'Rude' Chefs Leave Sour Taste For Madhur Jaffrey

The Delhi-born actor is returning to the small screen with a 10-part series on the Good Food channel.The new generation of "rude" television chefs is not to the taste of Madhur Jaffrey, who is returning to the small screen three decades after her groundbreaking BBC series Indian Cookery.Jaffrey, the Delhi-born actor and presenter who has written more than 30 cookbooks, said she was unimpressed by the antics of some of the new breed of celebrity chefs. "I couldn't be that rude to people, if only because I wouldn't like it done to me," she told the new issue of Radio Times.The world of TV cuisine has changed in the 17 years since Jaffrey presented her last BBC cookery show, The Flavours of India. Back then Gordon Ramsay, tutored by another tough-talking TV chef, Marco Pierre White, had yet to open his first restaurant. So familiar is Ramsay's post-watershed style that one of his shows was called The F Word.The milder-mannered Jamie Oliver, meanwhile, was two years away from making his first on-screen appearance in a documentary about the River Cafe.Jaffrey indicated that her on-screen spice would be restricted to her ingredients, not her language. "That said, I do swear from time to time," she told the magazine. "But only in a very quiet voice."Jaffrey's new 10-part series, Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation, will begin on the Good Food channel on Sunday night.Jaffrey, 79, moved to London in her 20s to study at Rada. She has appeared in a string of Merchant Ivory films as well as doing a stint in BBC1's EastEnders in 2003.In her new series she will tour the country to explore its love affair with Indian and other south Asian food. "So many Indian restaurants in this country are run by Bangladeshis, yet so few of them actually cook Bengali food," she said."It's only here in Britain that bhajia wear this thick overcoat of batter. Like a lot of Indians, I make mine with a very light film, so thin that you can see the vegetable underneath; I'd use cauliflower, too, rather than onion."She added: "Over the years [the vindaloo] has become known in Britain as the super-hot curry for macho men, yet in India, it's nothing of the sort."What makes it a vindaloo is the combination of vinegar and garlic, which not only produces a sour, garlicky taste, but acts as a preservative ... it's the kind of dish you might serve up for children, perhaps with a few less chillies."Pic: Madhur Jaffrey has written more than 30 cookbooks but has not presented a TV cooking show for 17 years Photograph: Graeme Robertson