What I Cooked Last Night

Several Christmases ago, I was giving an average five goats or wells to Third World villages in lieu of receiving gifts from friends. The number dwindled in recent years; and this year, none. The chattering classes seem to have given up on sanctimonious and conspicuous charity dressed up as Christmas cheer. So why do I feel guilty? Every gift I unwrapped this year brought visions of a Third World villager peering to the horizon for a goat who would never come. Happy new year to all.

... will not be on my Christmas table this year. I'm going back to basics.

That kale was useful in other ways. I ran out of the usual greens for pesto, so I took several fronds of kale (examining carefully for bugs), the rest of the coriander that had run to seed in the blink of an eye (actually, two weeks from maturity) and a handful of parsley also running to seed. The rest of the pine nuts and a few almonds, some garlic just out of the ground last week, half a cup of olive oil, and half a cup of grated hard cheese. Plenty of pepper and salt. Blitz. Cook the fettucine (green and red for a little jaded year-end colour), boil cubes of sweet potato, drain the pasta, fold through sweet potato with a little olive oil. Top with a tablespoon of sour cream and the pesto on that. More grated parmesan. Heaven.

The only catch? It's made of dandelion. When I was growing up we had Bushell's Chicory Essence in the cupboard. And Tracy used to drink Caro, which at least looks like coffee. Don't see why we shouldn't try dandelion.

A new ad for a chicken company boasts that its chickens get to run around in the sun and climb ramps. (Then they have their heads cut off and are plucked, but that's later.) The fate of chickens is something of a national obsession, which is why chicken producers are hitting back with images of farmyard bliss, where every fowl is happy, for three months. The producers are on the defensive from chicken freedom fighters, a loose axis of lobby groups battling for territorial expansionism to allow chickens to walk, Rousseau-like, away from the confines of their crowded cages and into a solitude and peace they might not otherwise know. But are chickens their own worst enemy? After giving chickens access to open space via doors leading from their barn to freedom, one major producer found the chickens were actually refusing to venture outside, preferring to sit in their stalls or scratch about in the dirt inside the barn. The freedom fighters hit back, demanding the ungrateful chick...

I started this weblog ten years ago. It was meant to be an online filing system for recipes, because I didn't want to end up with 10,000 yellowing newspaper tear-outs all over the kitchen, which is what happened to this recipe hoarder . I didn't even have comments then, and introduced the feature later in case I wanted to make footnotes to entries. It was a good time to start a weblog, because they were new, and so people sought them out and read them, and I was lucky enough to gain a few readers; one or two or maybe three of which still visit and comment occasionally. Today, because there are so many, it would be next to impossible to open a weblog and attract visitors without publicity, which kind of misses the point. I can imagine Twitter going the same way when everyone has a Twitter account and less time to read everyone else's. One of the first recipes I posted was a simple Asian-style soup of butterfish fillets cooked in stock with onions, garlic, ginger, herbs a...

I spent my early-1970s schooldays covering the empty space in my exercise books with words designed in flower power fonts, using, alternately, an Osmiroid fountain pen and a Ballograf ballpoint pen. There were three reasons for this floral typographical occupation. The first was that such fonts were widespread and very popular then, especially on record album cover art. The letters were beautiful, voluptuous, infinitely variable and very accessible. The second reason was that Form Two schoolwork was so boring it made watching paint dry look like the last quarter of the 1970 grand final or even the pre-match entertainment (if there was any then). I spent hours crafting type while the teacher went on about wool production in the Western District or the Atherton Tablelands, or the Roman who cast his hand into the fire of a brazier. Had Twitter or smart phones been invented then I might never have developed an appreciation for typefaces. I might also have grown up with the memory span...

The road that ran from west to east through the small Gippsland town was its only street. If you kept going you would end up at Neerim South, with Neerim North and Neerim East beyond. There is no Neerim proper; and Neerim West would be in the middle of the Tarago Reservoir. GPS is useless out here. The town was high on a hill and other peaks were visible in the distance. Cows grazed on their impossibly steep hills. They looked like they should fall off, but they stuck, like fuzzy felt. It was a warm Saturday around lunch time. A white sedan pulled up in the main - only - street outside a café. Three women got out of the car. The driver was a sprightly, white-haired octogenarian and wore a cream blouse over tartan trousers and soft leather shoes. She looked like a senior golfer. The two younger women, her daughters, might have been in their early forties but looked years younger. Both had shoulder-length brown hair and wore t-shirts over designer jeans and the kind of running shoes ...

Six years? Must be the quickest six years in history. (This, of course, is literally true, because each passing year is a smaller proportion of your life. Oh, forget it.) It was a warm Sunday morning in November 2007, close to midday. I sat on a deck chair in the back garden of a large, rambling house that was once a farm homestead somewhere south of Warburton. In the distance, the mountains were smudges of blue between the gums. I wasn't alone in the garden. Others were reading newspapers and some were just staring, blinking in the sun and nursing their Ketel One hangovers, silently and reverently. Some guests were emerging from the old house slowly, as if having just woken from a dream. They probably had. The aromas of crisping bacon and toast drifted across the lawn on a warm spring breeze. There was a kind of jubilation among some of the party, if jubilation is compatible with a hangover. It was a little forced, or even wary, for some of the older ones who could still rec...

The green currently rearing its curly head in the vegetable garden is kale, otherwise known as curly kale, named pertinently because its leaves are so curly, you have to examine every leaf minutely to remove any bugs, insects, grubs or whatever might be loitering in its voluminous folds. In fact, the folds of curly kale are so dense, I estimate the average kale leaf, if flattened, which is impossible, would have a perimeter similar to that of Tasmania. The other day I watched as a small bird emerged from the folds of one of the shrubs. The recipe featuring kale takes minutes, unless you count the time looking for bugs, in which case it could take hours depending on how ‘organic’ your garden is. Bugs love organic gardens. Creamy curly kale with mushrooms and prosciutto on polenta. After extracting wildlife from your bunch of kale and washing it (the two processes go, of course, hand in hand), chop it roughly and steam it in a little water until it collapses. (It takes longer tha...

Last week - but the photo is a year old. Gift: first pair of football boots, half price at Rebel Sport. End of season is a great time for football fans to have their birthday. They get twice the value. Second gift: vintage 1950s sheriff's badge and holster set in original unopened packaging, made in England and found in Essendon op shop. Gold for a seven year old. Tom said it was his best birthday ever. Five friends visited after school for an early dinner of spaghetti bolognese.

Although you could, of course, polish your shoes with Vegemite. One of these products is celebrating its 90th birthday. I'm not sure which.

On October 23, before even the Melbourne Cup has been run! A radio commercial for Mercedes Benz cars, backed by Angels We Have Heard on High , the voiceover urging people to 'secure' a demo model Merc, the faux-upmarket jargon designed to impress the cashed-up bogans who comprise today's Mercedes Benz market. MB could at least have spent some money on an original composition rather than a tune in the public domain. I'm off to the supermarket to secure a carrot.

It was a nice stew, almost perfect. It's only taken several decades to refine, but I'm almost there. It can't be taught. You have to learn it by trial and error. How small you cube the beef. The few extra seconds browning it. The amount of flour, salt, pepper. The heat of the pan. The weather. Whether or not you have had coffee yet that day. Where the planets are. Whatever. Even so, it is still better some times than others. That bit is chance. But even the children ate it the other night. Then they wanted more. That proves it. I used oyster blade, which has a thin layer of connective tissue running through it like a vein of gold in quartz, which melts during long cooking and turns the meat molten. I browned it in seasoned flour in a very hot pan, but browning is the wrong word, so we will not use it again. Seal it only. Browning will cook it. The word browning should be reserved for Robert, or the gun. Then it was all routine. Beef stock, a carrot, an onion, a stick of...