What I Cooked Last Night

The waiter flew out of the door and put a plate on our pavement table and that characteristic aroma of something freshly deep-fried rose from the plate. The crumb coating on four ovoid shapes was ragged pale gold, like tempura, and flecked with herbs. There was a dipping sauce. Is eating something deep-fried and dipped in a tangy sauce the pinnacle of eating? William and Thomas thought so. Children like fried things. You can’t blame them. Their hands reached out. They bit and tasted, and tried to place the taste, and bit some more, and thought about it. Was it chicken? Was it fish? Music from a band in another café fifty metres up the street floated down to us. It was playing Crimson and Clover , without the distortion. No, William and Thomas, I replied. It is not chicken. It is not fish. Don’t talk like a Dr Seuss book, they replied. Just tell us what the hell it is. I’m paraphrasing loosely. The never say ‘the hell’. In reply, I picked up the menu and read aloud from ...

... mixed with aroma of brewing coffee at dawn before the traffic has started and the world is still quiet ... when you were ten and your mother took the pie out of the oven and cut it at the table and steam curled in the air and the aroma of baked egg and bacon and pastry was like something you had never smelled before ... in a takeaway when you are as hungry as a tiger and the sandwich hand slips your freshly toasted $5 bacon and egg sandwich (extra butter on top) into a brown paper bag and you sit in the park and pull out your newspaper and tear open the paper bag that is now partially translucent ... when it is cooked so long in the pan it crumbles into deep red shards of salty crunchiness, because that's how you like it best ... on the fish shop grill when George the Greek throws it down next to the meat pattie and the onions and the egg and he drags the bacon around to turbo-charge the heat and it sizzles and pops and then he builds your burger ... when it comes ou...