Learn Indian cooking with Madhur Jaffrey

In London and New York, Madhur Jaffrey is a much-loved author and international authority on Indian cooking. Yet in Vancouver, she's not as well-known except among those who might have spotted her in Merchant-Ivory movies.

As a child growing up in Mumbai, I remember watching Jaffrey's cooking shows on the BBC and hearing a friend marvel, "She's so good, she nails it."

As much as I love Indian food, cooking it is a complicated, tiresome procedure because most dishes require far too many ingredients and it takes a lot of time. However, Jaffrey makes it all so simple and easy.

Years ago, she revolutionized Indian cooking by making it so accessible and understandable with her pioneering cookbooks. What I like about her is that she's removed the exoticism; her approach is authentic and down to earth.

I find too many TV cooks in the West tend to play up that stale, stereotypical image of Indian cooking where they make cumin powder sound like a rare find in the jungle. Jaffrey, on the other hand, has methodically explained the use of every spice and she brings recipes from a multitude of Indian households.

She's not regional in any way. She doesn't just do Punjabi or South Indian dishes. She does them all, including Anglo-Indian cuisine. (For those who don't know, Anglo Indians are half-British and half-Indian people. Most Anglo Indians left India after the country gained independence and moved to the U.K. and Australia.)

Of course, this reveals Jaffrey's cosmopolitan perspective, because Indian food reflects the influences of many communities. It doesn't solely belong to a single culture. That's a pretty myopic view.

Right from chicken korma to South Indian vegetable stews to basic homemade lentils and basmati rice, Jaffrey covers it all. When I read her recipes, they're exactly what my grandmother would make, standing short and stout in her kitchen, which makes them so trusted.

If you want to try Indian food at home, your best bet would be to buy or borrow one of her cookbooks. Watch your kitchen transform with smells and flavours you never thought of before.