What I cooked last night.

Barbecue on a hot night. 1. Roll pieces of salmon through a marinade of soy, ginger and garlic. Wrap in foil adding some of the marinade. Place on grill. Barbecue until the package steams. Serve with coiled glass noodles with sesame oil and stir-fried Chinese broccoli. 2. Lamb chops marinated in olive oil into which you have snipped a handful of fresh rosemary. Serve with cubed potatoes boiled until very soft and then tumbled with chopped spring onion, parsley and a splash of vinegar. 3. Fat pork and sage sausages with a side of red cabbage with apple juice: Fry a couple of chopped medium size onions in oil. Shred one half of a medium red cabbage, add it to the pan and stir gently to coat in oil. Turn the heat down and add a dash of red wine vinegar, a cup of apple juice and a pinch of salt and pepper. Vary the fluid according to the size of the cabbage. Cook 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, reducing a little. When done, top with sour cream and serve alongside the pork and sa

Happy Christmas or, if you're afraid to offend someone , happy holidays/festive season/new year/Hogmanay/yuletide etc etc. And a peaceful new year. I think that's acceptable.

From today's Herald Sun: While their meat doughnuts completely reimagined this humble snack - paprika sugar-rolled fluffy dough balls with a savoury meat centre - (and which a pork version thereof is also the must-order snack at the very fun Two Wrongs in South Yarra) the "milk and cookies" to finish at Dexter in Preston is a rudely clever, stupidly tasty full stop to a meal. Second prize goes to the same review: This "cheese" course, where a glossy-sheened smoked croissant is served with a round of what appears to be camembert that's actually cauliflower, oozing like ripe cheese, is wildly smart and inventive.

"Please prove you are not a robot."

When you have children, you eventually end up in Healesville, one way or another. One way is the Maroondah Highway. If you tell someone you took the children to Healesville at the weekend, they will ask you two questions: 'How was the traffic?' and, as an afterthought, 'How were the wombats/koalas/numbats?' The answer is always 'appalling', meaning the Maroondah Highway, not the animals; but on a Sunday in December it is even worse, given that half of Melbourne drives to the hills for Christmas picnics, obeying navigators (the GPS ones, not your wife) that push everyone onto the same road when several alternatives are available for old-school Melway-readers. The road is a traffic light-ridden nightmare. Endless minutes crawl by while you wait for green after minutes of red followed by random directional arrows. The motorcade then draws on at snail's pace towards Ringwood past about five branches of Fantastic Furniture, six Barbeques Galore, nineteen McDona