https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6SN9ITfCTc

If your maid can cook, so can you. Well, it is not so simple, as we found out after shifting to Switzerland nine months back. There can be no maid in Switzerland, unless you belong to the super rich SEC. We hired one, during our naive initial days here from India. She arrived in a BMW. 

For precisely two hours of effort, she charged more than our Indian maid’s full month’s salary, back home. Worry not, we told ourselves. If the maid can do it, so can we. After all, cooking is such a glamorous activity, globally. 

A successful chef, with a TV show to boot, is like a film star, a fashion icon. My initiation happened at the very basic raw material level. Dals, or lentils, for instance. I spent an afternoon at an Indian grocery store (appropriately called Exotic Shop, here in Switzerland), studying the various Dals (sabut, dhuli, chilka series of each dal), that we have been consuming for years. 

I know them by taste, but not by how they look, uncooked. The maid was handling all of that, along with a younger assistant maid who also helped with mundane tasks such as chopping, cleaning and washing. Sticking to the basics and keeping it simple, rather than aiming to achieve masterchef productions, we targeted the roti. The maid always served us hot phooli hui rotis, straight from the tawa. Our rotis refused to phoolo. A few did. 

But, most did not. Some ballooned a little, then burst, like an imported Chinese balloon. In other instances, parts of the roti phooloed, while other portions stayed put. The final look was hilly with flat stretches, much like the topography of Switzerland. We have had several discussions about the right way to make a roti phoolo: texture, refrigeration, hydration, fermentation, heat, weather, attitude, altitude etc. Indeed, life has its twists and turns. Back in India, my main concern was figuring out the complexity of the golf swing. 

All of that has now taken a backseat. Well, after tasting failure, I told myself, maybe I am too talented to make rotis. Maybe, I should try something more complex in keeping with my overall higher skill and intelligence levels. So, I tried to make vadas, as the family loves them. 

Our maid back home makes the most delicious vadas, freshly fried, straight from the kadhai to our plates. Thus, we were all craving for some spicy vadas, in any case. Additional benefits include no sugar and high protein.  The Youtube stars I studied offered technical insights to make the perfectly shaped round vadas. Progress so far is not bad, compared to the roti performance. Colour is right. Taste is fine too. Aroma is very vada-like. 

It is the shape, the curves, that is, that are missing. Just not good enough to post on my Insta feed, unless I falsely caption my vadas as pakoras or some such. Moving on, over the past few months, forcibly homebound due to Covid-19 and Covid-20, I have managed to upgrade my cooking skills.  I can make rice, dal (including differentiating the ones that need to be pressure cooked), pasta, omelette, boiled and fried egg, rajma, noodles, tofu, sandwich, burgers, French and cheese toast and most vegetables. 

In short, we are not starving, rather, if not for the Swiss summer that is conducive to running and other forms of exercise, we would all have fully phooloed long back. I have also been trying to find ways to cook while minimising usage of utensils that need to be washed. The dishwasher is very useful, but there is still the process of rinsing, placing and removing utensils, that is cumbersome. Necessity, as is said, is the mother of invention.

I would like to immodestly announce that I have made progress with my experiments with minimal cooking effort. A flat cast iron skillet, purchased at a discount, works quite well both for cooking and eating, when I have to prepare a meal for myself. I can manage a nicely stuffed masala omelette or steam heaps of cut veggies with tofu, mushrooms, eggs, chicken or fish.

To conclude, I am not as good as our maid back home, but can safely say that I can be counted among folks that can cook.  And, for this, I thank Switzerland, an amazingly beautiful country.