What I cooked last night.

One of these days I'm going to inadvertantly repeat a recipe. I think most people have a few core favourites they cook over and over again. Some folks even have a particular meal for each night of the week. Nothing wrong with that. When I was a kid, our local fish shop was packed to the gills every Friday night. Just about the entire suburb lined up for deep-fried hake, flake, whiting, 'couta or bream with potato cakes (hash browns without the hashing, just sliced), chips (fries) done the old-fashioned hand-cut way, deep-fried scallops, mussels by the jar and pickled onions. The things you remember. I can see her even now - wrapping the fish and chips in newspaper as if it were yesterday - the fishmonger's dark-haired daughter, big gold earrings accenting her beautiful olive Mediterranean skin. Then the fish shop burned down. The deep frier caught fire. It was a local tragedy. Now people get take-outs all through the week so it's nothing special any mo...

Late summer. Long hot days. Cool evenings. We ate outside at our little table under the trees. A simple pasta dish. We used pappardelle, those broad strips of egg pasta that don't need much in the way of a sauce as they are delicious - you can eat them with a coating of olive oil. Tossed them in the last of the latest batch of home-made pesto (basil from the garden - eat, eat, eat, there's lots more! - pinenuts from the Turkish foodstore, garlic, olive oil), and then placed tomato and thin slices of kasseri, the piquant Greek cheese over the top. The tomato salad: simple but fragrant and delicious. Dice some fresh, red tomatoes and a salad onion (any onion is OK). Toss them together with a handful of finely chopped parsley and, if you have it, some coriander or mint or both. Squeeze a lemon over it. It's perfect with grills but we ate it as a side salad with our pasta. Oops, tomato in both dishes, dinner party error! And a glass of cold white wine.

We went to the asian supermarket in town, and were amazed at the discrepancy between its prices and those of regular supermarkets. Some things were less than half the 'regular supermarket' price. Well, I wasn't really all that surprised. Picked up several things, some seaweed, tofu, sushi rice, miso, fish sauce, chinese basil (so aromatic!), noodles and several other things. So. Our first attempt at handrolls. Seaweed. Sushi rice (it's easy to cook and doesn't stick together). And whatever you want to fill it with. We used avocado, cucumber, wasabi. (Next time I'll get some sushi tuna from the Victoria market.) It's just an assembly job. Roll it up, the seaweed works as a natural adhesive. Slice. That's it. Eat with soy sauce, chili sauce or more wasabi. Or all three. We also made some laksa. Stock, herbs, a little coconut milk, poached chicken, tofu, bean shoots, spring onions, chinese basil. Delicious. (We used a laksa pack from the as...

Vine-ripened tomatoes. Picked this morning at eight o'clock, accidentally. See post below. Two fresh crusty ciabatta-type rolls from Mamma Ciabatta. Fifty cents each. Travel two suburbs south and you'll pay $1.50-$2. And these are better. Butter the bread, add thick pieces of mozzarella, slices of tomato on top of that, salt and pepper and a leaf of fresh basil. Eat. Heaven on a plate. Coffee to finish. Then outside for an early afternoon sleep on the lawn in the shade of a tree. See? We don't just do dinner. We do lunch as well.

I was standing there wondering whether to illegally water the lawn (water restrictions are in force) when I noticed a huge tendril curling over the geranium/pelargonium (whatever, crimson flowers) hedge bordering the vegetable garden. Oh. My. God. Over there by the garden shed, another tendril, creeping over the garden gate. Yet another snaking up the paling fence at the bottom of the garden. The pumpkin has turned feral, if not actually science fictional. I thought I'd leave it be, but if it starts taking over the suburb and stopping traffic, etc, then I might have to take action. And another thing. How many vines are there? Because beneath all that greenery, there seems to be several different varieties of pumpkin growing. I poked about underneath the canopy checking out the different pumpkins, and way down low, on a tomato bush that was almost completely overshadowed by pumpkin leaves, was a vine containing a dozen perfectly formed, bright red cherry tomatoes. The f...

The temperature hit 41 celsius late Saturday, or 105 fahrenheit (sounds more impressive). Slow to rise, it was still low thirties around lunchtime. Earlier in the morning we found ourselves at one of the Peninsula markets - a mixture between a farmers' market and a craft market. The farmers seem to be winning at present - who needs another pine knick-knack or a crocheted wall-hanging? Also quite a few plant nurseries had set up stalls. Shrubs were walking out, must be a lot of planting going on along the bay. Natives, exotics, ornamentals, all kinds of plants. Rose bushes, etc etc. I never know what to buy. One fruit and vegetable stallholder had a box of button squash in sizes ranging from about three inches to about twelve inches across. However, they were all the same price - a dollar each! I chose a medium-sized one to hopefully get the best compromise between value and flavour. Picked up some nice tomatoes, mushrooms and pale zucchini. Fat stone fruits - peaches and ...

While February is usually Melbourne's hottest month, but yesterday was our coolest February day for some years. So, a perfect night for Osso Buco, something you associate with winter. This was fast-track Osso Buco -sorry to the purists - but as I said earlier, if you don't cheat occasionally, you'd go very very hungry trying to be 'authentic'. Chopped onion and garlic in the heavy-bottomed pan with deep sides (what do you call that thing?). Chuck in some olive oil and the cross-cut veal shanks in a layer. A tablespoon of tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes, a cup of diced celery, the same amount of diced carrot, a cup of white wine and a half a litre of stock. Throw in some chopped parsley, salt and pepper and maybe a bay leaf. Now simmer away for as long as you like, checking the stock level. It's cooked when the meat falls off the bone and/or you start salivating. Meanwhile, cook some polenta. When it's done, layer some over your plate - it ...

Well, often. But for every time I cheat, there's a dozen times I do it by the book. By several books in fact. Because every great recipe - no, dish - has many recipes and many versions. The best version is the one you like best, no matter what anyone says. Personally, I think the best recipe is the one that is most suited to your own region and what it supplies, either from your garden, from your local primary industry, or at the very least from your local stores. If there's something that annoys me as much as seeing people cart home truckloads of pre-packaged 'complete' meals from the supermarket, it's those who must so meticulously re-create an exotic dish or a cuisine in their own home that they go to ridiculously complicated and expensive lengths to procure ingredients. This is particularly so for some peasant-type dishes which are a basic or a commonplace in their original home, where the ingredients are easily obtainable or grown locally. But whi...

And what was in the back of the cupboard was a can of beans. I think they were fava beans, red ones with black tails. I threw the beans complete into a pan with two cloves of garlic, half a chopped onion, a chopped yellow pepper and the juice of half a lemon - quite a generous amount. The lemon and garlic work well together. While that was simmering I chopped some parsely from the garden and some fresh coriander, threw it over the bean stew, topped it with a generous handful of pinenuts and turned the stove down to very low. Then I made a salad of halved cold boiled baby potatoes left over from an earlier potato salad, tomato, purple salad onion, cucumber from the garden (we discovered dozens growing like crazy under the pumpkin canopy!) and cubed mozzarella cheese. Finally I heated through a couple of chapatis (bought ones but very good) and served everything up with some yogurt and cucumber on the side. Well OK, the only thing from the cupboard was the can of beans, but...

Despite what you may have gathered from the previous post, the tomatoes haven't been successful this year, and from what I've been hearing, many others have had the same experience. Plenty of foliage and flowers, but not many tomatoes. Whatever. While the tommies haven't worked, the pumpkins have taken over. The entire patch has been overrun with pumpkin vines, their big green leaves creating a quite attractive canopy dotted with the yellow flowers, whilst down below, some monster pumpkins are growing. Expect lots of pumpkin recipes soon. In fact, if you have any good ones, email me with them.

It's a summer pasta dish using fresh tomatoes, basil and parsley straight from the garden and a fresh cheese. But the tomatoes have to be really good, very ripe, red and juicy. Bad tomatoes are starchy and pasty and just don't work the same. Boil your pasta. Ordinary spaghetti works the best with this as it is very sensuous and silky the way it curls around and catches all the flavours. Meanwhile, slice three or four tomatoes into fairly thin slices. Pick some basil and tear it into pieces, not too small; roughly chop parsley, a generous amount. Slice a generous amount of cheese into thin strips. You can use any fresh cheese - I used mozzarella. Drain the pasta, arrange it in a big serving platter, and quickly place tomato slices, basil, parsley and cheese on the pasta and either serve it like that or mix it through a little. The heat from the cooked pasta will warm the other ingredients, especially if you place a large lid over the dish for a couple of minutes...