What I Cooked Last Night

You can't act the expressions on the faces of the Costa Ricans as they shot for goal. And there's no take two.

The flat screen television in the café sits high over the pasta shelf, and the volume is adjusted cleverly so that it becomes audible over the café talk when a goal is imminent or a vital passage in play occurs, thanks to the rising pitch of the commentator's voice. In this way, you miss none of the important action while not having the sound predominate. After 9 o'clock in the morning, when the rush commuters have 'grabbed' their lattes and run for the train, the slower customers arrive: the real estate agents from across the street come in for their takeaway coffees; Moreland council workers hunch over their cups around an outside table; the old Greek men come in and put coins on the counter for another short black, keeping their caffeine/talk ratio meter going. Occasionally the picture on the television pixillates, turning national colours into screen bloodshed. A player runs towards goal, stops unnaturally, shoots forward several inches, and then his head explod...

Take a kilogram of broad beans, pod and peel them (peeling individual beans is optional). Cook two chopped onions in olive oil in a large heavy pan for ten minutes, add two scored cloves of garlic, sauté a few more minutes, stirring; and then add two teaspoons of ground cumin, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a dash of ground coriander. Now add the beans and a cup or so of water. Cook on low heat until the beans soften. Adjust fluid if necessary. Add half a cup of lemon juice, two or three tablespoons of olive oil, and stir. Remove from pan and process in batches to a semi-smooth consistency. Reheat when desired, for example, at 2 a.m, when a World Cup game is about to commence and you need food to keep you awake should the game fail to excite. Add chopped coriander or dill for an extra flavour zing, as if it needs it. Ideal on toasted Lebanese or Turkish bread with zatar. Just swipe the bread through the bean mixture and eat. Also ideal as a dip with blanched green vege...

Cook enough linguini for however many people you are feeding. I used to have one of those spaghetti utensils with punched-out measuring holes for various quantities, but these never were accurate. Trial and error teaches quantities best. Meanwhile, warm some olive oil in a large pan and add half a cup of white wine, plenty of cracked black pepper, and two scored cloves of garlic. Cook gently without burning garlic, and then add a dozen or so halved walnuts*. Cook gently for a few minutes, stirring. Add half a cup of cream, reduce. Fold several torn basil leaves through the cooked linguini and add the sauce. Finish with shards of parmesan or the genuine reggiano if you can afford it. *Or if you have pine nuts, leave out the walnuts, toast the pine nuts and scatter over the finished dish.

From Bernie's Two Minute Friday , the weekly St Bernard's Old Collegians email bulletin: Essendon, fresh from another bout of controversy courtesy of the ASADA witch-hunt ... er, investigation, will be fired up to put a scoring-challenged Melbourne team to the sword. No comparison. History's most infamous witch trial went for only fifteen months, from February 1692 to May 1693. This one looks like running for years.

Chop two onions, and fry them in your preferred medium and pan until soft. Take a dozen roasted cashews, a teaspoon of chili, a knob of peeled and chopped ginger, a large clove of garlic (or two small), half a teaspoon each of cinnamon and garam masala, two cardamom pods, a couple of rays of star anise (optional) and half a cup of vinegar and blitz them all together in a food processor. Reserve half the cooked onions and add the cashew mixture to the rest of the onions, and stir in one large can of coconut milk. Simmer gently for a minute or two. Meanwhile, place a couple of tablespoons of raisins into a small pot of just-boiled water, to which you have added a teaspoon of turmeric. Steep for ten minutes, until they fatten and then drain and add them to the simmering sauce. Now cube some firm-fleshed fish such as swordfish or salmon and dredge the cubes through a little salt and pepper. Add the fish to the sauce, stir and cook very gently until fish is just cooked. Adjust fluid...

Recently, six out of ten people, when asked in a survey where peanuts grow, replied: "On a tree." I have nothing to add to that. But it brought to mind the man that used to circle the old suburban football ovals with a hessian sack containing paper bags full of peanuts. "Peanuts, 10 cents a bag!" he'd call out. It was usually around half time, and beer made you hungry. Mmmm ... peanuts, in the shell. * In a pot, I heated about ¾ cup peanut butter, a quarter cup of crushed peanuts, four tablespoons of hot chili sauce, two tablespoons each of tamari and white vinegar, a good squeeze of harissa paste, and the juice of a lime. I like it spicy so I usually use more chili paste and sometimes a raw chopped chili. Serve as a sauce for blanched vegetables such as zucchini, florets of broccoli etc. Or try it with sweet potato: split a sweet potato down the middle, bake it and top it generously with peanut sauce and sour cream, and a squirt of lime juice and a show...

In a large heavy pan with a tight fitting lid, fry two sliced onions in ghee or oil. Stir in a quarter teaspoon each of cardamom, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper when onion has softened. Now add a cup each of basmati rice and rinsed red lentils, three and a half cups of boiling water and two teaspoons of salt. Stir. Lid the pan tightly. Turn down heat very low and leave it for 20 minutes. When the rice grains have ballooned, it’s done. During the twenty minutes, top three red capsicums and remove seeds and pith. Stuff the capsicums with the fragrant rice and lentil mixture. (You'll have some left over.) Replace tops and place stuffed capsicums in a casserole, which should be of a size that roughly holds their tops in place. Take a jar of tomato puree, add a little water and stir through a teaspoon each of coriander and cumin. Pour into casserole so that it comes halfway up the capsicums. Bake until capsicums collapse, about an hour. Adjust fluid if your oven is particula...

3RRR announcer Brian Wise plays plenty of Bob Dylan, but on Saturday he used the excuse of Dylan's birthday - and the announcement of some Dylan concerts at the Palais - to crowd the playlist. We were in the car, on the peninsula under a cold streaky sky alongside a grey heaving sea, heading for town. Music sounds better when you're driving. The two hours made the boys Dylan fans, continuing a long family tradition dating back to me. I told them Dylan's frog-like growl makes him either the worst good singer in the world, or the best bad one. They thought about that for a while. Put his voice over that Warner Brothers cartoon where the frog sings opera, I said, and you'll see what I mean. It fits perfectly. Close to town now. "Changing of the Guards" from Street Legal even took me by surprise. The year that album came out I saw Dylan play a night concert at the Myer Music Bowl; I had an open air ticket, it rained, I could barely hear the music, and I drove h...

Leek and zucchini casserole. Chop four large onions and one leek into fine rings. Slice two large green (or four small white) zucchini into thin rounds. Peel and chop two medium potatoes into thin slices. Place a layer of the onion rings in a large casserole dish and drizzle with a little olive oil. Add a layer of zucchini, a layer of leeks and a layer of potatoes. Brush each with oil as you go and add some tomato puree (or diced tomatoes with the juice), to moisten each layer. Repeat layers until casserole is three quarters full. Top up with balance of a cup of tomato puree, half a cup of white wine and half a cup of stock. Ensure there is enough fluid to cover the vegetables. Sprinkle a teaspoon of crushed dried rosemary over the top. Add salt and pepper. Place the lid on the casserole and bake until bubbling. Top with chopped parsley. Serve with crusty bread smeared with home-made pesto, tapenade or the like.

The more I think about it, the uncannier the similarities. (See previous post.) One 1980s drink-waiting job - although I was more of a plongeur carrying out jugs of beer and carafes of wine in between shifts at the sink - was at a reception centre in Melbourne's working class 'heartland' (upper classes don't have a 'heartland' - their suburbs are 'leafy' instead). The kitchen was a vast space with a central cooking area and a rabbit warren of passageways running off three sides. (The dining rooms were to the north side, through sound-proof plastic kick doors shielded from view by two enormous curtains.) In the passageways were rooms for the storage variously of foodstuffs, casks of wine, cases of spirits, rows of steel and vinyl chairs stacked at life-endangering height, spare round tables on their sides like giant cartwheels, sound equipment, cleaning items, linen, office supplies and, of course, the day manager's office which was always locked at ...

Or, in this case, non-fictional: At a quarter to five we went back to the hotel. Till half-past six there were no orders, and we used this time to polish silver, clean out the coffee-urns, and do other odd jobs. Then the grand turmoil of the day started - the dinner hour. I wish I could be Zola for a little while, just to describe that dinner hour. The essence of the situation was that a hundred or two hundred people were demanding individually different meals of five or six courses, and that fifty or sixty people had to cook and serve them and clean up the mess afterwards; anyone with experience of catering will know what that means. And at this time when the work was doubled, the whole staff was tired out, and a number of them were drunk. I could write pages about the scene without giving a true idea of it. The chargings to and fro in the narrow passages, the collisions, the yells, the struggling with crates and trays and blocks of ice, the heat, the darkness, the furious festering...

Welcome to the future of driving with the RACV Connected Vehicle app began the mailout, predictably beginning with a cliché. Welcome to the future of ... fishing? abseiling? home brewing? race walking? The app, the mailout explained, made your driving experience safer , more convenient and enjoyable . (My emphasis.) How can using a phone while you are driving be safer? The mailout did not specify. The app, it went on, provides you with personalised access to the information you need to enhance your total driving experience . Notice in that line at least five words marketers drop into their sentences - in any order - to sell you something completely useless. The app's Eco Drive function lets you get rated on your driving behaviour and compare your performance with other members ; while its My Trips feature lets you geo-tag your photos and upload (them) to Facebook . Look out, here comes a hairpin bend! Tag it! Upload it! You can check the weather (if it is not obvio...

That's the simple name for what the recipe specifies as lentils and rice with fried onions. Doesn't sound great, tastes amazing. Even the children eat it. Its simplicity and ease of preparation means it is on high rotation here, like a Rolling Stones hit on 3XY in 1967. Lentils and rice with fried onions. You'll need: One cup each of red lentils and long grain rice, two large onions, 2½ tablespoons ghee, 2 teaspoons salt, ¼ teaspoon each ground black pepper, ground cloves, ground cardomom, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg and 3½ cups boiling water . Wash the lentils, removing any that float. Drain thoroughly. Melt ghee in a heavy pan that has a lid. Slice onions into thin rounds and fry until golden brown, stirring. Remove half the onions and set aside. Add lentils and rice to pan and stir for a minute or two to coat in the hot ghee. Add water and spices, stir well, bring to boil, add the salt, stir again. Turn down to a very low simmer, place the lid on the ...