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Beyond Indian Cuisine with Madhur Jaffrey

by Peter Barrett and photographs by Jennifer May, October 26, 2011

Attaining the highest level of accomplishment in any discipline is a difficult task. Achieving world renown in two different fields is almost unheard of, and yet Madhur Jaffrey has done so, in both film and food, breaking down barriers between cultures and cuisines for more than 50 years. She has been active since the inception of the modern culinary renaissance, teaching three generations of people around the world how to make South Asian cooking part of their regular repertoire. And she is beloved: Her writing is elegant, her recipes work, and her voice is without pretense or artifice. Petite and polite, with piercing dark eyes, at 78 she still has the regal features and poise that helped make her a movie star. And she’s working as hard as ever; she recently wrapped a film with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken (A Late Quartet) and is working on a new book.

She has a strong connection to the Hudson Valley. After settling in New York City in the late 1960s, Jaffrey and her husband, the violinist Sanford Allen, became acquainted with this region through their close friends James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. The legendary director-producer couple had a house in Claverack. “Years ago, they were out of town, so we borrowed their house for three months,” says Jaffrey. “It’s so lovely, this whole area, so we started looking around.” They eventually found an old house, built in the 1790s, in Columbia County. “It was too near the road, but we never found anything nicer. And since it had once been a tavern, it seemed right.”

Later, they bought the property next door and expanded the yard and gardens. She and Allen divide their time evenly between the city and country houses. The spacious interior is elegant yet homey, with each room painted or papered in a different saturated hue or pattern. The furniture is eclectic, including many periods and styles, and it harmonizes nicely with the many photographs, masks, statues, and other objects she has gathered in a lifetime of traveling the world. Jaffrey says she has no use for interior decorators, and the house makes that abundantly clear. It’s ready for its close-up in a much fancier magazine than this.

Outside, Jaffrey tends lots of flowers, a vegetable garden, and several patches of fruit (raspberries, blueberries, apples) and plans to add trellises of grapes and hardy kiwis next year. The exterior shows the same aesthetic as the interior: elegant and tidy, but with plenty of room for asymmetry and moments of lavish beauty. Each object or plant is afforded enough room to be appreciated; there’s no clutter inside or out. The garden is modest but filled with a wide variety of greens, beans, squash, tomatoes, and roots, with herbs tucked in between. She shows it off with obvious enthusiasm, saying: “I believe in getting things from the earth and cooking for yourself. It’s so easy to grow things.” The garden dictates her meals, which very often are not Indian: “Whatever is there, we use, regardless of what kind of food. Last night we had pasta with broccoli and globe zucchini from the garden.” Jaffrey mentions the zucchini several times, as well as parsnips and salsify, when discussing her favorites. (She either boils and dresses salsify like an artichoke or cuts the long roots into sections and roasts them until tender).