First Lady of Global Indian cuisine Madhur Jaffrey awarded Padma Bhushan

From writing over a dozen cookbooks and appearing on several related television programmes outside of India, Madhur Jaffrey is unarguably the First Lady of Global Indian Cuisine.

President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday announced that 88 year old Madhur Jaffrey has been honoured with the Padma Bhushan this year, India’s third-highest civilian award for her contributions to the culinary arts.

Sharing an Insta Gram Story, renowned chef Manu Chandra posted, "Happy to see her get recognised at a national level for a lifetime of work to spreading the gospel of desi khana to the west."

It all began in 1973 when she wrote her first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking that got recognized for bringing Indian cuisine to the western hemisphere. The cookbook was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2006.

Celebrity chef Ranveer Brar also posted on Insta gram by saying her a pathbreaker, a star both in an outside of the kitchen.

She was the food consultant at the popular Dawat restaurant in New York city that was considered as one of the best Indian global restaurant globally.

Jaffrey was also awarded by the Queen as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2004.

Celebrity chef and restaurateur Sanjeev Kapoor also called her a torchbearer for Indian food globally.

Her latest cookbook was ‘Instantly Indian Cookbook’, published in 2019 (46 years after ‘An Invitation to Indian Cooking’ where she collaborated recipes customised for the Instant Pot, the electric pressure cooker that had become an instant hit, when the world was locked down because of the pandemic and home cooked food has become the only choice for the people stuck at home.

Pic Courtesy: CN Traveller India