What I Cooked Last Night

That headline alone has enough appetite appeal to get you salivating. The dish itself is even better. Chop a leek lengthwise twice, and then slice the lengths to get quartered rings. Chop a red capsicum into small squares and add the leek and capsicum to a pan with a scored clove of garlic, a dash of white wine, a little olive oil, and lots of pepper. Simmer fifteen minutes. Check fluid level and adjust with more wine. Meanwhile, cook pasta shells. When the leek and capsicum are cooked and the wine has almost evaporated, add a sliced avocado, a dessertspoon of home made pesto and half a cup of cream, and simmer until cream reduces. Drain the pasta shells. This is difficult and annoying. The shells hold the water. Persist. You do not want watered-down pasta sauce. Spoon creamy vegetables sauce over pasta, add shaved parmesan cheese and toasted pine nuts. Glass of shiraz.

The most fragrant of all vegetables, the leek is the prince of the onion family and the national emblem of Wales. Leeks were grown in ancient Egypt and mentioned in a Chinese food guide 3500 years ago. The emperor Nero dined on leek soup, believing it would strengthen his voice for orations. Superstition? I don't know. Ask Tom Jones, Sir Harry Secombe, Katherine Jenkins, Bryn Terfel, Geraint Evans, and the Male Welsh Choir. The following recipe alone shoots leek into the top ten vegetables of all time, but that's just one. Then you have leek terrines, leek tarts, leek pie, leeks with pasta (or with mushrooms and gorgonzola - totally delicious), and leek omelette, or as it is sometimes more pretentiously known, leek frittata. (The only difference as I understand it is that with a frittata you mix the ingredients through the eggs before cooking; whereas with an omelette you dump the extras on to the eggs in the cooking pan. Big deal.) Leek and Potato Soup Leeks and pot...

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 ...

Trends come and go, some faster than others. In some cases, keep the original article and you won't have to buy another every time it comes back into fashion. You'll save a fortune. Take table decoration. There are three types of people in the world. People who dine on tablecloths, those who use placemats, and others who eat from plates set on the naked table top. I have been each of these at various times, but returned to the first category thanks to my collection of retro tablecloths. The collection includes cloths of Irish linen that are virtually indestructible. Tablecloths went out of fashion somewhere around 1970; the only ones you could buy subsequent to that were horrible cheap imports that pilled when you looked at them, or bunched up exasperatingly when you moved a plate. They also lost several shades of colour after one hour on the clothesline after the first wash. By contrast, the earlier ones were so heavy you had to starch them and the colours in the retro-pat...

Leeks are the world's most under-rated vegetable, except by those in the know, and the Welsh. They can even play a starring role in pasta dishes. While many people think of pasta sauces as either tomato- or cream-based, or rough equivalents, this recipe contains neither, but is as unctuous as the cream versions, and packs as much flavour as the acid-edged tomato ones. Rigatoni with leek, mushroom and gorgonzola. Slice one large leek finely into very thin rings. Rinse to eliminate grit. Slice half a red capsicum into fine dice. Slice six button mushrooms. Place leek, capsicum and mushrooms into a pan and cook slowly with olive oil and a little butter until the leek has 'melted' but not caramelised. The capsicum and mushrooms will look after themselves, the latter shedding a little fluid to keep the whole thing moist. Meanwhile, cook your pasta. For this, I used rigatoni. Drain pasta and fold through the leek 'sauce'. Top with chopped parsley. Perfect as i...

Gently fry a chopped onion and a clove of garlic in olive oil. Before the onion browns, add a leek chopped into quartered rings, a chopped stick of celery and a few chopped sprigs of parsley. Sweat the aromatics for a few minutes. Meanwhile, in another heavy pan, brown two seasoned shanks well in olive oil. Add them to the pot, cover with stock and add a bay leaf and some chopped dried rosemary. Bring to boil. Turn down heat and simmer an hour. Peel and chop four potatoes into quarters or eighths. Add these to the pot along with a cup of barley. Adjust fluid. Simmer another hour. Stir occasionally. To serve, place each shank over a mountain range of whipped potato. Spoon leek and barley sauce over; add stewed potatoes for the potato lover. That's all of us here. For a side dish, saute whole button mushrooms in the pan in which you browned the shanks. Delicious. Red wine please, but none of that strawberry coloured pinot nonsense. Try a McLaren Vale shiraz. Or a Victorian ca...

What would you rather eat, say for a special occasion dinner: (a) The shoulder of a pig rolled around some cored heirloom apples stuffed with sage, butter and breadcrumbs and baked in a closed barbecue until the skin crackles and the meat falls apart, or (b) Textured soy protein in a plastic casing. I thought so. Manufactured vegetarian food is a concept that is fundamentally flawed, although it continues to hold shelf space at the supermarket. Its marketers claim their products simulate the flavour and texture of meat. One such product even claims that, when fried, its aroma stimulates the appetite. You’d be better off ordering a salad at Vlado’s and enjoying the smoke from the grill. Or is that a no-no, like passive smoking? There’s a million ways to enjoy vegetables without resorting to soy burgers. And I’m not even vegetarian. I just like vegetables. Leek and late summer tomato stew on polenta Cook polenta, following your preferred recipe. For this, I whisk a cup of pole...

So that was Islands in the Stream , about which an anecdote: I was standing by the counter at the bookstore and the attendant said Can I help you by raising one eyebrow at me and not speaking. So I saved some words as well and said " Islands in the Stream ?" with a questioning upward inflection at the end. He disappeared for a little while and came back and held out a CD with a lopsided smile. "Track four." "Ah yes," I said, "I liked Kenny Rogers but I did find Dolly Parton's ..." Now he was raising his other eyebrow. "I found Dolly Parton’s voice a little unexpected," I went on, "Kind of like Neil Sedaka's voice coming out of Pavarotti." That left him flat-footed. So I bored on. "Actually, it wasn’t the CD I was looking for. It was the book. You can’t get it anywhere. Hemingway. Dymock’s didn’t have a single Hemingway title on the shelves. They had about a million Gordon Ramsay cookbooks and a whole ...

Home-made gnocchi with leek and tomato sauce. Cut a leek through the middle twice at right angles and then slice it to produce quartered rounds. Sweat this in a heavy pan with some oil, a chopped onion, a stick of chopped celery and a scored garlic clove. Five minutes or so, just to soften. Now add half a large jar of passata, or a can of diced tomatoes, stir it through the leek mixture and cook it gently for twenty minutes. Add a spoonful of water now and then if necessary. Meanwhile, make a big potful of gnocchi. The more I make home-made gnocchi, the worse supermarket versions taste, especially the shrink-wrapped ones. Years ago I used to buy these all the time, but nowadays I can boil and rice potatoes, add some flour and an egg (or no egg), roll it together, chop it into inches and throw the inches into a pot of boiling water faster than any supermarket trip, automated checkout or no automated checkout. ( Here's one using sweet potato.) Pour the cooked leek sauce ove...

It was an ordinary postwar timber house in a street running north out of Bell Street. Shadowed on its northern side by a double-storey McMansion, it had one main bedroom, with another small one off the rear verandah, sleep-out style. Great for a teenager, but you wouldn't want your small children out there, beyond the firewall of the main backdoor deadlock. The auctioneer shouted all the usual prefacing remarks. How close the house was to cafes and restaurants (currently the most quoted benefit in recommending spending half a million dollars on a house), shopping, transport hubs and schools. He didn't mention Bell Street being a Nick Riewoldt miskick away. You'd figure that out soon enough. Screech, crash! Bidding died at $581,000, was put on life support with a few $500 bids; made a major recovery with a jump-bid from $582,500 to $590,000 and finally cracked an even $600,000 when several parties walked away amid gasps from the crowd. Then the rolled-up auction sheet ...