Manju was raised in north west London, surrounded by Indian cultures, traditions and lifestyles. She was a BBC TV network announcer (mainly BBC Two, 1990 – 1999 and 2001 – 2006 (freelance)) and a BBC World Service TV announcer (1992). She provided voiceovers for trails featured on BBC News 24 and she was also an announcer on UKTV’s Good Food channel. She presented the early (4am – 6am) weekend show on BBC Radio 2 (January/February 1997).
In 1999, she won the BBC’s Food and Drink competition and went on to cook alongside Antony Worrall-Thompson on BBC Two. Manju’s Simply Indian series was aired on the Taste Network in 2001. She has also appeared on various other TV shows: Saturday Cooks (ITV); This Morning (ITV); Saturday Kitchen (BBC One); Paul Hollywood’s Pies and Puds (BBC One).
Manju has developed a career for herself as an Indian cookery writer and broadcaster, following in the footsteps of Madhur Jaffrey. She has become a leading expert on Indian cuisine, with five cookbooks under her belt. In her cooking, she draws on her childhood experiences living in India amidst a vast variety of cuisines and combines it with urban western life, creating a unique Brit-Indi style of food influenced by easy Indian home-cooking. In 2010, Manju filmed a forty-part programme for the India-based channel NDTV. Cooking Isn’t Rocket Science aims to teach viewers how to prepare classic British dishes with readily accessible local ingredients in India while retaining the original essence.
In addition to writing, she loves teaching, hosting cookery theatres and culinary demonstrations, promoting the easy ethos of home cooking in a climate where health issues, global waste and the respect of food is very much on everyone’s mind.
Manju updated us in May 2019 about current projects: “I am revamping one of my cookbooks – Easy Indian Cookbook – for next year, and teaching healthy cooking sessions near Grenfell Tower and the London Borough of Hounslow.”
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Clips of Manju on The TV Room
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Acknowledgements
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