing really seemed strange. The climate - there was a lot of smog then - took some getting used to but there was compensation to be found in the excellent chocolates and wines that I could now so easily purchase."

"We all liked to eat and eat well so meals had an unusual importance. I associate them with delicious tastes and the warmth of a large, boisterous, loving home."

"We all liked to eat and eat well so meals had an unusual importance. I associate them with delicious tastes and the warmth of a large, boisterous, loving home." Now 72, Jaffrey has lived in America for years, after marrying American violinist Sanford Allen. She remains as busy on the film set as she is in the kitchen, playing Meryl Streep's therapist in Prime, while three more of her films await release, including Hiding Divya, which centres on three generations of Indian women in New Jersey. But she has always loved acting, she confesses. "I have been acting since the age of five, or even younger. I first acted with my cousins in plays we wrote ourselves and then in school, on the radio and so on. It came easily to me and it completely consumed me."

After graduating from RADA, she acted in TV, film and radio productions, but then left England and headed to New York where she began to write food articles as a way of supplementing her income and to help get her children through school. Her immense success and appeal may be attributed to her flamboyant yet sensitive style of presentation and the way she has revolutionised and demystified Indian cooking.

She says that Indian food served in the US and in Britain today improves daily but still cannot match the freshness and variety of that found in India. Jaffrey still associates certain foods with particular memories of India, like the picnics of meatballs stuffed with sultanas and mint, cauliflowers flavoured with ginger and coriander, and spiced pooris with green mango pickle in the foothills of the Himalayas.

"Small sucking mangoes were what we had on our mountain picnics. We buried them in the icy waters of a cascading stream and ate them after our meals." Her husband is also a keen cook and at home in upstate New York they share the cooking. "He cooks Chinese, Italian, American and French foods but never Indian. He leaves that to me. He says it is because I do not label the spices. I have, however, taught him to make dal, which he loves, so if I am out of town, he can make it himself. We eat foods from all around the world, whatever strikes our fancy. Most of the time we prefer to eat at home."

Her passion for good food has been passed on to her three daughters, who are great cooks, she reflects. "My three daughters are wonderful cooks and cook everything I cook and then some. Two of them have studied in China so I am always learning Chinese dishes from them. They have other professions but if pushed, each could make a living at the stove."

Climbing The Mango Trees by Madhur Jaffrey, is published by Ebury, price £18.99.

Madhur's nostalgic recipes

Bimla's Chicken Curry (serves 4)

3 medium onions (about 450g/1lb), peeled and coarsely chopped
20 medium cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
7.5cm/3in fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
6 tbsp olive or other vegetable oil
8 green cardamom pods
2 x 5cm/2in sticks cinnamon
8 cloves
14 whole peppercorns
1 tsp Kashmiri red chilli powder (or 1/2 tsp cayenne plus 1/2 tsp of a nice red paprika)
1 medium organic chicken, skinned and cut into small serving pieces, net weight about 1.25kg/2lbs 10oz 350ml/12 fl oz rich yoghurt
1 1/2 tsp salt or to taste.

Put the onions in a blender. Add the garlic and ginger and blend until you have a smooth paste. Put the oil in a large, heavy frying pan set over a medium-high heat. When hot, put in the cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns. Ten seconds later, add the onion paste and the Kashmiri chilli powder. Now stir fry for about 10 minutes, turning the heat down to medium, if necessary, until the paste has turned a rich golden brown. Whenever it seems to stick, sprinkle in a little water and stir in. Now add the chicken pieces, a few at a time, and stir them in. Again, sprinkle in some water if the sauce sticks to the bottom.

When all the chicken has been added, begin to put in the yoghurt, a tablespoon at a time, and stir it in just as you did the water. When the sauce sticks, add yoghurt and stir it in. Do this for about 10-12 minutes. When only 120ml/4 fl oz of yoghurt are left, put it all in and stir it around. Add the salt and stir to mix. Now cover, turning the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes, stirring now and then. Uncover and stir, making sure the sauce is clinging to the chicken.

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Pumpkin (Kaddu) (serves 4-6)

60ml/2 fl oz olive or other vegetable oil
1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds
1/2 tsp whole brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp nigella seeds (kalongi)
1/4 tsp whole fennel seeds
1/8 tsp whole fenugreek seeds
2-3 dried, hot red chillies
900g/2lbs pumpkin, without skin or seeds, cut into 2.5cm/1in cubes
3/4-1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tbsp light brown sugar.

Put the oil in a large, non-stick pan and set over a medium-high heat. When hot, put in the cumin and mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds begin to pop, a matter of seconds, add the nigella, fennel, fenugreek and red chillies. Stir once quickly and put in all the pumpkin. Stir for a minute or two.

Cover, turn the heat down to low and cook for 40-45 minutes, or until just tender, stirring now and then and replacing the cover each time. Uncover and add the salt and sugar. Stir gently, mashing the pumpkin lightly to retain some texture. Serve hot.

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Stuffed Okra (serves 4-6)

350g/ 3/4lb whole fresh okra
1 tbsp ground coriander seeds
1 tbsp ground cumin seeds
1 tbsp ground amchoor (ground mango powder)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper
5 tbsp olive or other vegetable oil
60g/2oz onion, peeled and cut into fine half-rings.

Rinse the whole okra quickly and pat with paper towels until very dry. You could also spread the okra out in an airy spot to dry off. Now trim the okra by cutting off the tip and either trimming off the cone-shaped top or peeling it so its shape is preserved.

In a bowl, combine the coriander, cumin, amchoor, cayenne, salt and black pepper. Mix. Make a slit in each okra pod, ensuring you stop at least 0.5cm/1/4in short of the two ends and that you don't go through the whole pod. Stick a thumb into the slit to keep it open, and with the other hand take generous pinches of the seasonings and stuff them in. Stuff all the okra this way.

Use a large frying pan that can hold all the okra in a single layer (a 25cm/10in pan is ideal), add the oil and set over medium-high heat. Put the onion and stir-fry until it just begins to brown. Add all the okra in a single layer and turn the heat to medium-low. The okra should cook slowly, uncovered. Turn the okra pods gently until all sides are very lightly browned. This should take about 15 minutes. Cover the pan and turn the heat to very low for five minutes.