What I Cooked Last Night

From the top: Alexandra at just under 2; William at 2; Thomas at just under 2 (wearing my running shoes). Or is it at William the top, Thomas in the middle and Alex below? No, wait ...

Picture in post below resized for readability.

(Click to enlarge.) Roz Chast's illustrations of domestic desperation are like hand grenades with fool-proof pins. There's TNT in there but it never goes right off. Her characters keep a lid on it somehow. Satire or reality? My mother has every one of those teas. Not that she's a foodie: far from it. People keep giving them to her. 'Gourmet' teas seem to have achieved a kind of exotic attraction beyond their actual composition and have become the default gift - like aromatherapy kits about twenty years ago - for old ladies who have, or have had, everything. My mother's tea collection sits at one end of the kitchen bench, in a corner near the stove. The tea, loose or in bags, is in tins with lids, tins without lids, spilling out of opened boxes, packed in unopened boxes, piled up in wicker baskets and just laying loose, a tea mountain which occasionally collapses with outcrops of organic, fair trade, single estate, sustainable, ethical and socially responsi...

The boys were convinced Ishant Sharma works part-time as a security guard in Coles. They saw him there several times when we were shopping after school. But he wasn't there while the first test was on. That was proof enough for the two boys. "Why don't you ask him?" I said. "And find out once and for all?" They haven't seen him since; but we are in the middle of the second test right now. He must be in Brisbane. This incident mirrors what happened to my younger brother when he visited India years ago, and was accosted by scores of young Indian boys, who asked him if he was Australian, and then if he was Geoff Lawson; as if one followed the other logically. If you're an Aussie, you must be Geoff Lawson. * Recipe for a hot summer night: Sweet potato with chick peas and pine nuts. Peel two large sweet potatoes, cut the flesh into centimetre cubes, and cook until just tender. Meanwhile, heat through two drained cans of chickpeas. Toast hal...

Titles roll. Music. Scene one: day Tableau : the ancient shed at the end of the yard leans to the east. It was built in the 1940s, a simple rectangular steel frame with sheet-iron walls and a corrugated roof. It has one door, no window, and no light, because power was never connected. It is pitch black inside. You prop open the north-facing door to admit light. This works best in winter when the sun is further north, slanting in. Action : I enter screen left and pull open the crooked shed door. Ancient hinges complain. My eyes become accustomed to the darkness, and a great shape can be made out in the corner: a hulk of cast iron on wheels. Covered in dust, it resembles an abandoned steam train in some long-forgotten rail yard shed. Tracking shot : I somehow I drag it out into daylight. Locked-off camera : I hose the dust off the iron horse, and exit screen right. It dries in the warm air. Scene two: evening Against a painted backdrop of a line of ornamental pear trees and a...

It was one of Australia's greatest speeches ever made. That makes two in five days: by one man. "The same blades of grass ... the same stands ... the same fence ..."

Now that’s funny. After mentioning Lobby Loyde, Melbourne guitar legend (except he was real) somewhere the other day, an article in last weekend's newspaper quoted his opinion on the late television music show, Countdown . Countdown commenced in 1974, replacing the excellent un-hosted GTK . Why do you need a host? Just play the music and cut out the middle man. I did not like Countdown . I didn't like the mostly rubbish music acts; the live screaming teen audience that yelled the same high-decibel hysteria for every performance no matter how good or bad; the jabbering host who was always one jaw-drop away from actual dribbling; and the terrible theme music, if you could call it that. In other words, I was a music snob. Or was I? I looked up Thomas J. Guest’s very important reference work, Thirty Years of Hits: Melbourne Top 40 Research , to see if the music at that time was as bad as I remembered. Turning to the year Countdown first screened, 1974, I ran my eye d...

Why would I stop my children playing cricket? Every time we exit the cricket ground, I have to shepherd them against the mad drivers in the car park that also services the main street shops. It is those idiot shoppers, not the sportsground patrons, who drive like possessed demons. Not the ute-driving cricketers or footballers; but the four-wheel-drive mothers who aren’t looking because they’re staring into devices, or who think they are bulletproof in the massive vehicles they cannot control properly; or who are just too plain stupid to care about pedestrians. Meanwhile, a prayer for Phil Hughes .

Photograph taken by my father, 1970. Cnr Mt Alexander Road and Ormond Rd, Moonee Ponds.

After last Sunday's thrilling finish to the Phillip Island 400, the boys got to work with their HBs. The Polestar is a beautiful piece of machinery, its sculpted lines reminiscent of the hulking powerhouse racing cars of decades gone by. Garry Rogers of Garry Rogers Motorsport, whose driver Scott McLaughlin stole Sunday's race in the last straight, posted the resulting pictures here . Well done boys. Now it's a hard career decision: commercial artist or racing driver. Hmmmmm. (Herge, who wrote and illustrated the Tintin series, started out as an illustrator in the automotive industry.)

People think I exaggerate about the past. Maybe I do. But maybe I don’t. Because I was there. Reader Melbourne Girl recalled an item of 1970s clothing in a comment at this post about 1970s food. That brought the whole horrible decade of bad taste flooding back. Because I sold them! My first job was salesman in a menswear store during a period that rode the fashion wave from flower power to the platform sole. Put 'clothing' and '1970s' in a sentence and you picture skin-tight trousers with the legs flared out to eighteen inches at the bottom. Why the width? To accommodate the battleships underneath: two-tone fake leather uppers that sat on five inches of prime Portuguese cork. People think the wine cork industry was destroyed by the Stelvin closure but that’s rubbish. It was devastated by the shoe industry. Rumour has it that a famous Italian shoe designer had a love rival who was a Portuguese wine cork baron, or whatever they call barons in Portugal. He vowed rev...

The weather is good in the Sunshine State, as is the beer, the beaches, the football , the hinterland, the outback and everything else. So you can little blame the politicians for taking a few days to notice a speech by the USA’s chief weather forecaster. But they got there, finally. 'The Queensland government,' The Australian reports today (subscription required, but Facebook link here ), ' ... is incensed over what it sees as an ill-informed, insulting speech from Barack Obama about climate change, the Great Barrier Reef and coal.' You could add patronising, hypocritical, disingenuous and any number of other words, but mostly hypocritical. The guy might be an orator, but Australian larrikin bushmen know a bit of oratory too, they just keep it short. Their rejoinder might contain just two words, the second of which would be " ... off ". The last US chief weather forecaster got the same treatment, so don't say we're not fair. Meanwhile, at t...

Two rival newspapers, two banner headlines outside the newsagent this morning: Newspaper 1: $18 BILLION AUSSIE CHINA DEAL Newspaper 2: SCAM HITS FAT DUCK BALLOT

The leek might be the vegetable I have mentioned most in the twelve years I have been writing this online diary. It could be my favourite vegetable, but I'm never sure. But the leek is one of the most versatile, tasty, fragrant, inexpensive, ubiquitous and waste-free vegetables you can buy. As usual, I shop on price and leeks are $1 each this week so leeks is what we eat. Leek, potato and tomato stew. Warm a tablespoon of butter and a splash of olive oil in a deep heavy pan. Chop a large leek into thin rounds and rinse. Chop an onion into rings. Add vegetables to the pan and cook until soft. Now add a scored clove of garlic and a zucchini chopped into quartered rounds. Stir, add a glass of white wine, and lid the pan. Simmer on low for ten minutes. Then add two cans of whole tomatoes with their juice, a dozen or more pitted black olives, a cup of stock, a dash of salt and pepper, a scant teaspoon of sugar, and a dash of chilli powder. Put the lid on and let it bubble for ...

Like barley, brown rice used to have a reputation. Barley was once regarded as the ingredient grandmothers added to soups and lamb stews to fortify growing children. Then someone on television turned barley into a risotto, and packets of McKenzie's Pearl Barley starting flying off the lower supermarket shelves, where they had lain untouched for decades next to McKenzie's Soup Mix, McKenzie's Yellow Split Peas, McKenzie's Dessicated Coconut and, of course, McKenzie's Bi-Carb Soda. Barley was now a foodie's food. Brown rice was once similarly unloved. It was like barley for 1970s hippies, having been associated with that demographic together with several types of smoke and a kind of footwear. Being brown was kind of appropriate because everything in the 1970s was brown: curtains, Datsun 120Ys, carpet, dinner sets, corduroy, record covers , you name it. Even the timber bowls that brown rice salad was typically served in were brown. Well, of course. And the r...

Turns out they did. The brand name of an early version of the then-controversial spread was indeed called "Nutter". From the Daily News Cookbook , UK. Can't find a publication date but the paper itself was founded by novelist Charles Dickens in the 1840s and folded (in the economic sense) in the Depression of 1930.

It's almost pathetic. What? That I missed the Rolling Stones again. Always an excuse. Too young in '65 or '66. Couldn't afford '73. Too busy another time. Missed out on tickets. Forgot. Out of town. On the subject of ticket prices, is $300 to $1000 too much to pay for a two-hour Rolling Stones concert? It's all relative. If you offered fans the chance to see a miraculously revived two Beatles, and they joined the other two in concert, how much would they pay? Anything. Elvis Presley? Quadruple that. Yet the Rolling Stones survived largely intact and are here. It's all relative. I think I just said that. Last night, when Keith Richards was announced on stage, he was reported saying, "It's good to be here. It's good to be anywhere!" No, I haven't bought tickets for Hanging Rock. Can't remember my excuse, but there must be one. * Favourite Stones song? The one my mother frowned at in 1967 when my brother purchased the EP: ...

The children have never been inside a TAB. We went in to throw away a few dollars on the mugs' race, the Melbourne Cup. A huge screen on one wall was showing races around the country. Sit on the couch, I told them, while I put the bets on. (Fawkner for Tracy, William and Thomas; Lucia Valentina for Alex; Mutual Regard for me.) Alex asked me if she could have some popcorn.

The last three Friday nights have been on the grass. I suppose it was inevitable. I was kicking a football around with the boys - refusing to admit football season was over - at Coburg city oval, when an under-tens training squad was setting up for a game down at the grandstand end. The coach came over. "Would you like to join in?" he called to the boys, having seen them running around. "We're short of a couple of players." Ten minutes later they were fielding, and I was sitting on the grass outside the witches-hat boundary. The game finished about seven, with the ground draped in long shadows from the trees at the western end and the air still warm. The boys enjoyed the game so they signed up. Thomas had hit a boundary, William had taken a catch. If you're going to join a club, it might as well have a good history. This one does. It came into being two years after Eureka, and a couple of years before the Melbourne Football Club was formed. The cap proud...

Cook half a 500g pack of linguine. Approximately three minutes before pasta is done, add a cup of broccoli florets and a few sticks of asparagus chopped into one-inch batons. A minute later, add a cup of snow peas. Drain. While pasta is cooking, warm through two chopped garlic cloves in olive oil in another pan, then add half a cup of sliced button mushrooms, an avocado sliced into segments, a good shake of black pepper and half a cup of white wine. Cover and cook gently for three minutes. Remove lid, add a tablespoonful or more of cream. Reduce. Drain pasta and green vegetables and place into serving bowls. Pour creamy mushroom and avocado sauce over. Add parmesan and chopped parsley.

Now, let's just get some perspective. This city, Melbourne, has about four billion people spread across 9,900 km2 (3,857.2 sq mi). That's a lot of mouths to feed. Melbourne is also often regarded as the food capital of Australia in which the hospitality and food industries thrive. Melburnians love to be outdoors, especially on warm spring nights. It's almost compulsory. What? You're inside watching television on a night like this? They sit on sweeping lawns in Victorian-era parks (or in their own manicured back gardens), sipping cold wine and eating al fresco dinners while the aroma of barbecue drifts across the suburbs, and the children run wild silhouetted by a shimmering orange sunset. They go indoors only when darkness comes; and sleep, perchance to dream of marinated steaks and pork ribs and cold white wine and warm brulee and the best city in the whole world. And food trucks. Food trucks have been around a long time, way back to the horse. For years, they ser...

Till Death Us Do Part writer Johnny Speight satirises the pseudo-intellectual public broadcast culture in explaining his writing technique: ... any big words would have been lost, not only on their audiences but on (the actors) as well. And as (they) didn't pay you any more for big words it seemed best to stick with the little ones. It was more economical because they took up less room on the paper. ... I never had a lot of time for big words. They're harder to spell for one thing and if you stutter like I do they're harder to speak as well. I always tried to slip out little words before my stutter notices them. ... Of course this was a handicap for a writer because only being able to use little words which everyone could understand, I had to be very careful what I said. I couldn’t hide behind an indecipherable display of semantics. I was out in the open, and on my own, without a dictionary to protect me. ... I figured that most radio audiences were ordinary, simple ...

It was a cold overcast spring day - most have been so far this season - but so far no rain. It was a nice day for a walk if you're not the kind to be scrabbling for an umbrella and a coat and a scarf every time you see a cloud. I got a bag of loaf ends out of the fridge and took Alexandra down to the lake, heading for the south side near the picnic ground where the ducks gather. On the far side, the cliffs rise sheer and you can see joggers steaming up the hilltop path. I've been visiting the lake for years now, back to when William was a baby; and prior to that when the children's much older brother and sister were toddlers. That takes it back to the 1980s. We don't do it for the ducks; we do it for the children. Children like feeding birds. It's good for them; the children, I mean. You stand by the edge and throw a crust. The pigeons arrive first; followed by seagulls if there are any around. In this weather there were plenty. Arrogant nasty things lowering thei...

I call it the grand final plant because I’ve been planting them on grand final day irregularly over the past few years. Not for any particular reason; the lady at the nursery told me one year that they pot their annual batch of echiums in the last week of September. So that's how I came to plant the first few on grand final day one year. I had been looking for a low maintenance plant to fill the gaps in the garden at the beach house. Sandy soil means you don’t have a great choice apart from agapanthus, which would grow on the moon if it could. One winter, I ripped out enough agapanthus to fill a Kenworth tipper. Agapanthus spreads and clumps and takes over. You lose tennis balls in it. I was tired of having to deadhead the flowers each year, and tired of buying tennis balls. When I dug out the agapanthus, I found enough tennis balls to supply Wimbledon for ten years. There’s no tennis court in the garden; just grass, and the boys used to hit the balls all over the place; on the ...

One fine cold winter day in the late nineties I was picking my way through some rotting sheds by the decrepit wharves of the former Victoria Dock. Sun streamed in through the broken walls, lighting the filth on the floors; and rats, fat on inner city detritus, grinned out of the shadows like petty criminals. The firm I worked for had been invited to submit a proposal for the naming and design of a new city development. A couple of Ian Stewart drop kicks away, a tangled mess of construction had already started. It looked like a bombed rail shed then, but it became Docklands Stadium two years later, known more commonly by its various sponsor names, currently Etihad Stadium. Until last Sunday, I had never visited the stadium, despite being a Melbourne-born football tragic, and notwithstanding it being Essendon's 'home' venue. I preferred suburban grounds, such as the one within walking distance from here. So the boys spent most Sunday afternoons this winter kicking a ball ar...

Actors Jack Thompson, Ray Barrett, John Jarratt and John Hargreaves have starred in every movie ever made in this country. The federal government legislated in 1972 that no film could be released in Australia without these actors playing roles. It also legislated that they play the same characters in every movie. In comedy, disaster, costume drama and period romance, Thompson, Barrett, Jarratt and Hargreaves play the same laconic grass-chewing check-shirted semi-neanderthal ocker farmer/barfly/shearer characters, with minor variations: even in 128-minute art house films in which nothing actually happens. This has led to some truly innovative and creative Australian cinematic moments, which Hollywood has dismally failed to replicate. Also, titling services in Australia are much cheaper than other markets because the editor only has to change the font; the names stay the same. 1978 saw the launch of Little Boy Lost on to Australian screens. It played to vast audiences nationwide, some...

Sunday, midday. The café was long, like a bus, with a row of tables down one side and the servery on the other. A mirror ran along the wall and wrapped around the back, giving air to an otherwise claustrophobic space. Some tables spilled out on to the arcade, and there was an old coin-in-the-slot tractor for toddlers to sit on while their mother calms her nerves with a coffee. It's like something out of the 1970s; the very concept of a café in an arcade is dated. But there are no hipsters, and that is a huge advantage. Hipsters want a street frontage and a view while they yap into their devices and eat buffalo cheese and sweet tomato compote out of ramekin-like vessels. Eddie was on his own. Staff are expensive when there are no customers. So far, we were the only customers. That is; me, Tracy, William, Thomas, Alexandra, and Erin. It was father’s day. I was being taken out for lunch on the cheap. We ordered. Eddie got busy. An old, short Greek man and his wife drifted in, l...

I'd been walking all morning, down from the mountains, and I crept up on a town built on the side of a hill crowned by a cathedral. It was close to midday, and bright and hot, and the streets were empty. I opened a heavy door in the cathedral. Inside, it was dim and cool and lonely. I stayed long enough to cool down, and went out again into the harsh light. I walked on. The claustrophobic streets were confusing, winding back on themselves and lined with tall, narrow houses. From some, laundry hung out over the street, high up. Caged birds twittered from open windows. Dark doorways lay open to allow the passage of air. I passed them. Every now and then an escalier – or whatever the Spanish call those narrow stairways that connect streets at different levels – ran upwards or downwards, scores of steps disappearing in the blinding midday sun. I followed one down. I was lost, but I didn’t care. I had all day; all week in fact. I was free that year. I was also hungry. The descent ...

Nothing wrong with potatoes, but sometimes something different works wonders for a jaded palate emerging from a long, cold stew-filled winter. The following mash is sweet and sour, nutty and salty, smooth and unctuous and is easy to make. Swede and carrot mash with pine nuts and prosciutto. Take half a kilo each of swedes and carrots. Cut into chunks and cook in salted water until soft. Meanwhile, lightly toast some pine nuts in a pan. Chop a few slices of prosciutto into pieces and crisp these in the same pan. Drain the vegetables, retaining a little of the water. Mash, adding salt, pepper and a little nutmeg and place into a serving bowl. Shower pine nuts and prosciutto flecks over the top and serve as a side dish with ... anything, especially eye fillet chargrilled quickly so it is still rare inside, drizzled with garlic butter. * Oh look! It's September! Spring! Football finals! Warm weather! Right now it's raining fit to flood the Merri Creek.

1. Chop a leek radially into thin rings. Rinse out grit if necessary. Chop a large red onion into rings. Sweat the leek and onion in oil in a covered pan until they just start to soften. 2. In a bowl, combine three tablespoons of olive oil with the juice of two lemons, a handful of chopped parsley and half that amount of chopped dill. Season. 3. Place two large salmon fillets into a baking dish and cover with warm leek and onion mixture. Pour over the herbed oil and lemon mixture. Cover dish with foil. Bake twenty minutes depending on size of fish. Salmon cooks quickly, staying moist. 4. Serve with asparagus drizzled with lemon butter: boil and remove asparagus from pan, drain most cooking water, add the juice of two lemons and a pat of butter, reduce, pour over asparagus and add cracked black pepper.

Impossible? 1984. It had always been in everyone's conscious future because of the George Orwell book, but then it arrived, and now it's thirty years in the rear vision mirror. I got the grand final video out for the boys. The colour is muted. It had been an overcast steel-grey day with patchy rain. I had walked to the M.C.G, of course; lived in Carlton then. Through the Carlton Gardens, across at Nicholson Street, past St. Patrick's Cathedral. And yes, I dropped in. Call it superstition. Could you seriously walk past when your team is in the grand final against the club that won by more than thirteen goals in the same game the previous September? Through the Fitzroy Gardens. Yarra Park. In. I watched the video with the boys. The soundtrack is strangely muted. The old commentators let the pictures speak for themselves, waited for the goal umpire before calling the score. Essendon hopelessly behind all day, and then that electric last quarter that will live on in the mem...

August could be my favourite month. While the weather is still intermittently bad, you can see the end of winter. So now we're having a last rush of cooking winter dishes before h swept away by spring's warmer weather. Heavy stews like the following always taste better when the weather's cold. Oxtail with red wine. Take an average oxtail* and joint it. Hardly necessary: the butcher will do it for you. Boil the pieces ten minutes with a bay leaf, a clove of garlic and a teaspoonful of pepper. Drain. Now sear the oxtail pieces in a cast iron pan and remove to a large pot. Place two chopped onions, two chopped carrots and a scored clove of garlic in the pan in which you have seared the oxtail. Add a cup of boiling water. The residual heat will deglaze the pan juices, combining them with the vegetables. Pour the lot into the large pot over the oxtail. Add half a bottle of red wine and one jar of tomato passata. Add enough water to just cover the contents. Simmer a c...

The anti-road protest sticker read: No East-West Link . It was on the back of a car.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I embarked on a campaign to champion the much-unloved vegetable, the Brussels sprout. This robust brassica with its distinctive earthy, nutty taste is one of my favourites and lends itself to far greater cooking variety than it is generally credited with. Linguine with bacon and Brussels sprouts. Trim sprouts and slice in half through the core. Cook pasta and sprouts. This can be done in the same pot. In a pan, cook a few scored cloves of garlic in olive oil. Add two or three slices of short bacon chopped into small squares. Take care not to burn the garlic. Add a slosh of white wine, a shake of white pepper and a third cup of cream. Reduce. When pasta is done, drain. Pour creamy bacon mixture over pasta and sprouts. Top with fresh grated pecorino and chopped parsley. Drink: McLaren Vale shiraz. * The boys are watching the Commonwealth Games. Comment: "Dad, this is not as exciting as the World Cup."

We don't have central heating, so sometimes I warm the place with the aroma of food. Not sure how this works but the smell of a joint roasting in the oven, for example, makes the house feel a few degrees warmer. The following soup recipe does the same as it bubbles away slowly on the stove. It reminds me of coming home after school when I could detect the delicious aroma about a block away, produced by the unbeatable combination of onion, beef herbs and root vegetables. Scotch broth. 1. In a litre of water, simmer 750g of lean beef cut into pieces for two hours. Skim if necessary. 2. Now add half a cup of barley, a chopped onion, a diced turnip and a chopped leek. Cook another half an hour; then add a diced carrot and a few stalks of celery, finely chopped. 3. When carrot is just tender, remove meat, shred it and return it to the pot. Season and add white pepper. 4. Serve broth in large bowls sprinkled with parsley, and hot thick buttered toast on the side. Drink: sco...

The first time around, meaning marriage mark one - many years ago - our two children were in creche or day care or after care depending on their age. We worked; and they came home at six from paid care, and they had dinner and they went to bed. No time to play on weekdays. I was in a career, and a career means you have to have 'quality' time with your children. These days, since I am freelance - meaning quite often not working - I can pick up the boys from school and take them to the football ground and kick the ball with them until darkness. This is the pinnacle of life. It doesn't get any better. I have had a business career, a sporting career, houses, girlfriends, wives, cars, wine, holidays, money, gourmet food, dogs, holidays, books. Some I have lost. (Not just the books.) However, spending endless unharried - and unhurried - hours kicking a ball around on the well-kept lawn of a mostly deserted football ground defeats everything else. Sometimes the sun falls behin...

My Salinger Year is a fascinating 'insight' (a greatly overused cliché) into how a writer met a famous author, whom she didn't know from Jerry Seinfeld. Or else it is a cynical exploitation based on the most tenuous of links. You decide. While the title technique cannot be ignored, has it been utilised to its full search term potential? I have never met a famous author, but I do have an uncle who saw Bryce Courtenay signing books in Angus and Robertson once. He didn't buy one. Me and J. R. R. Tolkien, W. E. Johns, Enid Blyton, George Orwell, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, James Hadley Chase, Raymond Chandler, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ovid, Ernest Hemingway and Dr. Seuss. There's a connection somewhere.

You can't act the expressions on the faces of the Costa Ricans as they shot for goal. And there's no take two.

The flat screen television in the café sits high over the pasta shelf, and the volume is adjusted cleverly so that it becomes audible over the café talk when a goal is imminent or a vital passage in play occurs, thanks to the rising pitch of the commentator's voice. In this way, you miss none of the important action while not having the sound predominate. After 9 o'clock in the morning, when the rush commuters have 'grabbed' their lattes and run for the train, the slower customers arrive: the real estate agents from across the street come in for their takeaway coffees; Moreland council workers hunch over their cups around an outside table; the old Greek men come in and put coins on the counter for another short black, keeping their caffeine/talk ratio meter going. Occasionally the picture on the television pixillates, turning national colours into screen bloodshed. A player runs towards goal, stops unnaturally, shoots forward several inches, and then his head explod...

Take a kilogram of broad beans, pod and peel them (peeling individual beans is optional). Cook two chopped onions in olive oil in a large heavy pan for ten minutes, add two scored cloves of garlic, sauté a few more minutes, stirring; and then add two teaspoons of ground cumin, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a dash of ground coriander. Now add the beans and a cup or so of water. Cook on low heat until the beans soften. Adjust fluid if necessary. Add half a cup of lemon juice, two or three tablespoons of olive oil, and stir. Remove from pan and process in batches to a semi-smooth consistency. Reheat when desired, for example, at 2 a.m, when a World Cup game is about to commence and you need food to keep you awake should the game fail to excite. Add chopped coriander or dill for an extra flavour zing, as if it needs it. Ideal on toasted Lebanese or Turkish bread with zatar. Just swipe the bread through the bean mixture and eat. Also ideal as a dip with blanched green vege...

Cook enough linguini for however many people you are feeding. I used to have one of those spaghetti utensils with punched-out measuring holes for various quantities, but these never were accurate. Trial and error teaches quantities best. Meanwhile, warm some olive oil in a large pan and add half a cup of white wine, plenty of cracked black pepper, and two scored cloves of garlic. Cook gently without burning garlic, and then add a dozen or so halved walnuts*. Cook gently for a few minutes, stirring. Add half a cup of cream, reduce. Fold several torn basil leaves through the cooked linguini and add the sauce. Finish with shards of parmesan or the genuine reggiano if you can afford it. *Or if you have pine nuts, leave out the walnuts, toast the pine nuts and scatter over the finished dish.

From Bernie's Two Minute Friday , the weekly St Bernard's Old Collegians email bulletin: Essendon, fresh from another bout of controversy courtesy of the ASADA witch-hunt ... er, investigation, will be fired up to put a scoring-challenged Melbourne team to the sword. No comparison. History's most infamous witch trial went for only fifteen months, from February 1692 to May 1693. This one looks like running for years.

Chop two onions, and fry them in your preferred medium and pan until soft. Take a dozen roasted cashews, a teaspoon of chili, a knob of peeled and chopped ginger, a large clove of garlic (or two small), half a teaspoon each of cinnamon and garam masala, two cardamom pods, a couple of rays of star anise (optional) and half a cup of vinegar and blitz them all together in a food processor. Reserve half the cooked onions and add the cashew mixture to the rest of the onions, and stir in one large can of coconut milk. Simmer gently for a minute or two. Meanwhile, place a couple of tablespoons of raisins into a small pot of just-boiled water, to which you have added a teaspoon of turmeric. Steep for ten minutes, until they fatten and then drain and add them to the simmering sauce. Now cube some firm-fleshed fish such as swordfish or salmon and dredge the cubes through a little salt and pepper. Add the fish to the sauce, stir and cook very gently until fish is just cooked. Adjust fluid...

Recently, six out of ten people, when asked in a survey where peanuts grow, replied: "On a tree." I have nothing to add to that. But it brought to mind the man that used to circle the old suburban football ovals with a hessian sack containing paper bags full of peanuts. "Peanuts, 10 cents a bag!" he'd call out. It was usually around half time, and beer made you hungry. Mmmm ... peanuts, in the shell. * In a pot, I heated about ¾ cup peanut butter, a quarter cup of crushed peanuts, four tablespoons of hot chili sauce, two tablespoons each of tamari and white vinegar, a good squeeze of harissa paste, and the juice of a lime. I like it spicy so I usually use more chili paste and sometimes a raw chopped chili. Serve as a sauce for blanched vegetables such as zucchini, florets of broccoli etc. Or try it with sweet potato: split a sweet potato down the middle, bake it and top it generously with peanut sauce and sour cream, and a squirt of lime juice and a show...

In a large heavy pan with a tight fitting lid, fry two sliced onions in ghee or oil. Stir in a quarter teaspoon each of cardamom, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper when onion has softened. Now add a cup each of basmati rice and rinsed red lentils, three and a half cups of boiling water and two teaspoons of salt. Stir. Lid the pan tightly. Turn down heat very low and leave it for 20 minutes. When the rice grains have ballooned, it’s done. During the twenty minutes, top three red capsicums and remove seeds and pith. Stuff the capsicums with the fragrant rice and lentil mixture. (You'll have some left over.) Replace tops and place stuffed capsicums in a casserole, which should be of a size that roughly holds their tops in place. Take a jar of tomato puree, add a little water and stir through a teaspoon each of coriander and cumin. Pour into casserole so that it comes halfway up the capsicums. Bake until capsicums collapse, about an hour. Adjust fluid if your oven is particula...

3RRR announcer Brian Wise plays plenty of Bob Dylan, but on Saturday he used the excuse of Dylan's birthday - and the announcement of some Dylan concerts at the Palais - to crowd the playlist. We were in the car, on the peninsula under a cold streaky sky alongside a grey heaving sea, heading for town. Music sounds better when you're driving. The two hours made the boys Dylan fans, continuing a long family tradition dating back to me. I told them Dylan's frog-like growl makes him either the worst good singer in the world, or the best bad one. They thought about that for a while. Put his voice over that Warner Brothers cartoon where the frog sings opera, I said, and you'll see what I mean. It fits perfectly. Close to town now. "Changing of the Guards" from Street Legal even took me by surprise. The year that album came out I saw Dylan play a night concert at the Myer Music Bowl; I had an open air ticket, it rained, I could barely hear the music, and I drove h...

Leek and zucchini casserole. Chop four large onions and one leek into fine rings. Slice two large green (or four small white) zucchini into thin rounds. Peel and chop two medium potatoes into thin slices. Place a layer of the onion rings in a large casserole dish and drizzle with a little olive oil. Add a layer of zucchini, a layer of leeks and a layer of potatoes. Brush each with oil as you go and add some tomato puree (or diced tomatoes with the juice), to moisten each layer. Repeat layers until casserole is three quarters full. Top up with balance of a cup of tomato puree, half a cup of white wine and half a cup of stock. Ensure there is enough fluid to cover the vegetables. Sprinkle a teaspoon of crushed dried rosemary over the top. Add salt and pepper. Place the lid on the casserole and bake until bubbling. Top with chopped parsley. Serve with crusty bread smeared with home-made pesto, tapenade or the like.

The more I think about it, the uncannier the similarities. (See previous post.) One 1980s drink-waiting job - although I was more of a plongeur carrying out jugs of beer and carafes of wine in between shifts at the sink - was at a reception centre in Melbourne's working class 'heartland' (upper classes don't have a 'heartland' - their suburbs are 'leafy' instead). The kitchen was a vast space with a central cooking area and a rabbit warren of passageways running off three sides. (The dining rooms were to the north side, through sound-proof plastic kick doors shielded from view by two enormous curtains.) In the passageways were rooms for the storage variously of foodstuffs, casks of wine, cases of spirits, rows of steel and vinyl chairs stacked at life-endangering height, spare round tables on their sides like giant cartwheels, sound equipment, cleaning items, linen, office supplies and, of course, the day manager's office which was always locked at ...

Or, in this case, non-fictional: At a quarter to five we went back to the hotel. Till half-past six there were no orders, and we used this time to polish silver, clean out the coffee-urns, and do other odd jobs. Then the grand turmoil of the day started - the dinner hour. I wish I could be Zola for a little while, just to describe that dinner hour. The essence of the situation was that a hundred or two hundred people were demanding individually different meals of five or six courses, and that fifty or sixty people had to cook and serve them and clean up the mess afterwards; anyone with experience of catering will know what that means. And at this time when the work was doubled, the whole staff was tired out, and a number of them were drunk. I could write pages about the scene without giving a true idea of it. The chargings to and fro in the narrow passages, the collisions, the yells, the struggling with crates and trays and blocks of ice, the heat, the darkness, the furious festering...