What I Cooked Last Night

A hot afternoon close to Christmas. I was in the car heading north on the Sydney Road hill in heavy traffic, so I wasn’t so much driving as sitting behind the wheel and punching the radio to try to make it play something good. It wouldn’t, so I turned it off instead. The boys were in the back seat finishing off their most recent riot. We were behind a tram and it was inching forward and we were inching forward with it, along with about a million other cars whose drivers were probably all punching their radios. Or texting. The tram lurched forward with an electric whine and we made a whole hundred metres before it braked at Bell Street and I stopped behind it again. Passengers hunched over with shopping bags got down from the tram and laboured across the road to the footpath. Then the tram clanged and rocked across Bell Street through the red, and we stayed right there. The boys, suddenly silent, gazed out the window. I looked at them in the rear vision mirror and followed their gaze ...

It’s Christmas week, so the old traditional turkey-and-ham versus seafood debate is on again. They have to sell newspapers. Without doubt, roasted turkey and ham are unsuitable fare for the middle of an Australian summer day. This is why we drink so much alcohol. You have to stimulate the appetite. Only after three or four gin and tonics or sparkling reds is it possible to stomach the prospect of sitting down at midday in 28 degree heat to what is essentially a cold climate meal of roast turkey with cranberry sauce and stuffing, baked ham with a sweet, sticky glaze, hot roasted potatoes, carrots and minted peas followed by plum pudding with brandy butter sauce, Christmas cake with Scotch whisky, or trifle made from custard and red jelly on a bed of sponge cake soaked in port and topped with two inches of whipped cream, grated chocolate and nuts. Yes, nuts. The official antidote to this Edwardian stodge is seafood, but given interest rates and utility prices, cold lobster salad with m...

Click to enlarge.

That noise you hear is man fighting nature and man losing. They’re out there early in the morning and late into the evening cutting, hacking, chopping, slashing, line-trimming, power-edging and leaf-blowing. I cut the lawn twice in a week just to restore the horizon. Fourteen years of drought, and then enough rain to kick-start things into life that haven’t grown for over a decade. I've seen weed and grass species that haven't been sighted in years, their evil little seeds lurking patiently and potently under the ground. The rain has put the 'nature' back into 'strip'. Some are three and four feet high. Take a walk down the street and you'll see gardens disappearing under greenery, even those geometric ‘drought-tolerant gardens’ made of concrete squares and cordyline. They might be good in a drought but you still have to weed them, especially if the geometry has river pebbles in it. And then where do you put the weeds? I have two compost bins and both are fu...

The best guitarist was(is): (a) Eric Clapton (b) Jimi Hendrix (c) Carlos Santana (d) Richard Clapton (e) Les Paul

Peel it and chop it up. This is easier said than done. Pumpkin's dense texture means a good knife and a steady hand are essential. One slip and you'll lose a finger. The following recipe means the peril is worth risking. Pumpkin with spinach, corn and fresh basil. I am fond of the vegetable known in some parts of the world as being food fit only for pigs. ( Only ? The pig is one of the noblest creatures, if your moral universe extends to an animal pecking order. Orwell was right, but he got the order wrong. Squealer should have been a snake.) I like pumpkin’s sweet, mellow flavour when it is baked or sautéed, especially when eaten with contrasting flavours or textures. I’m not so fond of it when mashed together with potato, a common childhood side ('golden potato') and one which, it seemed to me, masked the assets of both vegetables. Having arduously made small cubes of a one-kilogram pumpkin, don't put away the knife. First, chop two onions and then cut six ...

Sunday. Late afternoon walk under grey skies heavy with the threat of more rain. It had rained all the previous night, a welcome soft hissing sound with a background slash and groan of the midnight traffic. Merri Creek was in spate, flooding the bicycle pathway that runs beside the northbound path on its left bank at several points. I followed it past its junction with Merlynston Creek, detoured at Bakers Road, crossed the baseball park to Mathieson Street and back onto the pathway. Blocked again, I backtracked to Queens Parade, and rejoined the creek where it turns east. Here, it was running as wide as a river. I hit water again and climbed the hill to the Fawkner plain where the creek turns north again and drops into a valley. It was running brown and fast and flattened reeds on either side showed its high point, reached earlier in the day. There is a new bridge here that crosses to Reservoir, but I turned west with the creek, followed it around, and eventually came out at Sydney R...

1964 The first sung words of my younger sister, born the previous year, are ' yeah yeah yeah ', from the Beatles’ She Loves You . Father brings home plastic Beatle mop-top imitation wigs, a giveaway at Golden Fleece service stations (or were they?). They resemble punctured black soccer balls with a section missing. 1967 The battle begins in earnest. My older brother purchases the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday single with Let's Spend the Night Together on the B side. Neither mother nor father impressed with lyrics of latter song. Older sister trumps with the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band . Ten-year-old Kitchen Hand doesn't buy into the debate, considering Tom Jones' Green, Green Grass of Home to be the vocal performance of the year. 1968 Older sister triumphantly brings home the Beatles’ double white album. Travelling to a cub camp in the family car one day, I boldly turn the car radio to full volume when a newly-released song comes ...

People used to approach me in the street with a loud greeting and a smile and I would open my mouth to answer them, and then they would walk straight past me and I would realise they were talking on phones connected by wires to their ears. Then I would shut my mouth and determine not to be fooled again by such an obvious if unintended trick. But I always was. Now it's different. No-one looks at you any more because they're walking down the street with their heads down, gazing into 'apps', a word I don't like.

There comes a time when a spice jar gets so old you keep it anyway, for curiosity value. I have a nutmeg jar, nearly empty, that has ounce weight on the label. That makes it pre-1972, when we changed to decimals, much of which nobody understands. How tall is a 165cm gangster? Beats me. The nutmeg jar is a nice imitation cut glass design with a silver and blue label and a red Hoyts logo. Since spice jar use-by dates give you a few years, someone must have bought the jar in the late 1960s, possibly when Hey Jude was topping the charts. How did it come to be in my kitchen? No idea. Picked it up somewhere. Probably borrowed it from my mother's kitchen years ago. Spicy barbecued chicken. One tablespoon each chili and coriander powder One teaspoon each turmeric, fenugreek leaves, peppercorns, and salt 5 green cardomom pods 1 black cardomom pod 1 piece star anise 2 cloves garlic 1 inch peeled ginger 1 inch cinnamon 1 clove 1 pinch asafoetida 1 grate of nutmeg One half-teas...

I started thinking about this in about 1963, or around the time car model names started ending in '-a' (e.g. Falcon Futura, Vauxhall Viva, Toyota Tiara); and I have made a decision. The Rolling Stones were better than the Beatles. Your indignation, concurrence, outrage, praise, fury, shock, abuse, favourite songs, sightings, anecdotes etc etc in comments below.

I don't plant them any more, they come up all by themselves right on cue for November 11. Previous poppies: 2009 , 2008 (scroll down to November), and 2007 . * I was in town this morning, waiting to cross Swanston at Collins, close to 11 o'clock. Before the town hall clock struck the hour, two cops stepped onto the road and stopped both directions of traffic. Trams heading in three directions ground to a halt and the horses pulling carriages for tourists shook their heads. A few pedestrians ignored the cops and crossed anyway. Cars idled. Then a howling roar. Four RAAF planes in formation screamed overhead, following the spine of the city towards St Kilda Road and the Shrine of Remembrance, and were gone. In the sudden silence, a uniformed bugler stepped out of the shadows on the north-east corner of the intersection and marched onto the road. You could hear his footsteps. The horses shook their heads. The bugler raised the bugle and played The Last Post . Then a minute...

It was early evening on the day after the Melbourne Cup. I was walking up Sydney Road towards Dawson Street past the cafes and bars and vintage clothing shops and second hand book stores. It must have been almost eight o'clock. The footpath and road were partially taped off and a large vehicle with a flashing orange light was standing in the blockage and its crane was propped against the Brunswick Town Hall and workers were at the top of the crane in a cherry picker. They weren't putting out a fire; they were hanging the year's first Christmas decorations on the town hall. Merry Christmas. * I came out this morning about five-thirty to get the paper from the shop around the corner and the world was red. It wasn't just in the east. Bars of orange and pink hung in the sky right over to the west. It was gone within half an hour. There is stormy weather expected.

One box rigatoni. One bunch new asparagus (i.e. local rather than Peruvian or Chinese). One cup fresh shelled broadbeans. One pack fetta (local is fine; it doesn't have to come from Greece or Bulgaria or Denmark). Olive oil. Garlic. Boil rigatoni, adding broadbeans and asparagus chopped in two a minute or two before completion. Drain. Return to pan having added a little olive oil and a finely chopped garlic clove. Stir over low heat to coat in oil and garlic shards. Serve with fetta crumbled over. Drink: chardonnay, if you can find one that still tastes like chardonnay. They used to call it the red wine drinkers' white, but that was a long time ago.