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Rachel Roddy’s recipe for roast aubergine with tomato and basil | A kitchen in Rome
‘Thick, striped rounds of aubergine baked with loads of olive oil and salt until tender and velvety, then topped with finely diced macerated tomato’
Years ago, I did a workshop in a church hall that smelled of milky tea and damp carpet. One of the various exercises was to write a short story, a page long, about something dramatic that had happened to us or someone we knew. Having written our page, we were told to read the story back, then cross it out with a single line. The next stage was to write the same story, only this time to take up half a page. Again, we were told to read it, then strike a line through it. The last part was to write the same story in a single sentence, read it twice, then underline two words.
Almost without exception, and regardless of where the story had started and how dramatic or bad it was, the sentences were tender and funny. The two words (“busy orange” are the ones I remember best) were all moving and hilarious, which was no doubt also due to the fact that we had been incubating in a strip-lit room that smelled of milky tea and damp carpet. After a break to drink the tea we had been smelling all morning and to eat chocolate bourbons and ginger nuts, we came back to discuss the exercise. It was all about the stories we are tied to, and how we tell them and can change them; at the time, it felt as if we were hitting on the meaning of life. Some things have stayed with me, and nothing more so than the smell and taste of milky tea and a busy orange.