Making It Work: Inside Madhur Jaffrey's Kitchen

Sometimes the kitchen you want isn't the kitchen you get

By Madhur Jaffrey

Making It Work: Inside Madhur Jaffrey's Kitchen

Credit: Todd Coleman

My grandmother's kitchen in Delhi looked out on the Yamuna River, and fresh air blew through generous windows; my mother's kitchen there had three separate rooms. When I think of my ideal kitchen, I dream of space: of long granite counters, of places for my around-the-world seasonings and my collection of international crockery. When I see women in India turning out wondrous, multifaceted meals, squatting in front of a single burner in kitchens that boast of nothing more than gleaming brass pots, I begin to question my dreams. But I do not stop dreaming.

My husband and I have an apartment in New York City with a small galley kitchen, just a bit over eight-by-seven feet. When I was somewhat younger, we entertained there, cooking meals for dozens. I even taught cooking classes in it, though because of the tight quarters, the maximum class size was four. It was decidedly inconvenient. I dreamed of something larger.

When we bought a country house in upstate New York, all my kitchen dreams stayed intact—and unfulfilled. We loved the rambling old 1790s property. But it had a small kitchen, not much bigger than the one in the city. We could have enlarged it, but it would have been expensive, and there were two old maples outside the kitchen window that we could not bear to cut down.