Product Description

Whether acclaimed food writer Madhur Jaffrey was climbing the mango trees in her grandparents' orchard in Delhi or picnicking in the Himalayan foothills on meatballs stuffed with raisins and mint, tucked into freshly baked spiced pooris, today these childhood pleasures evoke for her the tastes and textures of growing up.

This memoir is both an enormously appealing account of an unusual childhood and a testament to the power of food to prompt memory, vividly bringing to life a lost time and place. Included here are recipes for more than thirty delicious dishes that are recovered from Jaffrey’s childhood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48542 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-09
• Released on: 2007-10-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The celebrated actress and author of several books on Indian cooking turns her attention to her own childhood in Delhi and Kampur. Born in 1933 as one of six children of a prosperous businessman, Jaffrey grew up as part of a huge "joint family" of aunts, uncles and cousins—often 40 at dinner—under the benign but strict thumb of Babaji, her grandfather and imperious family patriarch. It was a privileged and cosmopolitan family, influenced by Hindu, Muslim and British traditions, and though these were not easy years in India, a British ally in WWII and soon to go though the agony of partition (the separation and formation of Muslim Pakistan), Jaffrey's graceful prose and sure powers of description paint a vivid landscape of an almost enchanted childhood. Her family and friends, the bittersweet sorrows of puberty, the sensual sounds and smells of the monsoon rain, all are remembered with love and care, but nowhere is her writing more evocative than when she details the food of her childhood, which she does often and at length. Upon finishing this splendid memoir, the reader will delight in the 30 "family-style" recipes included as lagniappe at the end. Photos. (Oct. 11)
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From Booklist
Actress and consummate authority on the foods of India, Jaffrey reflects on her earliest memories in this autobiography. Steeped in Hindu culture and learning, she grew up within an extended well-to-do Delhi family that expected the best of each. Starting with her grandmother's placing honey on her tongue shortly after birth, Jaffrey's life began to arrange itself around all that food represents in Hindu life. Some of her most touching and distressing scenes come with the advent of India's independence and its partition. Jaffrey's friends and schoolmates had from the outset included both Hindu and Muslim, but religious and political strife soon sundered all relations. On the culinary front, Hindu refugees from the subcontinent's northwest regions brought tandoori cooking to Delhi and ultimately made it an integral part of the national cuisine. In an appendix, Jaffrey records recipes for dozens of dishes that figure in her memoir. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Wistful, funny and tremendously satisfying. . . . Jaffrey's taste memories sparkle with enthusiasm, and her talent for conveying them makes the book relentlessly appetizing.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Do not attempt to read [this] mouth-wateringly evocative memoir on an empty stomach. . . . A delicious tribute to a deeply rooted, multicultural upbringing.”
—Newsday

“A sharp observer with a pleasing eye for sensual detail, Jaffrey weaves a richly textured story in which she effortlessly mingles quotidian drams with historic events.”
—People Magazine

"Her story reads like a novel and evokes images worthy of a Merchant-Ivoryproduction. You can practically taste sun warmed mangoes plucked from the tree, the barley-sugar candy that holds a hallowed place in the author's memory."
—The Seattle Times

Customer Reviews

Food and family flavor this memoir
Mixing together family, food, history and culture, Madhur Jaffrey gives us a fascinating glimpse of upper class life in India. Her delicious descriptions of the daily life of the privileged contrast with what many hear of the poverty and troubles of that country. There are amusing tidbits such as "the art of getting thirty people into two cars" and the mischievous "Holi" day celebrations, and an indepth look at the intricacies of life in a large extended family, plus a sprinkling of family photos. Although she delves into the darker shadows of family troubles and the consequences of WWII and political changes, Ms. Jaffrey keeps those experiences on the light side, leaving me with more questions than answers.

As with many memoirs, there is some disjointedness, but through it all there is the food - delightful, delicious, descriptions to make one drool. The average reader will undoubtedly find the recipes included at the end of the book to be daunting, but a trip to an Indian restaurant should be a most satisfying ending to this book. I enjoyed this book which offers literally a taste of India. My only question - since Madhur failed cookery in school, how did she learn to cook so well?!

Madhur Jaffrey's remembrances of life and food in India
Madhur Jaffrey is a personal favorite - I loved her reading of Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club) & it's a delight to see her pop up unexpectedly in movies like Prime (Widescreen Edition) in small but juicy roles. So, it was a pleasure to read about the author's childhood in this enjoyable remembrance of an India past.

Ms. Jaffrey's family was obviously prosperous and privileged, as attested to by the grand house ("Number 7") that was the center of her early life. You quickly take that standard of life as a given. We get a look at the 'joint family' style of living - all the incomes pooled & the family living under the extended roof and paternal care of her respected and successful grandfather ('Babaji').

You'll want to rush out and order Indian food every night. Each remembrance is embraced with recollections of specific foods and the preparation that goes into making those dishes for a large family. There's a full 50 pages of family recipes that follow the Epilogue.

Delightful!
Madhur Jaffrey is one of the foremost authors of indian cookbooks. This book is a memoir of her childhood in northern India during the 40s and 50s. It is packed with all the joys and flavors of an extended family with liberal food descriptions and delightful flavors of multi ethnic indian cuisine. She obviously had a very rich, privileged up bringing which is perhaps not what every indian born child is privy to, but her writing is compassionate, mindful of the privileges she had in comparison to the rest of the country - and allows the reader to really travel visually and enjoy a taste of the same. One cannot help wishing though that she had dealt with, at some length, on some real struggles with a dysfunctional uncle (Shibbu dada), the changes in the family during the post independance era (all families went through a lot of struggle then, particularly privileged ones) or for that matter anything that lets the reader know that the journey was not always a happy or easy one. Read it anyway, and particulary if you are from India, it is truly a delightful nostalgic journey into the joys and flavors and family love that is so typical of extended family life in our homeland and sadly getting to be a rarity for even those who live there.