To whip up their lives with dignity Swiss flavours in a desi tawa

It wasn’t easy training 30 people at Writer’s Cafe but Chef Silke Stadler’s taught them to not only stay strong together but also replicate flavours. The Swiss-inspired pastas & pizzas attest to that.

CHENNAI: 'Culinary Entertainer’ reads Chef Silke Stadler’s visiting card, a simple yet curious title instead of fancy designations. When asked, she shrugs and says, “Food is all about enjoying it. Why complicate it?”

City Express caught up with the Swiss chef, seated on the fi rst fl oor of the cozy Writer’s Cafe in Royapettah. She is in town to train the chefs at the cafe, which includes women survivors of burn injuries. It’s not Silke’s first trip to Chennai. She was here last November to train the chefs before the opening of the Writer’s Cafe in December.

“I remember when the walls here were plain and the whole cafe was just being built. Look at it now!” she gushes. Her admiration is evident when she speaks of her trainees — nearly 30 this time, with eight women rehabilitated by the International Foundation for Crime Prevention and Victim Care (PCVC). “I’m really happy the way the girls have progressed. In fact, now it’s them teaching to the boys!”

Silke considers it a privilege to teach the culinary arts since she did not have the ‘luxury’ of food while growing up. “I was born in East Germany during the Cold War. I was 18 by the time the Berlin Wall fell,” she recollects.

“I still remember vividly, we didn’t have much in terms of food choices. In West Germany, people would have access to all varieties of food, fruits and material possessions but across the wall, we would have to stand in line just to get one banana! So we learned to make good food from simple things.” She says she intends to train the chefs at the cafe “to make something out of nothing — so to speak.” “I realised through those experiences that we must have the heart, eyes and mouth for cooking. This is what I train the girls as well. Open your eyes, learn well and you never know how inspiration will strike you!” Silke grins. But she admits the job isn’t easy.

“We have a big team of chefs in training here — nearly 30 people, so it was a bit hard to remember all the faces when I started training them,” she says. “Also, they were shy and restrained and I had to whip them into shape! I merely showed them how to do it.... we approached each problem as a group, and helped them look out for each other when the ‘chips’ were falling down!” And that she avers, is the very essence of what they try to teach them about life. “We don’t just teach them how to prepare meals, we teach them how to be strong together and that we are all the same!” However, she adds, this doesn’t mean they are excused for the quality of food they prepare.

“I can be quite a hard taskmaster....we can’t treat them special, we have to treat them like everybody else. It certainly is challenging for them because the food served here is Swiss-inspired and does not include normal local food. You have to teach them a few times to get them to replicate the fl avours of the cuisine,” she mulls. Silke has travelled to Thailand, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Italy, France, Russia, etc. She has previously worked in Suhl, Hamburg, Stuttgart (all cities in Germany) and later in Zurich, Switzerland. Based now out of Lucerne, she often conducts culinary sessions and runs her own catering service back home. She will be in Chennai for the next two months training the new batch of chefs.

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