What I Cooked Last Night

That was yesterday. Today's reading was stew recipes and the sports results. Onions are cheap at the moment. Beef and onion stew over mashed potato sounds good. We still have wild pumpkins to spare (wild meaning they grew from seeds cast out in the compost and turned onto the vegetable garden) so roasted pumpkin cubes with garlic and cummin seeds to accompany. Coffee with old running friends (old meaning long-time, not aged) at Potter Centre today in the sun, then a long walk home with Alexandra in the stroller. What a life. Well, both of us.

(Or scroll to the baked chicken recipe below.) * Everything is dry. Two heavy downpours in two months; nothing in between. But I've been watering the garden regularly - all summer long - and it is a lush, shady haven to come home to on these hot nights. Yesterday I got the quarterly water bill. Surprisingly, it wasn't much higher than usual, the usage component overshadowed by parks and gardens charges, sewage fees, water supply costs, waterways and drainage charges, various levies, desalination plant extortion fees, GST, carbon tax, whatever. I made some of those up. So why do they call it a water bill? I don't know. The water's the cheapest thing on it. Yesterday I saw an elderly woman hosing her Coburg driveway in broad daylight, as elderly people seem to enjoy doing. Watering your driveway is probably going a bit far, but the fact that she was doing it brazenly, like robbing a bank without a mask, meant that people are slowly recovering from the quasi-crimin...

It was a hot night. I was sitting on the front porch with a cold beer and a book on the table beside me. The ancient incandescent globe above cast a soft yellow glow in the dying light and the oppressive heat. The heavy silence was broken only by the sprinkler hissing softly in a small shady corner of the garden. Then the crickets started. I heard that crickets can generate 100 decibels, or is that just an urban myth? The noise was deafening. Do crickets go deaf? The noise came from small cracks in a dryer part of the lawn. So I moved the sprinkler. The noise stopped. I sat back in my chair and felt a heel for drowning crickets for doing nothing more than making a noise. Maybe they weren't drowning. Maybe they were drinking. All these thoughts stopped me from being able to concentrate on my book. Then there was another distraction. From out of the window behind me stole an aroma so incredibly divine, I could only stand up like a zombie and follow it into the kitchen, via the do...

And now – just as at this time last year (scroll down) – we can’t walk on the grass again, because of the consistent rain, now the highest for fourteen or fifteen years. But now there’s something else. Now, the lawn is talking. You can hear it at night if you creep outside in the cold air and lower your head to the ground. A thousand faint trickling noises. It’s not in one spot; it comes from the whole lawn. Trickling busily, like water in an underground stream. It’s not water sinking into the lawn, because it might not have rained for a day or two. That second last sentence might be the answer. This house sits on the banks of a tributary to the Merri Creek, on a north-sloping block that also falls away to the east. It seems we might also be over the top of an old sub-tributary, flowing south-north. Evidence? The lawn on this block never died during the drought. Green as ... well, green as grass throughout the entire drought, as if it were tapping a subterranean water source. Pe...

For about the last ten years, radio ads have endlessly urged people to buy rainwater tanks "because of the lack of rain". Now there's an ad on air that says, without any sense of irony: "With all the rain, now is a great time to buy a water tank!"

Yes, it is cold today. The chill north wind is blowing across the Australian alps and you can practically smell the snow. But today is the day: the winter solstice. For some reason it varies between 20-22 June and this year it is today. Roll on summer. It's all downhill from here. Last night, dinner was simple and you'ce probably heard it all before. What came after was less common. Salmon with linguine. Linguine in the pot. A large square salmon fillet cubed into bite-size pieces and poached gently in a little white wine and a squeeze of orange juice. Just until done. Then the fluid reduced with the addition of a little cream, perhaps a tablespoonful, and poured over the salmon cubes on the linguine. Simple. Nothing else needed. Maybe a few springs of parsley, just for decoration. Then came the rumble. It was only a tremor, of course. The whole plate shakes, like the skin of a drum. They only break at the edge, and I don't think we're on an edge. Of course, sha...

Lamb shanks were a winter staple when I was growing up. When walking home from school on cold winter afternoons, I came to love the soupy redolence of lamb, carrot, celery, onion and barley rolling across the suburb like an aromatic fog. Everyone made lamb shank soup! There was nothing like that smell. * Six days to the winter solstice, so I’ve dragged this recipe out of the archive. Right now we need something robust, homely, and crammed with flavour. Lamb, rosemary, and a bottle of red. (Important note: the bottle of red wine in the title is an ingredient, so you’ll need to buy two if you plan to actually drink some.) Rosemary comes to the fore in this highly aromatic dish that will blanket the neighbourhood with tantalising aromas of lamb braising in red wine with herbs and garlic. (Is garlic also a herb?) In a plastic bag, dust six lamb shanks with a tablespoon of flour and salt and pepper. Brown the seasoned shanks in olive oil in a large heavy pot in batches. Remov...

The city was bleak at 6.30 p.m. I walked diagonally across Flagstaff Gardens from King Street towards the market, in softly falling rain. The paths were dull yellow and slippery with wet fallen leaves. It had been windy and the leaf carpet rolled out onto William Street. I waited at the tram stop for the 55. Out of the darkness lit by pixillated orange, a giant mechanical monster emerged and ground its way slowly along the track heading towards the city. It was the leaf-eating machine that patrols the grid in winter, removing leaf mush from the inset tracks. The 55 came along and we sailed along William and into Flemington Road and then up into the blackness of Royal Park and behind the zoo. Is this the best tram ride in Melbourne? I like the part where the tram slams around the sharp turn under the rail bridge and cuts through the golf course. I was looking forward to dinner: home-made kebabs. * Question: do you eat bread that is older than a day? My routine is eat bread on day ...

It rained all day, and it was cold, and I walked down a sodden Sydney Road late morning and visited the fish shop and one of the two greengrocers; and brought home a dozen oysters, two swordfish steaks, a bag of very good green beans and the last decent tomatoes in Australia. * Early in the afternoon, I visited a friend who was housebound following a hip operation - he will never run another marathon - and drank coffee while his dogs leapt about the small lounge room in which we sat. We listened to the rain outside, and then another noise started. The endless rain, having obviously pooled on the roof, was trickling through the vents of a wall-mounted heater and was dripping on the carpet behind the television with a loud patting noise; drips of slow destruction, water torture for apartment-dwellers, a slow insistent reminder to call the body corporate who would call a plumber who would fix the problem in due course, perhaps June, perhaps July, perhaps never. My friend hobbled to th...

Well, actually, no. I don't recall it ever being that hot on Good Friday. What I do recall is the silence, something even more apparent in recent times when the city never takes a day of rest. I drove to Essendon for an early lunch at the house of a thousand tins, and while the roads were not completely empty, they seemed to be missing that kind of pressing traffic that is always on a mission, tearing off to a supermarket or some other kind of store. On crossing the valley, I usually run into a long, impatient and unyielding northwards line of traffic bound for DFO at Essendon airport. But on Friday everything was closed. I understand why they legislated for seven day trading all those years ago. But a silent suburb beats a herd of black BMWs racing to be first in the single lane entrance to the shopping mall any day. Now it’s once a year instead of one and a half days a week. Enjoy it. Shortly after three in the sultry, silent afternoon. No breeze blew through the open arched d...

Seems to have been all seafood lately, or maybe I just haven’t written about the less interesting dinners; baked beans on toast, etc. (Having said that, if you add scrambled eggs flecked with chopped prosciutto or pancetta, sliced warmed avocado, grilled mushrooms and a grilled leek sausage, you have a passable supper. Interestingly, people seem to be eating this kind of thing in the morning in cafes all over town, but I can’t; just like I could never face up to the British morning fare of kippers before midday.) Nevertheless, Easter week is a good time to be eating seafood. I went into the fish shop in Sydney Road to buy some clams to make pasta vongole, but came out with a large bag of mussels instead, due to $5.99 compared to $25.99 per kilogram. I also bought some flathead tails because they are delicious and the children are not yet eating mussels. (However, William did ask me if I picked them off the pier from which they had been diving. I replied no, but not far away; just acr...

This recipe has the heat of the equator, the tang of the tropics, and the sweetness of the islands; all of which is academic - we ate the meal on a cold autumn night in Melbourne with rain pelting on the iron roof. I evolved the recipe from an old balchao dish I used to make. The original recipe was as hot as you like; later versions toned down the chili, added spices, added coconut, added lime. Let's get started: fry two onions in ghee. Remove and retain onions. Brown one kilogram of chicken pieces in the pan. Add oil or ghee as required. Remove chicken when browned. Meanwhile, process half a cup of roasted cashews (I dry-roasted raw cashews first), half a cup of dessicated coconut, two large and very ripe and juicy vine tomatoes, two tablespoons or slightly more of malt vinegar, one black cardamom pod, one twinkle of star anise, a scatter of dried chilies, half a teaspoon each of crushed cinnamon and cumin seeds, four cloves of garlic, an inch of peeled ginger and one sma...

Yes, February was always the busiest month and you get fewer days to do it in. And the weather! When I was ten I read Colin Thiele's February Dragon , about as accurate a portrayal of February weather as it gets. Another early read was Ivan Southall's Ash Road published in the early 1960s, and with a darkly prophetic title given the events of 2009. And 1983 and 1967 and other years, for that matter. Do children still read Australian literature or just Andy Griffiths these days? It's all rain into March; but on the last weekend of February we sweltered at the beach. As the sun fell on the Saturday evening, Tracy walked the ti-tree lined slopes with Alexandra reclining in the stroller. They returned. She smiled. I took over. Walked down to the beach. No sleep. Onto the sand where after dinner walkers, many with dogs, were enjoying the sunset. The water was still warm, tide on its way out. Earlier in the day, I had been a couple of hundred metres offshore with the boys o...

Eye fillet with garlic butter. Slice two inches off a 250 gram stick of butter. Allow it to soften but not melt. (Not difficult in this climate: at the time of writing it was 32 degrees outside (we’ve gone from Fahrenheit to Celsius in two posts) with black clouds and storms approaching the city). Assist the softening process if necessary by cutting into smaller cubes. Chop a sprig of parsley as finely as you can including the fine stalk. One way to do this is by placing it in a glass and chopping it with scissors. This works surprisingly well. Peel four cloves of garlic and chop them as finely as possible. Combine the butter, parsley and garlic: best done with a fork, in a cup. Add salt and cracked pepper to taste. (Vary the relativities in this mixture depending on your preferred garlic Beaufort Scale.) Transfer to a piece of aluminium foil, roll up and shape into a cylinder. Refrigerate. Meanwhile peel, chop and boil four large potatoes; trim twenty green beans. If you are n...

It was the second white Christmas in five years, if you count hail. Christmas was back at the golf course after three years. A dozen tables sat under shady umbrellas outside the clubhouse, on a rise of lawn overlooking the fairways. That’s where lunch was supposed to be served. But the rain came first. I watched it come. A little earlier, a massive black thing in the sky way out west had grown larger and loomed over the city, and had then started aiming hail at us as we hit the Eastern Freeway. I thought it might overshoot and fade to the southeast. Wrong. I took the exit ramp at Bulleen Road, crossed the freeway, turned right into the Boulevard, and right again back over the freeway along a narrow bridge road that ended at a steel gate. By this time it was a torrent. The gate slid open and we drove through and stopped out the front of the clubhouse. They were huddled under the eave and inside looking out at the storm. It raged. Way below, the fairways were white carpets sweeping...

I kept bumping into Occupy Melbourne last Friday. I was in town for the day, working in an office in Collins Street, fifty metres from the mess of tents in the City Square. I went out mid-morning for an apple from the Swanston Street fruit stall. By that time the eviction was commencing and I passed between rows of protesters holding placards made from brown cardboard that was wet because of the drizzle. At lunchtime I went out for sushi from the cheap sushi shop in Capitol arcade where you get free miso with your order. The intersection of Collins and Swanston was at a standstill and several trams were stuck in the throng. It looked like Wellington Parade on a Saturday afternoon after the football in the 1950s when trams lined up to ferry thousands back into town. It was raining now, and the police were telling the protestors to go home. Why wouldn’t you? The City Square is an ugly concrete slab with patches of hard sand. A dreadful place to camp. The shouting had begun. A man weari...

I looked out the front window. It was a warm, cloudless afternoon, but the room had almost imperceptibly darkened, as if a cloud had passed the sun. There was something in the air, like smoke, or a dust storm. I went outside and into the front garden. The flowers were out, and the shrubs were in bloom, and the garden was looking nice, and the thing in the air was bees. Thousands of them. They were flying around in ever decreasing circles like fighter planes homing in on an enemy base. They were silent. I thought swarming bees would buzz but the only hum came from a light plane cutting a line in the northern sky towards Essendon airport. The bees were circling the old weigela. It could be sixty years old. It's about ten feet tall and almost as wide. It still flowers well, but inside it is like an old hedge with thick gnarled inner branches. By five o’clock they had settled. How many bees are there in a swarm? It’s the size and shape of a bagpipes, pendulous at the bottom an...

Foghorns could be heard from the bay most of last Sunday, a mournful sound that bounced off the dead flat sea and echoed up the hill. The Port of Melbourne must be a busy place. Everything we buy comes from China and it comes by ship and they don't stop on Sundays. Despite the haze, there was a warmth in the air. In the early afternoon, we went down the hill to the beach. You couldn’t see twenty yards out to sea or up or down the beach. A thick, swirling pale yellow mist was rolling off the water and breaking up through the ti-tree like dry-ice smoke in an amateur stage production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night , assisted in this imagery by continued foghorns. Then the fog was gone, exiting stage south, and the sun came out of the yellow, and the stage was restored to its proper size. Two ships were passing each other on the horizon. The boys were in the water now. Baby Alexandra crept through the sand and down to the water's edge and then straight in, just like her br...

The lettuce in several varieties are trying hard but succumbing to bugs. But the mustard greens are holding their heads high. Even the snails and grubs won't touch them, thanks to their strong flavour, I suppose (I'm not sure how you get to prove that). Got mustard greens in plenty? Try: - Using them in place of spinach in filo pastries with fetta - Boiling them with fenugreek (fresh or toasted seeds) and mixing with yogurt and a good dash of salt for a delicious Indian-inspired recipe. Good with vindaloo as a cooling side dish. * One entire viburnum tinus hedge in the back garden: gone. I planted it in 2005 when we moved here. It got to seven feet tall within five years, a magnificent hedge with small white flowers that attract bees. One of those thousands of species of bugs that followed the breaking of the drought last year got it. Apparently viburnum is prone to the problem. Spraying would kill the bees, defeating the point of growing a flowering hedge. I tried pre...

Lunchtime yesterday. I was at the top end of Collins Street trying to walk south and the rain was horizontal, propelled by a gale that was howling straight up the middle like a 1970s Western Oval southerly. It had been raining before the wind came, and the street had been a sea of umbrellas. Suddenly, the wind got up and all the $10 umbrellas blew inside out and snapped their ribs, and someone’s quality one flew up into the plane trees and hung there like a paratrooper landing in a forest. It should be fine if the owner manages to retrieve it. The rain was so intense people had to take refuge in shops. I was outside Harrold’s Gentlemen’s Outfitters and, at the height of the storm, I and four or five others huddled in the entrance set back from Collins Street, and that made the electric doors open, so we stood inside instead, far enough back to let the doors close, and waited for the storm to pass. I amused myself by inspecting the display case nearest the door. Paul Smith driving glo...