Cooking with Stella

Inside the Canadian diplomatic compound in New Delhi, a mischievous cook affects the lives of her employers and fellow staff. Stella Elizabeth Matthews has been a cook in the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi for 30 years. She is brilliant as a cook, and brilliant at creatively padding her salary - with a few pilfered items, some minor overcharging, and a special phone-order duty free business. A newly posted Canadian diplomatic couple Michael and Maya arrive with their baby and, after an initial jolt when she learns that Michael will be staying home as "diplomatic housewife" while Maya goes off to work, everything goes swimmingly for Stella. Michael was a chef in Ottawa and he is longing to learn authentic Indian cooking. Stella agrees to be his "cooking guru". But Stella's cozy domestic set-up implodes when Tannu, an honest nanny, joins the household, and threatens to expose Stella's deceptions. Eventually Stella wins Tannu's full cooperation (and then some!). This unlikely partnership embarks on a much grander, riskier scam, which seems to bring disaster. An unexpected kind of justice is found, but not until the guru-student relationship between Stella and Michael has been sorely tested. Michael has learned many important lessons from his teacher ...including glorious traditional South Indian cooking. And Stella? Well.... let's just say dreams sometimes come true in unexpected ways. —Hamilton-Mehta Productions Inc. As head housekeeper at a diplomatic residence in New Delhi, Stella serves up delectable dishes to a succession of Ottawa civil servants. But while she sets a divine table, some of her other activities are less above board. Through finely orchestrated duplicity, she skims inflated bills to pad her modest salary and raids her employers' pantry for her own "duty free" business. Each night, the devout Christian impishly prays to the Virgin Mary to bless her crooked schemes. The arrival of Maya and Michael initially disrupts Stella's routine. To her surprise, the wife is the diplomat while the husband stays home to look after their baby daughter. Even more shocking, he has designs on her kitchen! When Michael, a trained chef, discovers Stella's culinary talents, he asks her to be his guru and teach him the secrets of authentic Indian cooking. She warily agrees to this breach in master-servant protocol, and as the two begin whipping up mouthwatering curries and dosas together, her trepidation eventually turns to pleasure. Meanwhile, the beautiful and virtuous Tannu joins the household to care for the baby. Can Stella make her an ally in domestic subterfuge, or will the honest young nanny topple the kitchen kingpin? Determined to protect her turf, Stella plots her sliest and most ambitious ruse yet. —Anonymous Part of the Canadian diplomatic corps, Maya Chopra accepts as her next assignment what is considered the hardship posting at the Canadian High Commission in New Dehli, she ethnically half-South Asian herself. She, her chef husband Michael Laffont and their infant daughter Zara will live at the High Commission compound, with Michael to be the stay-at-home dad while he hopes to hone his palate and learn how to cook authentic South Asian cuisine in the process. In the role of their housekeeper and cook, they are assigned a thirty year veteran of such postings for the High Commission, a poor fifty-something South Asian woman named Stella Elizabeth Matthews. As is the Canadian way, Michael, who will deal with Stella more than Maya in being the stay-at-home dad, wants to treat Stella like one of the family. A devout Catholic, Stella continually prays to God for an early retirement fund in being able to buy a house in the country. What the High Commission and her previous direct employees don't and didn't know is that Stella, to achieve that fund, has routinely stole from them, whether it be directly in the form of jewelry, small electronics, or duty free Canadian goods (including alcohol) purchased from the High Commission commissary, which she either resells or uses as payment for other goods, or in the form of kickbacks with merchants who end up charging higher prices, but which Stella always passes off to her unsuspecting employers as a good deal. Stella continuing this scheme with Michael and Maya may be affected by two items. First, Michael, after tasting her cooking, asks her to be his cooking guru in a special teacher/student relationship. And second, Michael, in wanting to focus more time on the cooking, hires a nanny for Zara, a young innocent woman named Tannu, who is unwise to the ways of the big city as a new arrival from the country, she whose obligation is to send money home. —Huggo