What I Cooked Last Night

Two teaspoons of salt? someone exclaimed (re yesterday's recipe). It’s not that much, I replied. Indian main courses are meant to be small serves filled out by much more rice or bread and vegetables. And in any case, these recipes are upfront about their ingredients, instead of sneaking them in progressively like some others. Take a British-style beef stew, for example; in which the beef is shaken in seasoned flour before being browned. How much salt goes into the flour? More than a shake. Then stock is added to the stew. How much salt in the stock? Who knows. The rest of the seasoned flour usually thickens the stew. If it is served with potatoes, these may be cooked in salted water, mashed with more and then salted further at the table, as are any side vegetables. The whole thing may then get a downpour of Worcestershire, HP, tomato sauce or similar. Thoroughly delicious: and by that stage, quite salty. The curry, on the other hand, is garnished with yogurt and herbs. In o...

The first of spring, it rained most of the day. At lunchtime I walked from Collins Street up narrow Church Lane, where noodle shops and tiny cafes gaze at each across cobblestones. Water was escaping from an ancient round iron manhole cover and running across the stones. Umbrellas collided apologetically, and smokers banished to the wet street huddled into shop windows and shielded their cigarettes from the rain and the sanctimonious. I crossed Little Bourke where Church Lane becomes Church Street, because it is wider, and runs behind the AMP plaza, a 1969 tribute to rake-angled brown marble and corporate sculpture . The buildings and plaza were completely encased in demolishers’ hessian, like a Cristo installation. Is it coming down or being ‘renovated’? And what have they done with Clement Meadmore's Awakening ? Don’t know. I got a sandwich - chicken, avocado, tomato and cheese on sourdough - from the food plaza in Bourke near King Street and went back to the office. Later, w...

Oddly coincidental fact of the day. Or coincidentally odd fact of the day. Or just plain odd: My last six addresses have been situated on exactly the same longitude . From residence one I went north, north again, then far north; then a long way south, almost back to the middle north; and then a little further south again. But all within a second or two of longitude. All by sheer coincidence, of course. For example, the house we are in today is two doors away from one of our previous houses: we now live on our neighbours' right, where once we lived on their left. Perhaps we helped them feel as they’d had a move as well. I’m feeling quite dizzy just writing this paragraph, so let’s have a new one. This whole conversation line (!) came about when I was cooking silver beet. Tracy and I were discussing the most redolent neighbourhood we had lived in; redolent in the aromatic not the malodorous sense; we’ve never lived near an abattoir or a rubbish tip or a Subway store, for exampl...