When and how did I learn to cook?

As I do the final glaze for my latticed tart for dessert after dinner tonight, I am struck at how far I have come as a cook.

Really sometimes, I surprise myself ! As I admire the pretty decent pie on the table, I am reminded of an earlier post that I had made on my now neglected food blog.

Growing up with boys around you and having family friends who mainly had boys for children, kind of leaves you unprepared for existence as a woman! And more than that I think it leaves your parents unprepared for how to deal with a girl who behaves and acts like a boy! :-)

Luckily I had very indulgent parents. My memories of my childhood are coloured with bike rides, cricket matches, football practices and swimming… an amused mother who would sometimes admonish me about not having any womanly grace and an indulgent dad who encouraged and sided with me no matter what! My only concession to my sex was wearing skirts / frocks / dresses that my mom lovingly bought and I regularly tore! I suspect that some of it has still stayed with me and to this day, while I am a far cry from the tomboy I was, I am way way off anything feminine!

With all this baggage I got married, luckily to the man who I loved, and, who mercifully fell in love with me.. otherwise the torture his poor stomach has had to go through in the first few years of marriage, the marriage would have had slim chances of surviving! Anyone who is married to a foodie, and, that too a foodie whose mother is a fabulous cook, will understand why! Though I suspect it helped a bit, that he taught me how to cook!

I remember the first meal I ever cooked – a dal and some rice. I just knew that my mom used lentils, cumin, tumeric, salt and water to make dal, so I just threw them into the pot and hoped, miraculously it would all come together. Needless to say it did not, but R was sweet enough or newly married enough  to gulp a few spoons down!!

My journey from there to this pie has been long, ardrous but thorougly enjoyable! From a person who couldn’t make out spinach from any other leafy vegetables, I can, today wax eloquent about a ballotine of chicken, butter squash mezzlune, pansoti, a chocolate mousse cake et al.. and through all of this R has braved stomach aches, cramps, burned and charred dishes, food that tasted like newspaper or ditchwater and has bravely dared where no man in my life has been before – down my culinary path!

Dubai: The ultimate dream?

While I continue the hunt for a house maid, I have been using a cleaning agency to help keep the house clean. Dubai abounds with these agencies who offer maids for just about anything - cleaning to party helpers to baby sitters et all.

Have a young Filipina called Christine who comes to me from a cleaning agency. She does a 4 hour shift with me every alternate day, and, if you've tried cleaning the house, doing the dishes etc you will know that 4 hours is a really long stretch. So I usually insist that she has a coffee or tea break after 2 hours and make herself a sandwich or if she is feeling really hungry she is free to help herself to some rice and curry / vegetables or whatever may be there in the fridge.

One such break, we got chatting. It appears that's the agency who hired her, did so with the promise of AED 1500 per month but when she got here, the contract she signed was for far less. The agency gives her accommodation, a salary of AED 600 and a monthly food allowance of AED 200. The maids all live in "labour camps" yup, that's what they are called, which have 10-12 maids to a room, though the rooms are air-conditioned. Surprisingly they are not allowed to cook, and, have to buy ready, cooked food, so the AED 200 doesn't really go a very long way. Hence, the coffee and the sandwich that she has, is very welcome. Now I am not sure how much of what she said was 100% true, but these stories keep popping up far too often to not merit a consideration.

The conversation left me feeling terribly apologetic about how comfortable my life was, and wondering about the wide divergence that exists in Dubai. I can't remember where I read this, but Dubai is really a segmented society with a huge difference between the "have nots" and the "have yachts". Rather appropriate I think!

In economic terms, the Emiratis I suspect are top of the heap, prosperity for many been aided by being sleeping partners or otherwise in almost all business (at least in the initial stages) and the workers from the Asia forming the bottom of the heap, with a whole load of expats in the middle, and, their lifestyles  are a reflection of this segmentation.

Coming from a developing nation, you are not a stranger to poverty, or a wide disparity in income levels, but somehow there is something very poignant and heart breaking about coming to work to a foreign land with hopes and dreams of bettering your lot in life, and unfortunately waking up to a familiar sense of drudgery and fatalism.