Scriptwriter dramatises seminal Indian cookbook for BBC Radio 4

An Invitation to Indian Cooking is a drama based on actress and food writer Madhur Jaffrey Madhur_Jaffrey.jpg: rolandderivative work: JD554, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A radio drama written by a university lecturer, script writer and poet tells the story of an actress turned groundbreaking food writer, who popularised Indian cooking in the West.

An Invitation to Indian Cooking is named after the seminal 1973 cookbook authored by Madhur Jaffrey, a then-Broadway star.

Written by Anjum Malik, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University, the five-part BBC Radio 4 drama airs on consecutive days from February 1. Recorded entirely over Zoom, it stars Emmy-Award winning Archie Panjabi (The Good Wife, The Fall) as Jaffrey.

Malik is a prolific screen, stage and radio writer, who specialises in food writing and poetry. It is the second such cookbook she has dramatised for Radio 4, following A Book of Middle Eastern Cooking by Claudia Roden, starring Tracy Ann Oberman.

Malik, who teaches on the MA Scriptwriting course at the University’s Manchester Writing School, said: “It was a real honour to dramatise the life of Madhur Jaffrey, a huge Indian icon, and in particular to bring to life her influential cookbook An Invitation to Indian Cooking.

“I was offered the opportunity to dramatise the cookbooks by Polly Thomas, an award-winning director and producer because she knew about my food poetry writing. I enjoy writing about food because it makes us all the same because we have to eat, but at the same time unique in what we eat, when, where, who with, why and how.

“Our food heritages can be the bridge, the table of food which can bring almost everyone together, no matter what your beliefs or background.”

The drama charts Jaffrey’s life, from her childhood in India, training at RADA, to her success on stage and screen, winning the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her performance in Shakespeare Wallah, at the Berlin Film Festival, 1965.

While living and working in New York, the Jaffreys’ dinner parties were hugely popular, in part because of Madhur’s wonderful cooking, and attended by many celebrities, such as the filmmakers Merchant and Ivory. She made her name from her family recipes, sent by her mother in letters from home, and their enthusiastic reception culminated in An Invitation to Indian Cooking. She went on to write a dozen more cookbooks and present a number of TV cookery programmes, and was awarded a CBE in 2004.

It was a real honour to dramatise the life of Madhur Jaffrey, a huge Indian icon, and in particular to bring to life her influential cookbook An Invitation to Indian Cooking

The drama is one of a number of projects Malik has been working on over recent months, developing her food poetry that started in 2002 when she was chosen to be Writer In Residence for the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.

She is currently partnering with two artists to illustrate some of her food-inspired poems as food posters – that also work as recipes, and continues to work with local communities to produce poetry films based on their life experiences – most recently helping Syrian refugees in Blackpool to catalogue their thoughts and feelings during the first lockdown in a poetry film called ‘At Home – in the UK – Alhamdulillah’.