Aubergine by heart, by Rohan Gunatillake
Meditative Story
WaitWhat
4.6 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
During some of the tougher days of the last two years, Rohan takes refuge in learning a new dish: aubergines with fermented chili bean paste and black vinegar. The project grounds him at an ungrounded time, and gradually leads to a singular form of mastery – no recipe required. A meditation about learning the ingredients, practicing the steps, and ultimately stepping into your intuition.
Cooking with Andong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEaFuNbbsM
Fuchsia Dunlop: http://www.fuchsiadunlop.com
Chinese Cooking Demystified: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC54SLBnD5k5U3Q6N__UjbAw
Each episode of Meditative Story combines the emotional pull of first-person storytelling with immersive music and gentle mindfulness prompts. Read the transcript for this story at: www.meditativestory.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I guess you might call it eggplant, but I call it aubergine. |
| 0:04.3 | Sorry, everyone in North America and Australia. |
| 0:08.0 | To be more specific, what I'm actually talking about is Yusheng Shia-Zi. |
| 0:13.6 | Sorry, everyone in China, for my horrible pronunciation. |
| 0:17.2 | I didn't mean to start off by knowing a decent percentage of the world's population, but hey. |
| 0:24.8 | This is the latest in the series of my own personal stories that pop up on your favorite |
| 0:28.9 | podcast feed every few weeks. |
| 0:31.9 | And this time, it's about food. |
| 0:35.4 | Is it about food? |
| 0:36.4 | What was it about creativity? |
| 0:39.0 | What was it about what happens when you do the same thing again and again? |
| 0:42.8 | And how that can open things up? |
| 0:45.9 | When you let go of the recipe and just let your instinct take over. |
| 0:51.5 | Let's find out. |
| 0:54.2 | Last year, I made the same dish for dinner every week for me and my wife for nine months |
| 0:59.0 | in a row. |
| 1:00.0 | Give or take. |
| 1:02.1 | Back in March 2020, and the first lockdown here in the UK. |
| 1:07.2 | My daughter's a few was just one and a bit, and not sleeping particularly well. |
| 1:12.2 | So I'd often be in her room, settling her, or just sleeping on the spare bed there, so |
| 1:16.7 | Lucy could get some proper sleep. |
| 1:18.9 | It was a tough time for a lot of reasons. |
... |
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