What I cooked last night.

First came the aroma, a kind of steamy spiciness, like woks in an Asian market. Then a plate appeared. On it was an explosion of glistening red barbecued pork erupting out of a bread roll containing a sea of coriander, sliced cucumber, pieces of dynamite chili and shredded carrot. It was a cold early autumn day under a steel grey sky heavy with cloud. We had been driving: what they used to call a day trip. East out of the city, and an early  lunch stop; a shopping square off the main highway. Selected at random. More plates arrived. Barbecue pork banh mi. Roast pork banh mi. Pork crackling banh mi. Roast chicken banh mi. The place was a hybrid cafe bakery: laminex tables with chairs that shriek when you pushed them back, help-yourself refrigerators, those straw cylinders on the counter where you pull one and two others fall out. The front was all glass, framing the looming mountains above the shopping square.  Iced coffee Vietnamese-style: a cold tawny caffeine blast designed ...

Some years ago I put a hedge of rosemary where some old geraniums had been, in a narrow garden strip under the north-facing front window bordering the path to the front door. Now, fully grown, its pine forest-blue-green needled stems tap at the windows; and, if you brush your hand against it as you pass, leaves an aromatic earthy perfume you seem to be able to detect all day. On a more practical level, rosemary adds an immense flavour and aroma boost to meat dishes, particularly gelatinous stews from cuts such as lamb shank. I made the recipe below the other night, the coldest this year; a night when the pain of almost-molten sand underfoot goes from recent memory - just a few weeks ago on Point Leo beach - into some cerebral receptor vault: another summer dies (although it was already autumn). And they are finite. Tick, tick. * I browned salted and peppered four lamb shanks in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and then transferred them to a baking dish. In the same pan, I ...