What I Cooked Last Night

If Port Phillip Bay is a clockface, Melbourne lies, smug, maybe even complacent, at twelve o'clock. The suburbs extend to maybe four o'clock and then the vineyards and ti-tree of the Mornington Peninsula begins. Sometimes I take the road around the coast instead of the inland freeway. It's prettier. After Dromana, it edges past a cliff that reaches right down to the water and sometimes sheds rock. Houses cling impossibly to the cliff, picture windows the size of cinema screens staring vacantly at the stupendous view, the vast blue that sometimes turns grey, sometimes silver. Now we're at six o'clock on the big clockface, where the peninsula narrows to a few kilometres in width, the bay on the inner side and the roaring angry ocean on the other. Here for a few days, up on the hill in the little beach house with the aganpanthuses grinning stupidly in the sunshine and the ti-tree creaking in the heat. It's heading towards forty degrees. * Christmas was the usual am...

My friend had an exhibition. Said he wanted to clear his artroom, which is probably his loungeroom. Darren lives on his own because he doesn't like people. He likes painting and surfing. He is probably one of the nicest people I know, in that paradoxical manner of the likeable curmudgeon. So he had the exhibition and I went along to the opening and most of the paintings sold. Everyone seemed to think they were underpriced. 'I just wanted to get rid of them,' he said, viciously, as if he knew each painting too well, like a nasty aunt. They are idiosyncratic and strange and modernistic and populated by odd stretched-out people in vast land- and seascapes. I bought one that was blue. I planned to put it in the beachhouse, in the room where we sleep, the room that catches the roar and howl of the ocean at night when the wind is up. Each painting had an anecdote attached, typed out on a piece of paper. The anecdote on my painting was about surfing. Darren surfs all over the worl...

Lesley emailed me this recipe - perfect comfort food at a time like Christmas when there's far too many parties and far too much heavy food - particularly in our climate (it's 34 degrees and humid outside right now). Simmer some chicken pieces in a litre of water. Throw in a packet of chicken noodle soup, a can of creamed corn or corn kernels, some sliced mushrooms and broccoli and whatever else you have in the fridge. Cook until the chicken's done. Pile some snow peas and udon noodles in a bowl and spoon the soup over them. Yum. Thanks Lesley.

Every year old Mrs Hartney makes shortbread for mum. She's been doing this for years, it's a Christmas tradition. She brings it around in a tin. (Mum looked after her children during the school holidays in the late '60s as Mrs H. had to work - our backyard was always full of kids, us and other peoples' - and Mrs H. has remained eternally grateful.) So Mrs H. rocks up with the shortbread, only to find mum not home. She doesn't leave it on the doorstep or near the back door or under the potplant, she takes it to a neighbour, Mrs Snaith, who lives two doors away. Mrs Snaith is also not at home, but Mr Snaith is. So Mrs Hartney leaves the shortbread with Mr Snaith with strict instructions to look out for mum and drop it in when they can see she is at home. Only problem is, Mr Snaith has Alzheimer's Disease. Maybe Mrs H. doesn't notice. Maybe Mrs H. is heading that way as well. Then, later that evening, Mrs H. rings mum and she's like, Did you get the shortbr...

Is this weird or does everyone do it? We swap leftovers. Mum had a large piece of corned beef that she couldn't use. She had someone coming for dinner, I don't know, an aged aunt or someone, and bought a piece of corned beef the size of two footballs. So they have their corned beef dinner and mum hardly eats any meat anyway and the aged aunt or whoever it was has a bird-like appetite and eats probably two slices of corned beef sliced so thinly you can see the roses on the plate pattern (Grindley, England, 1927) and so there's a corned beef left over in the fridge and when we visit mum says, 'There's a corned beef in the fridge for you.' Just like that. * I boiled up some peeled, quartered potatoes with a carrot and dropped a few cloves and some peppercorns into the pot along with a bay leaf (because there was a sprig of them there, drying on the wall). After the vegetables had boiled for a while I added some chopped cabbage. Savoy. Then I sliced some the corned...

Half a can of red kidney beans and half a can of corn kernels sat on the middle shelf in the fridge along with not much else. Half a forlorn avocado, the glass jar we use to make dressings in, an almost empty and probably flat bottle of tonic water, some tired celery and a sad, soft carrot in the crisper. We've been busy and it's nearly Christmas and it's hot and we need to go shopping and the dog's arthritis has flared again and she needs to go to the vet to get some more Rimadyl and maybe we'll go shopping tomorrow. And maybe we won't. Maybe we'll just order takeaway until January. Or February. Imagine: crisp, delicious fish and chips all wrapped up in paper one night, followed by spicy Turkish adana kebab the next; maybe pizza on the third night - fragrant with melting cheese and salty anchovies and tart tomato and fresh herbs - then some spanakopita and cakes from the Greek shop; roast chicken and some baked potatoes from that chicken shop on the corner ...

When we moved house recently, Queen Elizabeth came with us. I drove her down in the back of the Volvo, not exactly a limousine but comfortable and spacious enough. She had lived in a pot at the old house, with a sunny northerly aspect that seemed to suit her just fine. But here at the new house, there was a gap in one of the garden beds - a gap that catches the afternoon sun - and I thought of the Queen straight away. You have to be careful when transplanting roses, of course. Some say you need to prepare the hole months in advance. This hole was prepared a few minutes in advance, by throwing in some Black Gold branded compost (they swear it by at the nursery) and building up a little throne of earth in the middle for her to sit upon. Then I lifted her gently out of her pot, teased her roots a little and down she went, as gracefully as a crowned monarch can. Then I tramped on the earth all around her to make sure there were no air pockets, rocked her gently to and fro to make sure she...

Outside, the midday sun glared, but inside the church it was cool and still and dark, just like it always is in churches everywhere. Marble and polished woodwork. Statues and silence. Stained glass and last week's parish flyers on the pews. William slept through the whole thing. He woke momentarily when the priest poured the water over his head but was asleep again in seconds. Then the oil on the forehead. Then the blessing. Then it was over. William's baptism day. Then everyone came back to our place for what was a kind of cross between lunch and afternoon tea. And it was a bit of a mixture. All the usual things. Sandwiches of many kinds, T.'s mini sausage rolls, little bowls of this and that, cocktail frankfurts, cakes; and - outside help this time - for the curry lovers, I had ordered some food from my new favourite grocery/deli/caterer, the quaintly named Desi Needs. A huge bowl of channa masala, another of magnificently spicy pepper chicken and a platter of pakoras, pr...

One blog. Two years. Three babies. Now there's number four. My youngest brother has become a father for the first time. Darcy Rose is an adorable baby with the biggest blue eyes I've ever seen on a newborn. In her white cotton gown she looks like an angel in a Mirka Mora painting. She was 8lbs something (we've had metrics since 1972 but babies still come in pounds and ounces) and mother and baby are fine. Darcy becomes my mother's twelfth grandchild, the others of which have produced six great-grandchildren. Christmas is coming. It's back at Family Central this year. We need the space.

I was out early to get the paper, around seven o'clock. I walked back along the beach and the water was silver glass as the sun rose over Arthur's Seat on a perfect day. * After breakfast, we drove along the bay and were in Sorrento in five minutes. Like weekend resort towns the world over, it's a sleepy village during the week. The main street stretches lazily up the hill from the beach, the cypress pines and the ferry terminus. We parked and unpacked the pram, lay gurgling William in it and set off for a stroll in the cool shade of the shopfront verandahs. The shops had that ten-o'clock-Monday-morning buzz. Not yet busy, just enthusiastic and waiting. A vacuum whirred in the darkness of one and further along, in the doorway of the real estate business, sat the resident staffordshire - Buster - with a giant grin on his face. Can't blame him. He's in real estate. A little shopping then back to Blairgowrie. Lunch at the cafe, under an umbrella. The bay winking i...

Zucchini are coming in so I picked up some small pale green ones, about two inches in length, from the market and stewed them whole with some chopped onion, canned crushed tomatoes, a small amount of stock, a handful of rice and more herbs from the garden; and when they were done, I sprinkled them with sumac and served them with warm turkish bread and pickled turnips with tahini on the side.

... is that it grows like wildfire and then turns to seed, unless I'm doing something wrong. So I pulled out the plants, picked off the remaining green leaves and cut them up finely - it yielded about a cupful. Then I placed them a bowl with 125g of butter and a finely chopped chili, beat it all up, rolled it up in foil and threw it into the fridge to harden. Ever tried baked, halved sweet potatoes with pucks of coriander butter sitting on top and melting over the sides? Delicious.

Europe wants its names back . Fair enough, they can have all their names back but they'll have to pay for what's in the bottle.

We gained title to the new house several weeks before the actual move, so we had been coming down and fixing the garden so it would be in order by the time we moved in. There were two of those old laundry troughs in the backyard near the fence. They catch the full afternoon sun and they were full of old soil and weeds. I removed the old soil, put in new, added some compost and transplanted some herbs from the old backyard. Some of these herb plants are very well-travelled and have followed us all around over the years. The oregano, for example, came originally from the beach house. You just rip it out and stick it in the ground somewhere else. I think I overplanted. It's a riot. Oregano is prolific, of course; the sage has taken off and there's more coriander and parsley than we can use. The spinach is almost ready and there's a whole sideway garden of it. * The other night, I made an old standby dish, the kind of thing you cook when you don't want to think about it - p...

Let's get the food out of the way first: a cold chicken salad . On a bed of rocket sat slices of chicken breast that had been poached in white wine and garlic. Over the chicken were slices of ripe avocado, leaves of basil, generous shavings of parmesan, a sprinkling of toasted pinenuts and a light dressing. Kind of an unconstructed pesto. Accompanying that were halved hardboiled eggs topped with mayonnaise, fresh buttered bread rolls with whole seeds, coffee from a thermos, fruit cake from the store and the Sunday newspaper. * We sat on a check blanket in the shade of, but not directly under, an ancient and sprawling gum tree at the top of a large, gently sloping paddock. About a hundred greyhounds were milling about and in an adjacent fenced-off paddock, some 'hounds were off-leash, flying around like mad things, remembering their racing days and trying to decide whether or not they still enjoyed it. It was the annual greyhound adoption program Christmas picnic. One man had fi...

... can I walk most of the way from the kitchen back to my office without spilling my coffee, but it always spills within four paces of my desk?

The tram freed itself from the Sydney Road scrum and jerked to a stop at Park Street. I was in a seat towards the back, idly gazing out the window, thinking about nothing in particular. Some people got on the tram. Oh, look - it's my sister-in-law, H. She saw me at the same time and made her way down the aisle. H. is English and beautiful and has a kind of old-fashioned manner about her that is charming. She sat down next to me and we chatted as the tram sailed regally down Royal Parade under the massive elm tree canopy. She told me she was flying to Tasmania this weekend for her father's birthday, for which she was going to cook up a feast. Then she pulled a small package out of her bag and showed me the contents. Curry leaves. Not dried curry leaves, fresh ones. She had been to the Indian deli in Sydney Road that sells groceries from the sub-continent and they have a local source for fresh herbs not available elsewhere. H. leaned across to me, held out the curry leaves, gave ...

It was late. Without measuring anything, I scattered a bunch of spices over some pieces of chicken on the bone; garam masala, coriander, cumin, chili - all that kind of thing - threw the pieces in a baking dish, crushed up a few curry leaves, threw them in as well, squished a lemon over the lot, slammed the lid on the dish and flung it in the oven. It was one of those nights when you throw things around like an ace card dealer on speed rather than doing things daintily like Delia Smith. Because sometimes you don't have time to be dainty. I was going to bake the chicken pieces and cool them for tomorrow. To eat with - I don't know - lettuce, yogurt, chutney, mango pickle, the coriander that's growing like wildfire in the garden, whatever. - Don't forget to turn off the oven, T. said, yawning and retiring. - I won't , I said, yawning and staying up. The book was good. * It's not that I forgot to turn the oven off, it's just that I didn't remember until 4....

A post by The Food Whore about pomegranates brought back memories of my own school days. (Or if you were cynical, you might just say she gave me a story idea. OK. She gave me a story idea.) As everyone knows, apart from breakfast and dinner, lunch is the most important meal of the day and at school, lunchtime meant I got to stop doing something boring and uninteresting - schoolwork - and do something fun and interesting instead - eat. Sometimes we ate at our desks - one year our teacher read a whole chapter of a novel aloud to us every lunchtime and I sat and ate and listened, drifting off into a kind of otherworld combining food and fiction, creating an association between eating and writing which has stayed with me to this day. If that makes sense. We had sandwiches nearly every day and as I was one of seven children, that means my mother made approximately eighteen billion sandwiches between 1959 and 1986. That's a lot of brown paper bags. We had vegemite sandwiches, sardine sa...

The weather was, at last, sensational. So we had a weekend at the beach. William had his first 'swim'. * It was a hot day and as the sun blazed its way through the afternoon I thought, mmm, mussels in white wine and garlic and maybe a touch of chile because there is no better meal to look forward to on a hot Saturday night especially when there is a fishmonger right down there on the main street with a chalkboard out the front with the hastily scrawled words fresh mussels . The big pot went onto the stove just as the sun was dancing with the ti-tree, casting liquid gold mixed with long spindly shadows into the big west-facing kitchen window. Into the pot went three or four finely chopped garlic cloves, a cup or so of dry white wine and half a dozen chopped spring onions. Touch of chile if you like. I liked. I cleaned the mussels and tossed them into the wine as it came to the boil. I shook them around. I heard them opening. Crack, crack, crack. I scooped them into large glass...

... many years ago, maybe twelve, I knew what it felt like to be a bird in a nest perched high in the tallest tree on earth. It wasn't a nest. It was Chris Talihmanidis' Beacon Point restaurant , above Apollo Bay, and it was November in 1993, and I remember that because it was our very first weekend away. To reach the restaurant, you drive from Apollo Bay directly up the coastal escarpment that rises dramatically behind the town like some fossilised glacier. Well, not directly upwards, there are hairpin bends. I love hairpin bends on the way to dinner. They make the first gin and tonic taste so much better. Parking at Chris's is a no-brainer as long as you don't forget to apply the handbrake. You could drive right off the scenery. (And after dinner, how easy it would be to slip the auto into drive instead of reverse . Hello, Apollo Bay.) Anyway it's November 1993 and there we are, Miss T. and me, at Chris's Beacon Point restaurant and the menus are thrust in fro...

The scribes were calling Makybe Diva immortal after last Saturday week's Cox Plate, so no doubt they were trawling through their dictionaries after the mare won her record-breaking third successive Melbourne Cup in furnace-like conditions yesterday. Where do you go after immortal? * My sister is in town staying at Mum's, so we thought we would get together and have a picnic somewhere cool and shady. We packed sandwiches and the picnic blanket, went off to the gardens and found a nice spot on a heavily shaded lawn sloping down to the lake - bliss on a hot day. All the usual picnic fare, but with an emphasis on salads (potato and chick pea; avocado, tomato, lettuce, onion) and sandwiches (chilled egg and celery, tuna and cheese) - too hot for pastry and cakey things. There were, however, fresh banana muffins and Mum, of course, brought along a flask of hot tea. She would drink hot tea in the Sahara Desert. 'It's cooling' , you see. Around three o'clock, there was...

The previous post was the shorthand of the move (I'm still not online in the new place - waiting ... waiting ... ) but here's the detail of what happened on the day of the move. 8am. I had the entire house packed up in cartons (including my reading glasses - and yes, I found them - in the glovebox of the car), ready for the removalist who was booked for nine. Fridge switched off, food in coldboxes, etc. 9.10am. I'm in the driveway looking up the street. Nothing but blue sky and gumtrees on the verges waving their shaggy arms. Getting anxious. People should be on time. 9.20am. I called the removalist. I knew immediately by the sound of the voice on the other end of the line that something had gone wrong. The girl said she'd check and get straight back to me. The girl didn't get back to me. Max got back to me. Max is the boss. Max said the truck had broken down. Max said maybe we wouldn't be moving today. I said maybe Max should hire another truck and get its ass ...

We're in. There are boxes in every room, still waiting to be unpacked. Has anyone seen my glasses?

Moving day at last. We have just eaten an early breakfast. Porridge with stewed fruit and yogurt. Toast. And lashings of tea, hot and sweet. Just waiting for the van to come now. The forecast is rain, but just now the sky is as blue as William's eyes, which are as blue as his mother's.

Only four nights left to cook in this kitchen, I thought idly to myself as I plunged the pasta - some nice linguine - into the rapidly boiling salted water. While it has been a generally good kitchen, it was a little short on storage space and, being an early 70s design, suffered from the poorer materials and craftsmanship of the era. The veneers are prone to peeling and cracking, the cabinet door hinges tend to loosen and the doors bang noisily instead of shutting with a satisfying 'thunk'. Not shabby, just a little tired. By contrast, the kitchen in the new house (new as in 'next' - it was built in 1948) has retained its totally original solid timber cupboards, benchwork and storage. It is exactly as it was when the house was built, except for the stove and oven which date back to probably the late 60s. But everything is spotless. It's like visiting your elderly aunt's place. The previous owners, an old couple, maintained it perfectly. While it offers about t...

What a pleasure it is to is clean up old furniture; seeing original finishes emerging through dust and grime. The cupboard my father made decades ago was too large for our current house, so it has been in storage along with several other items. I dragged it out into the sunshine, with difficulty. It's all solid timber, tongue-and-groove, dowelled and glued joints - no staple gun for Dad. It is more of a sideboard, I suppose, seven feet long, eighteen inches deep and four feet tall. Adding to the weight, of course, is the mosaiced top T. added several years ago using broken up excess tiles from her ceramics work. It's magnificent, a kind of spreading rays of the sun effect with mainly yellow, blue and white tiles from her 'lemon tree' period. (Broken tile warning: when the mosaic project was almost finished, broken tiles glued down, but edging and sealing not completed, I carelessly ran the back of my hand along the top edge of the cupboard. A fragment of tile at the edg...

At last! An evening that was almost balmy and I'm out of the house before you can say Barbecue! In the garden, the trees are alive with blossom - the apple is particularly beautiful - and birds are trilling everywhere, especially in the old pine that rises high out of next door's back yard. The setting sun casts its golden glow over everything, including my mood. The coals in the barbecue are glowing, the table is set (check tablecloth, nice glasses) and a gin and tonic is sitting there saying come and get me with its lemon slice smile. So I come and get the gin and tonic and I sit back and I sip it and I think to myself, what a wonderful way to spend summer evenings . Then I remember we are moving to a new house next week. With not so nearly as beautiful a garden. (Hmm. That's OK. It's a blank slate. And I have already started planting - a score of hedge plants, a camellia, a couple of roses and a few other things. And a vegetable garden down the side - tomatoes, zuc...

Not many more cold nights (I hope) so let's have an old-fashioned dinner of corned beef, the one that boils away for hours and steams up all the windows and smells as delicious as it tastes. Into the pot goes the beef, covered with water, together with a cup of brown vinegar, four cloves, a teaspoon of brown sugar, an onion and a dash of nutmeg. Corned beef must be accompanied by cabbage. Either boil it or bake it into a 'cake' with white sauce*. This last is particularly delicious. If you like cabbage. I do. Serve with plain boiled potatoes (I like them so well boiled they are just about melting) and carrots. I prefer a very hot English mustard with corned beef. A nice mustard-flavoured white sauce is a good alternative. What to drink with corned beef? Beer, beer or beer. Yes, even on a cold night. You cannot drink wine with corned beef. I don't know why, you just can't. * Doesn't get much more Australian than that - hot corned beef, a slice of white buttered b...

Breakfast in bed is a small luxury. The tray, the teapot, cereal with nuts and fruit. William gurgling in the middle, kicking his little legs. And the newspaper. Oh, yes the newspaper. I had poured the tea (two sugars for me, none for T.), then I peeled the plastic wrap off the newspaper. I stared at it dumbly for a few seconds. It was yesterday's. I don't usually even speak before two or three cups of tea, but I had quite a bit to say. There is a history to this. Despite 'guaranteed' delivery by 6.30 a.m., the paper is delivered anywhere between 6.45 and 8.30. And sometimes not at all. Now I can't decide whether getting yesterday's newspaper is worse than not getting one at all. I'm thinking it is.

Despite almost going blind last year, Australian-born author Colleen McCullough has just published her latest book. McCullough doesn't care for critics. 'I don't give a s---,' (about lukewarm reviews) she says in an interview in Weekend (not online). She does know good writing, however: "When I'm listening to Beethoven, the note that follows the note before is the only note it could have been. When I get that feeling out of a book, when the word that follows the word before is the only word it could have been, that's awesome and you just want to get down and genuflect." Her new book, On, Off , is also her first whodunit, drawing on her career as a neurophysiologist. (McCullough spent ten years at Yale Medical School after setting up the neurophysiology department at Sydney's North Shore Hospital.) Looks like this summer's ideal beach read. Mmm, summer. Bring it on. Barbecues. Heat. Cold beer. And a good book or two.

It doesn't have a name except what it is. And that's what it is. And it's delicious. Simple and easy, too. I sliced some chicken thigh (you can use breast) and poached it, along with a scored clove of garlic, in a little olive oil and a dash of white wine, using a pan with a close-fitting lid. I sprinkled some finely sliced button mushrooms over the chicken. They softened and gave off their juice, keeping the chicken moist. Meanwhile, I cooked some fettuccine. Towards the end of the cooking time, I added first some green beans chopped into two inch lengths; then some broccoli florets; and last, some snow peas before immediately draining the pot. I had also added a couple of tablespoonsful of cream to the chicken and mushrooms, and reduced it slightly. Then I simply tossed the lot over the pasta and vegetables. A little parmigiano and some chopped parsley to finish it off. Glass of red.

An old man, probably 85, sat in the corner of the shop, a second-hand goods shop, set up for a charity. It was his day to be on duty. The shop was jammed with old furniture, bric-a-brac, wardrobes. The old man gets up from his chair behind the old desk. He slurs and wheezes - obviously had a stroke some time in the past. 'Can I help you?' Yes, sir, you can help me. I bought a wardrobe. The old man had all the keys for all the wardrobes on a string. He fumbled with them, couldn't get the right key to fit the wardrobe. 'People pinch 'em,' he slurred and wheezed. 'All the time.' He's like, eighty-five. 'Let me help you,' I said. I unlocked the wardrobe. It had shelves on one side, a hanger on the other. Perfect. Here is this frail octogenarian, humour in his watery blue eyes, watching his autumn years - maybe months - roll away in the cause of charity. While mean-spirited low-lifes steal keys out of charity shop wardrobe doors from under the no...

Well, he rolled over, it amounts to the same thing. Once on Monday. He couldn't get back again. Stuck on his stomach. Tuesday he rolled back again. Technique improving. Today, three consecutive rolls in one direction. If I don't keep an eye on him, he'll be in the next room. I wonder if primitive man thought of the wheel when watching his babies roll around on the floor of the cave on those nice soft bearskins.

Perhaps one springtime day in ten is still, sunny and warm - all at once, and all day - in Melbourne. That was Sunday. So one last garden party before we move to the new house. Just a casual kind of finger food affair, partly because we were nostalgic for the party food of our childhood - and there were children coming - and partly because a good deal of the crockery is packed away in boxes for the move. Yes, I know you still need plates for finger food, but you know what I mean. Didn't stint on the linen, however. The crisp white linen tablecloths, probably forty years old, starch up beautifully and look magnificent spread on tables on the lawn under the canopy of the trees. (Until they are splattered with tomato sauce, splodges of food, spilled drinks etc, but that's at the end of the party. At the start they look great !) * Oh, the food. Let me see - there were sandwich platters: tuna, onion, cheese and parsley; curried egg with finely chopped celery; tomato, red onion, cap...

He lies in between us in the morning. He's been fed; and we have breakfast, being very careful with the tea. He can grasp. The newspaper is appealing. It rustles, you see. A small hand clasps and jerks. I wasn't reading it anyway.

It used to just be 'eat your vegetables' , now they want us to eat one of every colour. Something to do with phytochemicals in the pigment. Either that or the Sesame Street generation has grown up and is running the health bureaucracy. That's OK. I don't care what colour my food is, as long as it tastes good. Stuffed yellow capsicums. Take two yellow capsicums (here's one pictured with his red friend thanks to the New South Wales Department of Agriculture) and slice their tops off. Brown an onion in olive oil, add minced meat - pork and veal is good but I used beef this time - brown, add salt and pepper, a good slosh of tomato paste, a few pinches of zatar for a middle eastern touch and plenty of chopped parsley. Mint from the garden if you have it as well. Now add rice - probably one third in volume compared to the amount of meat - and enough water for absorption. Stir it through and cook on low as the rice absorbs the fluid. Stuff the capsicums with the meat and ...

The Federal Government has approved entry into Australia for Frenchman, M. Roquefort. M. Roquefort, a native of south-western France, will be admitted into Australia - without having to spend time in a detention centre - following a decision by Canberra bureaucrats last week* (if 'decision', 'Canberra' and 'bureaucrats' can be used in one sentence, which I doubt). M. Roquefort has been living in a limestone cave in his native France but is certain to be welcomed into dining rooms all over Australia. He was last in the country in 1994 before being declared an illegal immigrant by a previous administration. *I love the way a news story about French cheese being allowed to be sold again in Australia appears highest on Google in an Arizona newspaper!

We picked up the keys last week. I had noticed there are no wire screens on the windows and no evidence of any having ever been there. Inside, the window furnishings are 1950s cream venetian blinds, side drapes of gold satin and filmy lace between. All in good order, just a little dusty. I raised the venetians with some difficulty, they appeared not to have been lifted for a long time. Behind them, the double-hung sash windows are original shellacked cedar, twelve throughout the house. Many of the sashes were stuck. I wrestled them for most of the day. Just one failed to respond. The rest eventually squeaked along their vertical tracks. Every counterweight cord was clean and in perfect condition. Regular use should grey the cords because of the oil or metal stain from pulleys. Amazingly, these windows appear not to have been opened for decades.

IT'S HERE! And who needs a recipe. Just scald it for a few minutes in boiling water and eat warm, dipping the ends in mayonnaise or hollandaise. Don't worry about cutlery in the privacy of your own home. When you eat like this, asparagus IS the cutlery. Or sprinkle it with vinaigrette or just lemon juice and cracked pepper. Or wrap it in prosciutto ... roll it in pesto ... shake the tender ends into a salad with quartered boiled eggs, mustard, capers and maybe some anchovies. It doesn't matter what you do, just pour a nice crisp white wine, sit outside and watch the sun going down later ... and later ... and later ... and bite into that delicious herby yet meaty, delicate yet robust asparagus flavour - a flavour that is hard to describe - and rejoice in the arrival of spring. Did I mention I like asparagus?

The mind can remember up to seven separate items and then it struggles. I heard that theory somewhere, not sure where. I start to struggle around five. Sometimes four. So I go to the supermarket with seven things to remember. Yogurt. Timber polish for the 1930s Tasmanian Oak wardrobe, currently stored in the garage, that will resume storage duties at the new house. Shoe laces for a pair of running shoes that are still perfectly good but have gone through several pairs of laces. Clean up your act, shoelace manufacturers. A can of one of T.'s favourite comfort foods, Tom Piper Rice Cream. Milk. Bread. What else ... I'm right on memory capacity. Oh yes, something for dinner. (Why write a shopping list when this is such a great way to preserve your mental faculties? I could always read the daily newspaper, but where's the intellectual stimulation in that?) Where was I? In the spice aisles. Heh. We're feeling a little jaded so I'm looking for something tasty that won...

Sweat button mushrooms in a pot, add a sliced avocado over the top to warm while the mushrooms cook. Cook rigatoni according to pasta instructions. Add quartered brussels sprouts a few minutes before cooking time ends, sliced zucchini a little later and snow peas right at the end when you switch off the heat source. Meanwhile, add pesto to the mushrooms and avocado to warm through. There's not a lot of work involved so far. Well, not really. Now. Drain the pasta, sprouts and snow peas. (The snow peas were just added a minute or so ago, right? They're still green, not grey.) Throw the pasta mixture back in the pot and add the mushroom and avocado and pesto mixture. Fold through. Serve after having dusted very generously with grated parmesan. Vegetarian friends will congratulate you on this dish because it is sublime. Non-vegetarians will, as well.

Everyone has a favourite bread. I've had many favourites over the years, ever since my family's bread was delivered in the early '60s by Mr Goodwin, the baker's man, driving a Morris van up the street, and before that, a horse and cart. I barely remember the horse, but apparently it used to eat the foliage on the tree at the front gate while Mr Goodwin was patiently waiting for mum to make her selection from the basket - pipe loaf, unsliced high tin, brown or white sandwich loaf or dinner rolls with poppy seeds, all fresh from the bakery. Then I grew up and someone opened a French bakery somewhere and we discovered French bread, chewy but light, with an amazing depth of flavour. To this day, I believe soft, runny cheeses taste best on a hunk of genuine fresh baguette. After that, I went through a rye bread stage, smearing it with creamy butter and dipping it in chicken broth. Parathas, naan, chapatis, those toasted Greek bread rings with nutty sesame they sell in the de...

Occasionally I idly wonder how long one could live on the food we stockpile in the pantry. Or larder. (What's the difference between a pantry and a larder?) And why do we keep so much food? It's not as if we live several hours from the nearest supermarket, as does T.'s best friend M. - who lives somewhere in outback New South Wales and has to drive two hours for a cup of coffee not made by herself. There's a store not a hundred metres from our front door. Moving house provides an ideal opportunity to run down stocks. I've already thrown out dozens of empty glass jars - why do we keep empty glass jars? - and other hoards. An entire drawer of plastic bags. A box of string, twine and that plastic fishnet stuff that onions come in - all useful for tying up tomato plants. All out. We can collect again at the new place. Or not. And the food: dried beans and peas. One of every colour. They look pretty on the shelf. Yellow split peas. Green ones. Red lentils. Brown lentils...

The paper hit the drive. The dog doesn't even fetch a slipper let alone a newspaper so I opened the front door, greeted the day and picked up the newspaper. Every year there's a morning like this. Something in the air. It smelled like summer. The noise was different, a kind of early morning hum, not like winter's cold, wet silence. And there was a welcome warmth. * The kettle has boiled and tea is brewing in the blue and white teapot, Duchess 'Genevieve' bone china, made in England. Milk jug and sugar bowl, Carrigaline traditional blue ring design, made in Ireland. Cups and saucers, Bristile vitrified china, made in Australia. Front page of the newspaper - the fifth cricket test between England and Australia is lead story. A slow news day is kind of a relief in these times, isn't it? * I turned the page, poured milk into the cups, picked up the teapot and poured the tea ... into the milk jug. * I do like mornings.

Ten in the morning, sunny and calm. William lay in his pram, parked beneath the flowering magnolia. He gazed up at the fat pink buds, thinking who knows what. (Probably not that the possums had eaten maybe half of them.) * Then off to lunch with W's older sister. We visited the same cafe to which I used to take my two older children most Saturday mornings when they were growing up. Milkshakes and ravioli - yes! - for them, coffee and toasted sandwiches for me. It was always the same. The place hasn't changed in years. It's tucked away in a little arcade off a main shopping street. The coffee was always great. Still is. * We spent a few days at the beach last week. No damage from the storms, but a tree went through an old man's roof in Dromana. You'd think I was obsessed with gum trees. Must be through reading the tragic Seven Little Australians as a child. Incidentally, that book should be compulsory reading for today's children. Something of an antidote to the...

OK, the weather settled down but I'm still angry about this case . The weather reports and wind warnings were unequivocal. 'Do not go near trees.' They went near trees. They camped under trees. The girl died. The college spin started. 'We followed guidelines.' No, you let the girl camp under trees on a night in which severe warnings had been issued. 'We were in a designated camping ground, not "wild bush".' Gumtrees in camping grounds know not to drop their branches? I'm not the litigious type but I hope the family sues their sorry asses. Because if you can sue a company for the cigarettes you smoked, for the building materials you built a shed with; if you can sue a municipality because the geese at a public park pecked you and you tripped and hurt yourself (all true cases) then by heavens! someone who allows a child in their care to camp under a gumtree in the wildest weather in the face of clear warnings of winds should be ... no, I...

It's meant to be pleasant. Right now it is violent and ugly. Its winds are shaking trees and worrying small buildings. They are coming from the north , but tomorrow it is expected that the wind, furious beast, will wester and hit the Mornington Peninsula. Spring has been quite a nasty season in recent years. Looks like this will be no different.

I picked Canisha up from school, 3.15pm Friday. The bell rang and the children emerged from the red brick building like happy ants, laughing in the bright sunshine, glad of another weekend. 'Will mummy remember that you are picking me up today, Pops?' she said anxiously. 'She won't forget - and turn up here - and wonder where I am?' - I don't think so, sweetie. When we got home: 'Can I use the telephone, Poppy?' - Of course you may, sweetie. She called her mother. 'I didn't want you to panic,' she said into the phone. Almost eight and such adult consideration from one so small. So sweet. * We made crepes. They are the easiest thing in the world. Plain flour in a mixing bowl. Stir through an egg and enough milk for a runny consistency. Canisha did this part. Ladle, into a pan - greased or non-stick - and over a hot stove, enough so that the mixture extends almost to the edges. Help it along with a twirl of the pan. Gently lift the edges as...

... I sailed into port on a boat just made for the gentle swell. The sun was shining and it was thirty degrees celsius and the coast stretched away endlessly until it disappeared and life was just a dream and I wondered about how GREAT it was to be able to sleep so long into the endless summer day when suddenly... ... I woke at probably 3.30, maybe 4 o'clock, on a freezing Melbourne August night. No. Morning. By the plaintive cry of the baby-who-needs-either-to-feed-or-to-be-changed. It was my 'turn' to change the baby. I've been warned not to lock eyes with him at night. Because they have to sleep. So I try not to. Or to not. Does 'not' come before 'to'? Or does 'to' come before 'not'? And who cares? Whatever. What am I, a grammar expert? Not at this time of night ... morning. Thoughts like these invade my mind when I am trying not to look into the eyes of the gorgeous living, beautiful, hand-waving, leg-kicking creature that entered ou...

Back to the old brown chair in the reading room for a browse through my stacks of old books and piles of magazines. (I really should throw some magazines out - am I the only person in the world who seriously believes I'm going to read them again?) Here's an old Spectator containing an irregular column by one of my favourite food writers, the late Jennifer Paterson. Miss Paterson didn't start out as a writer, I believe she was the cook for Spectator staff. One can only imagine the parties they threw, especially if Low Life columnist Jeffrey Bernard were in attendance. Jennifer Paterson subsequently made a television series with Clarissa Dickson Wright for the BBC entitled Two Fat Ladies , in which these magnificent, slightly eccentric middle-aged spinster types clatter around the countryside on an ancient British motorcycle with sidecar, cooking catering-style for a variety of people and situations. They paid no lip service to any food fad or trend - how refreshing - and l...

Meaning you wait ages for one to come and then three come along all at once . It's been a week since I've posted but what a busy week. It started with us buying a new house, somewhat unexpectedly. By which I mean to say that - to cut a long story short - after moving bush (i.e, to the countryside, the hinterland, the sticks) for a year in 2001, we moved back into town the following year. In just twelve months city prices had almost doubled; so we bought a house two suburbs north of our previous domain. Since then we had kept a casual eye on the market, not seriously expecting to make a move back into our old territory since prices had remained inflated. Until last Saturday. A house in the very same street - a tiny cul-de-sac of just ten houses - we moved from in 2001 came on the market for what looked like a bargain price. I was sceptical and thought that competition at the auction would push the price up; however, I was the only bidder at the auction and the executors had to ...

This following recipe is surprisingly good - if you like Brussels sprouts. (Why did someone name a noble member of the exalted brassica family after the headquarters of the European 'Union'? Hmmm. Anyway. Brussels sprouts are nevertheless one of my very favourite vegetables. When I was growing up, they were one of the Big Three brassicas: Cabbage, Cauliflower and B. Sprouts. One of the three accompanied just about every meal, cooked extremely well. But we never ate them with pasta. But nowadays I do. Like this: Cook some rigatoni until al-dente or al-soft, whichever you prefer. I prefer soft. Pasta is nicer squishy. Sorry, pasta purists. Meanwhile, plunge some quartered Sproutes Bruxelles (my translation, not necessarily correct) into some boiling water and boil them until they soften but not until they turn grey (hello, Mum!). Now, quickly drain the sprouts and toss them in some melted butter, ground black pepper and garlic in a pan. The melted butter, pepper and garlic i...

Because when you do, writing like this makes you stop for just a moment: ' ... when the light began to change and fall promised.' And when you stop for just a moment, you wonder why you still read newspapers.

That flounder I bought the other day was so large there was sufficient for two with enough flesh left over to make fish patties/croquettes or whatever you call those little fried flat balls of yumminess. Well, they started out as patties/croquettes/burgers but ended up as pancakes. Here's what I did: Flake the fish into a bowl, mash the remaining two or three buttered boiled potatoes and mix them through the fish, crack an egg into it, throw in a small handful of semolina and the same amount of polenta along with a good sprinkling of sesame seeds. Combine and form into shapes. This is where it got tricky. My mixture was just a little too moist to form balls so I ladled it onto the pan and it settled beautifully, creating delicious pancake-style patties, something similar to the texture of Japanese Okonomiyaki . Different ingredients, but similar texture. (Appropriately - 'okonomiyaki' apparently means cook what you like.) That's how I like to cook. Throw it all in and s...

Unheard of. Gippsland looks pretty in white . No snow here but mid-afternoon, a blanket of hail turned the garden white. I stayed indoors and made a big pot of mushroom soup, before venturing out late afternoon for an hour's walk with a rather impatient Goldie the elderly Brittany. Easy mushroom and potato soup. Gently warm 50g butter and 4 tablespoons olive oil in a large, heavy pot. Add 500g chopped mushrooms and three scored garlic cloves. Saute for 10 minutes and then add four finely chopped potatoes, a cup of white wine, a sprinkling of chopped fresh oregano and two litres of chicken stock. Salt and pepper to taste. Bring to the boil, then simmer for half an hour or so. Cool slightly and blend until smooth. Reheat and swirl some cream or milk through. Garnish with parsley and serve with warm freshly-baked bread from the oven. Eat by the fire and then take a mid-winter afternoon nap.

Busy Victoria Street is Melbourne's Little Vietnam, with hundreds of eateries, soup houses, butchers, greengrocers, fish markets, you name it. Driving past right on lunchtime, we were lucky enough to find a parking spot directly in front of BBQ House. The place was filling up with customers - groups of students, mothers with children deftly wielding chopsticks, business people and one or two solitary elderly Vietnamese men in for their bowl of soup. W. was sound asleep in his pram and we were shown to a convenient table where a large pot of Chinese tea was placed before us immediately we were seated. Gotta love that. We shared a huge bowl of steaming congee, fragrant with ginger, in which 'swam' several generous white fish fillets and a plate piled high with rice topped with barbecued prawns touched with chilli. Delicious. $14 all up. Unbelievable, I know. * Two shops down is an amazing 'self-serve' fish market, where you can really acquaint yourself with the produc...

Dinner never had a name when I was growing up. 'This is great, Mum,' we would say, tasting another delicious concoction; a thick soup, perhaps, containing all manner of ingredients, or a stew of some description. 'What is it?' Forced to come up with a name, she would sometimes say 'It's Mother's Mixture. Now stop talking and eat!' . Other times, she'd say, 'It's goolygum!' , which I understand was Australian bush slang for a stew of indeterminate origin, but I could be wrong because I can't find it in a dictionary, and Mum only knows that she got the expression from her mother who grew up on a farm in New South Wales. Whatever. Mum was not fond of fancy names. We were never presented with anything a la Mode, Kiev or a la King, let alone anything entitled 'Supreme'. We never ate anything edged with piped ... whatever it was that was piped around the edges of things in the 1960s. And when it came to dessert, lemon pancakes we...

First, a quiz: what was once the most common root vegetable until ousted by the potato in the sixteenth century? A. Carrot. B. Turnip. C. Parsnip. The answer, if you can believe what you read on the Internet, is the parsnip . Take me back to the sixteenth century, because I love parsnips. I even made parsnip chips once, they were all crispy and delicious, slightly sweet, because parsnips have a sweetish flavour with herbal overtones. Here's a very simple fish recipe I have made many times over the years using parsnips. Baked fish with winter vegetables. Slice a parsnip and a carrot into discs and place them in a lidded baking dish along with an onion sliced into segments. Barely cover with white wine and water, about 75/25, and place in a moderate oven. The aroma of the sweet vegetables and the onion baking in wine will filter through the house - it is a delicious redolence. When the vegetables are almost done, add the fish. I use any fish for this, whatever is fresh and inexpensiv...

It's August 1! One month until spring! We're in the home stretch! Which is a completely irrelevant introduction to today's post: a couple of old favourite potato dishes. Both work great as side dishes or as the main event. Baked sweet potatoes with coriander butter and chilli. This is easy and, perhaps surprisingly, totally delicious. Bake a large sweet potato for 35-40 minutes in a moderate to hot oven. (It will cook faster if you skewer it lengthways first.) Mash a generous couple of tablespoons of softened butter with a finely chopped medium hot red chilli and a handful of chopped coriander (cilantro), adding salt to taste. Split your baked sweet potato, top with the coriander butter, eat. Colcannon. (Have I done this before? I need an index on this weblog.) Boil four large spuds in salted water. Shred enough cabbage to fill a large cup, boil until just tender. Slice a leek finely and saute it with a tablespoon of butter, a dash of white wine and some cracked black peppe...

The bext biscuits in existence are these , even though they are called cakes. My mother-in-law has been going on for years about oatcakes. The Scots have them with breakfast, lunch and dinner , she said. They are a staple in certain parts of Caledonia , she said. They are delicious , she said. She was right. It's just that the name - 'oatcakes' - makes them sound like bircher muesli or wholemeal scones or hunza pie or similar horrors (I actually quite like bircher muesli). But oatcakes are not like that at all! Try this recipe for the perfect Scottish supper for two anywhere in the world (it helps if it is winter): Go for a walk along the wild ocean coast, after an early dinner, when the sky is just a strip of fading gold beneath a massive black cloud merging into the darkening sky, like a blind drawn down to within an inch of the window in a lit room. Return with an appetite. Lay six oatcakes on a plate. Drape two with smoked atlantic salmon. Spread two with cream cheese....

William's first little holiday - three days at the beach. * Drove down mid-morning on a perfect winter's day, sun shining, no wind. Then, first things first: lunch at the Blairgowrie cafe where its sun-drenched north facing window overlooks the sparkling blue water of Port Phillip Bay. William managed to fend off the many admiring glances with the jerky wave of a little clenched fist and slept on as we ate - 'big' toasted sandwiches on Flinders bread : chicken, avocado, cheese and mayonnaise; coffee, of course; and then, How about some of that sticky date pudding I see over there in the cake display case? It is served in a wedge practically the size of a sailing boat, toffee sauce sloshing over the edge and onto the plate like a giant frozen wave. Creme fraiche. Strawberry. * In the evening, William kicked happily in his pram, refusing to go to sleep; while we enjoyed a rich beef stew with sweet potato and carrot (floured, seasoned beef sealed in oil; onions, sweet pot...

William's first family 'party' was my brother's fortieth birthday lunch a week or so ago. He met all his cousins and aunts and uncles and nieces. Yes, nieces. My brother and his wife had cooked up a storm based around their magnificent obsession - the food of the subcontinent. There were curries of all kinds in wonderful combinations including a delicious okra and potato one. We crunched on pappadums. Everything was mild and chilli was available to add if required, along with yogurt, spicy chutneys, delicious pickles (lime, mango, lemon etc) and some crunchy salads. There a massive bowl of basmati rice, cooked with saffron and then flecked through with toasted coconut, coriander and all manner of exotic spices. * My brother's other obsession is Super 8 film-making, a skill he learnt from my father who chronicled our 1960s childhoods on little reels of flickering yellow celluloid. My brother started making science fiction films on Super 8 as an early teenager. The ba...

Sometimes you just feel like roast chicken. I used to do a roast chicken with basil and currant stuffing - delicious - but one night last week I just couldn't be bothered so I went out and picked one up from Red Rooster, having prepared sides (halved and then finely sliced potatoes done in the oven with chicken stock and milk - what is that called - hasselback? anna? dauphinoise? - not sure); corn (from a can , but still delicious) and a pot of Gravox (traditional, none of your modern 'flavoured' versions, thanks). Mmmm, roast chicken, roast potatoes, corn and gravy. And cold chicken leftovers for sandwiches next day. Doesn't get much better.

We are well past the winter solstice and, although I have noticed the evenings are light for just that little bit longer, it still feels like we are just getting into the depths of winter. * Not that winter is especially harsh in these parts. Right now, I'm on the 27th floor of a building on Bourke Street, gazing down over this beautiful Victorian city of the South, sparkling in the bright early afternoon sunshine like your grandmother's ornate diamond ring. To the north, the Great Dividing Range rolls lazily around Melbourne, a rim of hazy blue, shaking hands with the blue Dandenongs to the east. Swivel around to the south and there is Port Phillip Bay, azure today, and as flat as a fresh sheet of A4. * Early this morning, a rare winter northerly bit my face as I walked out in the early light, Goldie, the elderly Brittany, by my side. The northerly, tending slightly east, blows straight off the Australian Alps. It's a sharp, tingling, energising cold; not the the bone-numb...