Exploring Shanghai's many flavors with a culinary pioneer

At eight a.m. on Tianping Lu crowds of people are wolfing down steaming doufu hua, youtiao, jianbing and baozi. As always, Madhur Jaffrey had her notepad out, assiduously recording the flavors and cooking methods of each dish. "Oh, that's the flower tofu," she exclaimed, spotting the drum of doufu hua. "I must try that." We order some and soon she was ensconced at one of the cramped tiny tables in the noisy shack of a restaurant. She looked positively tickled.

Madhur Jaffrey, celebrated writer, actress and lionized cookbook author was in town to give a talk at the Shanghai Literary Festival on her new memoir, "Climbing the Mango Trees." Jaffrey has written more than a dozen cookbooks over 35 years. She introduced Indian cooking to Britain and the world through her wildly popular BBC cooking programs and best-selling books.

This being her first visit to China, she was determined to taste as much of the city as possible, which we crammed into varied meals at all times of day. She ate thoughtfully, with great gusto and a superb appetite, although her petite figure gives nothing away.

She took a bite of doufu hua with its light broth of soy, dried shrimps and pickled veggies. "Oh, this is marvelous," she exclaimed. "I love it; I can't think of anything better!" She scribbled in her notebook. "Now what exactly is in this sauce?" she asked me. And so it would go for three solid days of eating our way across Shanghai. She was entranced by novel vegetables, cooking techniques and often with the most traditional local recipes.

Jaffrey has an aura of dignity, intellect, impeccable manners and warmth. She delighted in our private class on Shanghai classics at the Betty's Kitchen cooking school. As we watched chef Zhang Zhiqi transform a patty of pressed tofu into perfect even noodles with a cleaver, she admired his knife skills. "Oh I couldn’t do that!" She followed every step. When we rolled out skin for xiaolongbao she said, "He has a wonderful technique, different from mine." Soon she was demonstrating her own skills, folding a samosa shape.

At a wet market the variety mesmerized her. She marveled at the mushrooms and had the patience to hear about each of them. That's the chicken leg mushroom, I explained as she "ooh-ed." She pointed to a puffy white one with handsome upstanding gills. "I don't know what that is but it looks good!" she said with a gleeful smile.

At each meal she expressed her subtle palate and attention to detail: She swooned over tiny house-made pickles at Xin Jishi, candy-sweet kumquats from the wet market, and silky steamed egg custard with cod at Whampoa Club. She remarked on the tenderness of fatty pork over noodles at the dilapidated Shanghai institution De Xing Guan.

Her formidable knowledge kept me in check. If I made a wrong guess about an ingredient or method she immediately said, "No no, it can't be made like that." After inquiring for the exact details, she was always right.

One vegetable in particular intrigued her: wosun from the wet market, which I described to her as a combination of asparagus and broccoli stem. "We must order that somewhere," she said. We found a refreshing wosun sauté at Dishuidong which she pronounced "delightful." "James Beard used to julienne broccoli stems just like this and sauté them simply in butter and it was lovely," she said. She tasted the wosun over and over with contagious enthusiasm: "I always feel a sense of excitement and adventure when I discover a new flavor."

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