Page 35 of Mistaken Impression

“Because it gives the oil and spices more of a surface area… and it looks more interesting.”

He copies me with the second zucchini, and although his slices are by no means uniform, and he takes a lot longer to cut them up, he gets there with reasonable results. The pan is fairly full and I mix up the vegetables, burying most of the peppers and zucchini.

“Why are you doing that?”

“To protect them from burning.”

“I see. And is that it for the vegetables?”

“We’ve got enough, if that’s what you mean.”

“You’re not going to use this?” He holds up the eggplant.

“Not for now. It won’t fit into the pan. The potatoes and zucchini were larger than I expected, but we’ll use the eggplant next time.”

“So, it’s an eggplant?”

“Yes, although you’d know it as an aubergine.”

He shakes his head. “You probably shouldn’t have told me that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t know it as anything, and now I’m likely to get confused.” He has a point and I wish now I’d kept my mouth shut. He puts the eggplant down again and then looks up at me. “What do we do next?”

“We need to add the oil and spices, and some garlic.”

“Oh good. I love garlic.”

“Hmm… me too, but we have to allow for the fact that not everyone does, so we’ll just put in one fat clove, and I think Gavin’s going to put a proviso into the script that you’re supposed to say it can be left out altogether.”

“Yeah… if you’re insane.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that on camera, but if I was making this at home, I’d probably use three, or even four cloves.”

I pick up the bulb in front of me and put it on the chopping board, leaning hard on it to break it apart.

“So, how many of those are we using?” he asks.

“Just one… like I said.” He frowns, looking confused, and I pick up a clove, holding it up to him. “This is a clove of garlic. The whole thing together is a bulb. Don’t confuse the two. Even the most addicted of garlic lovers won’t thank you.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“There are lots of ways of preparing garlic and I’ll show you some of the others later on, but for now, we’re going to make a paste, so we can add it to the spice mix.” He nods his head, stepping closer again, and I place the garlic clove on the chopping board, putting the flat edge of my knife over it and leaning down hard on the blade to crush it. “If you do it this way, the skin comes away easily,” I say, demonstrating the fact by removing the skin from the clove. “And because we don’t need the clove to be whole, it doesn’t matter that I’ve crushed it.”

“Okay.”

I look around the countertop, then double check the box, which is empty. “I don’t believe this.”

“What’s wrong?”

“There’s no salt… or pepper, for that matter.”

“Do we need it?”

I stare at him for a moment. “Yes.” I shake my head. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that they didn’t give us a few basic ingredients, to leave out salt and pepper is…”

“Unforgivable?”

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