Aubergine, Basil, Coconut, Peanut, Shrimp

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Little white bowls of sticky coconut rice; big fistfuls of basil; slippery aubergines roasted smoky and black and a slick and silky sage-green pour-over sauce, pounded smooth in the pestle and mortar with shallots and garlic and galangal and shrimp, sieved to sharp-sweet sleekness. Big, funky, sexy flavours. Bright-but-coat weather. Jumper-no-tights weather. Rain. Sun. Hail. April. The good china: rusty gold, glossy navy, white. Aubergines on the platter and the sauce poured over; rice in a bowl each. The good chopsticks, and the junk-shop soup spoons with the deep round bowls. Maybe napkins: pale neutral linen, rumpled and crumpled. The battered dining table, freshly scrubbed and beeswaxed. Flowers in the fish jug. Music.

Sometimes, I really have to, like, fully seduce myself into the kitchen.