Climbing the Mango Trees

Susan Kurosawa

Climbing the Mango Trees
By Madhur Jaffrey, Ebury Press, 264pp, $59.95
AUTHOR, actor and television celebrity chef Madhur Jaffrey enjoyed an enchanted childhood in India during the dying days of the Raj. Madhur means "sweet as honey", although her father had to overrule the family priest, whose consultation of the baby girl's horoscope revealed the ideal name to be Indrani, "queen of the heavens".

She is culinary royalty, however, author of many tomes on Indian cookery and host of a popular BBC television food series.

Jaffrey has been instrumental in educating the world about Indian cuisine: its nuances and regional variations, the complexities beyond the everyday image of fiery curries. So it's amusing to discover she failed the cooking element of home economics in her high school finals: the kitchen was, of course, the domain of servants.

It's clear in this memoir of growing up in Delhi that Jaffrey's immersion in the world of food, and its nurturing and soul-healing qualities, came early. Hers was a youth of privilege and freedom in the bosom of a rich family with a sense of entitlement and a two-toned Plymouth. As the fifth child, and therefore a little removed from parental expectations, she was permitted to run a bit wild, climbing the mango trees of the book's title with a supply of salt, pepper, red chillies and roasted cumin to tease out the luscious hidden flavours of the fruit. She hung around with male cousins and got into harmless scrapes, which frequently included food: from raids on "monstrous green" watermelon patches to chasings under tamarind and mulberry trees.

But the wonder years inevitably had tarnished moments. A close cousin dies from rabies; there are family tensions involving a "tidal force" uncle who hates his plain wife and ignores his children; one of Jaffrey's elder sisters has a leg amputated after a wrong diagnosis.

The horrid realities of World War II and the process of partition after the British withdrew from India form a backdrop, but this is not so much a story about history as the tale of a shining clan so large and involved that it never occurred to the young Jaffrey that "families came in sizes smaller than 30 people, swelling beatifically to a few thousand at the mere hint of a grand event". The extended family's dining-room table was so long that Jaffrey and her siblings and cousins didn't know until years later that their grandmother was a vegetarian: they simply couldn't see what was being served to those at the top seats.

Jaffrey's lot were high-caste Indians, her grandfather a notable barrister. They were Hindus but "heavily veneered with Muslim culture and English education". Her "pretty and pliant" mother, though, of lower caste and educated not even to secondary level, never learned English, mocking its "git-pit" sounds.

There is a wonderful abundance of food in this book, with ingredients and sources lovingly described; I particularly like the notion of the Lady in White who would visit the household each winter, balancing on her head a round brass tray full of terracotta cups. Her specialty was a "frothy evanescence that disappeared as soon as it touched the tongue". The ingredients of this magical "food of angels" were dew, new milk and dried sea foam.

Jaffrey includes a glossary of recipes for family dishes such as Cousin Bimla's Chicken Curry, each with its provenance explained. It's not a book to be read while fasting, dieting or filling in hours during a hospital stay, with just the prospect of boiled tripe and green jelly for dinner.

The autobiography ends in 1953, so there is ample scope for a sequel with, no doubt, Jaffrey's memories of her work in films and on television, her association with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, all enriched with a Proustian ability to recall even long-ago dishes, their contexts, tastes and fragrances. If there is a next time, I hope the editing process doesn't allow through such howlers as palette instead of palate. Those of us who love Jaffrey's meticulous approach to recipes, with never an ingredient misplaced, expect perfection.

• Susan Kurosawa, The Australian's travel editor, has written seven nonfiction books and the novel Coronation Talkies, set in 1930s India.