In his ‘Ode on Melancholy,’ Romantic poet John Keats celebrates with hedonistic abandon ‘the burst of a grape on a palate fine’. To me the full-bodied lyricism of the line recalls Madhur Jaffrey who writes about food with relish, bringing it alive in all its lush detail. I’ve admired her elegant recipes for years and am excited to meet her on the eve of Asia Society’s conference on the globalisation of cuisines in Mumbai.

Wearing a green and red Poochampalli and her trademark bob, the actress-writer is a picture of refined poise. She’s in town to talk about the future of cuisine, but it’s her past, specifically her Mathur Kayastha childhood, that interests me most. Her books — including her recently published memoir Climbing the Mango Trees — often evoke a deep sense of longing for her wonder years spent in Delhi before India was partitioned. The Khomcha-wallah who visited on Saturdays with his hot and savoury chaat, the Anglo-Indian spiced egg sandwiches eaten by Jaffrey’s schoolmates and beloved family dishes like her grandmother’s cauliflower with cheese. The nostalgia runs like a leitmotiv in the Merchant Ivory films she acted in — Shakespeare-Wallah, Heat and Dust, Autobiography of a Princess — many of which attempt to recreate a bygone era. Does she tend to romanticise the past?

Jaffrey reluctantly concedes that there could be a “slight romanticisation” of her early childhood in her books. “It really was a wonderful time for us growing up in that neighborhood as children. We were all cousins and did all kinds of fun things together. But I try to be as cold-eyed about it in my memoir as possible. Not everything was wonderful or hunky dory about the joint family set up. I tell a few bitter stories, too.” On the whole, she considers herself a pretty objective person. “I write about new places all the time. I write about Thailand or Sri Lanka or Singapore as I see them today.”

The objectivity is evident in her practical stance on the evolution of Asian food. Purists may carp about the bastardisation of Indian cuisine. But Jaffrey argues that giving globalisation a bum rap is pointless because it’s inevitable and part of the journey of food. “It’s happening a little faster today because people are flying whereas earlier they were walking or using horses and ships. But it has always been there. Many of the taken-for-granted ‘Indian’ vegetables — potatoes, chillies and tomatoes — are imports that India made its own. I’ve been to the Punjab where people like to believe they’ve always had makki ki roti. But corn came from the Americas and has been around in India only for the last five to six hundred years. Chickpeas, likewise, came from Afghanistan and the Southern Caspian area.”

Jaffrey doesn’t think recent globalisation has impacted Indian cuisine significantly. The changes she sees in the West are more to do with presentation — plating traditional dishes like aloo tikkis differently or cutting and plating a raan differently to give it a more Western feel. The other big trend, she says, is being pushed by restaurants like Tabla and Cinnamon Club in London which are touching on Indian spices and techniques but still offering Western food. “A lot of people don’t like Indian food in its authentic form. They want a hint of exotica but don’t want to be overwhelmed. So there will be people who will cater to that as well.”

Save an active right brain, Jaffrey dismisses any connection between her writing, acting and cooking. Indeed, she finds it deeply ironical that she trained to be an actress and took to food writing to support herself because there were no roles for Indian actors overseas. But the drama of food is palpable in every marvellously evocative description – ‘the satiny, crumbling-at-the-touch tubular seekh kebabs’ or ‘the tiny new potatoes browned with flecks of cumin and mango powder’. In a recent NYT Op-Ed, she lovingly traced the journey of Indian mangoes when they first arrived in America, ‘burnished like jewels, oozing sweet, complex flavors acquired after two millenniums of painstaking grafting.’

Her own journey as food writer has been no cakewalk. As a struggling actress in America, Jaffrey learnt to cook slowly, painstakingly, from recipes sent by her mother on little air letters. She recalls the first time she tried making rasgollas “I started off trying to make the chhenna. But it kept curdling and going sour. I didn’t understand why and must have thrown away six or seven batches while writing my first book. So not everything turned out right but I’m persistent and keep trying till I get it right.”

The perfectionist not only got the recipes right, she mastered them in their contextual totality. Food never exists in a vacuum for Jaffrey. It exists in a culture, a society, a family. “If you give me a recipe of a Konkani dish and put it in the context of a family or a fisherman in a village, it would mean much more to me. Not just the recipe, which anyone could get. But the context of how it’s prepared, who prepares it, what it means to them, how they eat it and what a family meal is in that part of the world. All that to me gives a better picture of the dish I’m writing about.” Elizabeth David and M F K Fisher are food writers she admires. “They are really wonderful writers who write about life. Food is just a part of it. If we isolate food, it has no meaning.”

The rich multiculturalism of Jaffrey’s writing extends to her screen portrayals. From Shakespeare-Wallah to the more recent Cotton Mary and Chutney Popcorn, Jaffrey is known for her intense performances about complex, conflicted characters caught between cultures. Phoebe in Wonderland, due for release next year, revolves around a woman who lives in a world of imagination peopled by Alice in Wonderland characters who merge into her real world. Jaffrey plays a school teacher in the film. Also releasing next year is Hiding Divya, set in New Jersey and based on the subject of mental disease.
Recent times have seen a wave of non-resident Indians moving back to the homeland. Has she ever contemplated returning to India? “Yes, I could move back but my children and grandchildren are in America. Now my major ties are there, so I don’t think I’ll do that.” She sees no contradiction in writing about Asia or India while living in New York. “If you look at the writings of many Indians who live abroad, a lot of it is about Asia. It’s inevitable. Somehow your emotions and your past are all tied up in a very visceral way and you choose to recreate different aspects of it. All writers do that.”

For all the staggering scholarship she puts into her books, the James Beard award winning writer doesn’t spout any grandiose culinary philosophy. She simply likes good food. “I’m a firm believer in moderation, in eating well and healthily. But food must taste wonderful as well. It doesn’t have to be the most complicated dish. But if it’s nicely cooked, I’ll enjoy it. Anybody can make simple things that taste good, so there’s no excuse, really.” Jaffrey’s keen to explore Marwari, Andhra and Konkani food in the coming days. “There’s so much left to learn in India. Three lifetimes wouldn’t be enough.” Goan prawn curry and yakhni pulao are her favourites but if asked to choose a single dish, she would still prefer something “simple and fundamental” like dal-chawal.
But dal-chawal wouldn’t be just dal- chawal if Jaffrey were involved. It would have to be a particular variety of aromatic long-grained basmati rice. The moong would have to be hulled or unhulled and tempered just so with green chillies and mustard seeds or cumin.