And by golly, can she roll a chapatti!

My friend Jo came to stay last weekend. She’s the first person who’s ever come to stay just for the sake of it. It was my first chance to entertain – ie cook up a storm– since arriving here.

As I got the Saturday morning tunes cranking on my laptop, I began the early preparations. The menu included three dishes Janine and I learnt to make during our trip to India (samosas, stuffed paranthas and chapattis) as well as a baba ganouj of sorts. Smelling the onions cooking and the incense burning and listening to the feel-good music made me feel like I was back at Juliett St preparing for a party. Aahhh.

It was a lovely and relaxing day of cooking and bathroom cleaning. Anju was of course wonderfully interested in the exotic menu and cooking methods. She was especially perplexed by the eggplant sitting directly on the gas burner, skin blackening more and more by the second. I couldn’t work out how to say, “It gives it a nice smoky flavour” in Bangla, so she was left wondering about that.

When the time came to make the chapattis I was very careful to do it exactly how Ruchi did it in India – roll the dough into a ball, then roll once with the rolling pin, pick up, turn, roll, pick up, turn roll, until you have a nice, even circle. Anju watched patiently as I meticulously ironed out any uneven bits. In then end, I managed to get something that looked a bit like a squircle (half square/half circle).

Time began to tick away a little too quickly, and so I asked Anju to roll out the rest of the chapattis while I started on the samosa cases.

What I saw at this moment has given me yet another huge dose of respect for Anju. Admittedly, she does this every morning, but when it came time to rolling the dough into a circle, she rolled back and forth with the rolling pin, putting just enough pressure on the right end of the pin so that the chapatti turned ITSELF and within about ten seconds, she had the most perfect looking chapatti I’ve ever seen.

I’m sure she was quietly having a chuckle to herself as she watched my pathetic attempt. But she said nothing, and with that, she once again showed what a fabulous woman she is.