What I Cooked Last Night

I was chopping some carrots using a vegetable knife with a short non-serrated blade. The carrots were quite hard. I slid the knife across and into the third carrot. The blade of the knife snapped suddenly at the point where it is imbedded in the handle. It rebounded against the force of my hand, flicked up and around like a soccer player doing a scissor kick, and stabbed me in the forefinger before flopping onto the table. I threw the handle and the blade into the bin, after examining the break. The imbedded section was far too thin. It was the last cheap knife I will buy. Lesson: sack your cheap cutting knives before they crack up under the pressure and do you an injury. * I had been about to make a recipe I always drag out in autumn, an old favourite I learned from my mother before she gave up on all the old standbys. Oxtail stew with garlic mash. Using a quality knife, meaning a knife made just about anywhere except China, chop six celery stalks, two onions and two carrots...

In 1966, you were generally Holden or Falcon, hating the other with a passion equal to the Smith Street divide between Fitzroy and Collingwood. Every October, Bathurst fanned the tribal flames. My brother and I were Holden because Dad got a new one every year for his job. He was a travelling salesman for John Dynon & Sons restaurant and hotel supplies. I used to go with him on school holidays and saw the inside of more restaurants by the age of ten than Simon Plant and John Lethlean put together. My brother and I always looked forward to the new model and became connoisseurs of evolving automotive design, including the Volkswagen Beetle, which in the previous year had sold more cars in Australia than ever before. Volkswagens were everywhere. An uncle (not the farm uncle) bought a navy blue one and drove it like a Lotus Esprit around the Dandenong Ranges with us in it. I'd never been more frightened. But not everyone had a Holden or a Falcon, or even a Beetle. The family n...

Merle Haggard .

In a large pot, cook pasta. When almost done, place a dozen florets of broccoli and a dozen green beans into the same pot. Simmer three minutes. Add a dozen snow peas. Wait a minute, then drain the lot. Meanwhile, heat some garlic in olive oil in another pan. Add a splash of white wine, some cracked black pepper, a dozen sliced button mushrooms and an avocado sliced into segments. Cook until mushrooms are almost soft, then add half a cup of cream, or more to taste. Reduce. Arrange pasta and green vegetables in bowls, pour over mushroom, avocado and cream sauce.

Consulting firm Deloitte explains its 'diversity' policy : The approach to innovation leverages diversity and inclusion of people regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, faith or disability. So far so good. One of everything, like the child in the lolly shop. But consultants Deloitte should have consulted their mates over at PwC : PwC senior executive Mark Allaby stood down from the board of the Australian Christian Lobby this month because his ACL work was in conflict with the values of the corporation for which he worked. A firm of business consultants decides its values trump those of a religious organisation? Now I've heard everything. Diversity-ridden PwC rationalises the decision: "When it comes to employee participation on external boards, if a conflict arises between an employee's board role and the best interests of PwC, we would request that the employee step down from that board," a PwC spokesman said of the matter. The spokesman ...

Somewhere in this tangled web, someone asked which music albums had, to quote, 'stayed with you'. Now, I think the expression 'stayed with you' was intended to mean 'stayed in your consciousness'; in other words, your all-time favourites. But the figurative interpretation meant you could bend the list to please your peers. They can't physically look into your record cabinet. So I decided to take the expression literally. I once owned hundreds of LP records, but over the years they dwindled in number. Of the remaining, some I will never throw out; others are rubbish and I should have binned them years ago. Here are ten albums that have stayed with me: literally. 1. Running Down the Road by Arlo Guthrie. Famous for being the son of Woodie and his cult 23-minute hit 'Alice's Restaurant', Arlo Guthrie's 1969 release ticked all the boxes for post-flower-power motorcycle-riding hippies. The record belonged to my sister, and I kept it for s...

One day in 1982 I picked up a heavy table at work and my life changed. It wasn't the weight; it was the spread. The table was six feet long. I had it overhead, but it moved. I tried to move with it, but my feet held the ground and something shifted in my back. I thought someone had shot me. They used to call it a slipped disc. An uncle of mine in the 1960s had a 'slipped disc' and couldn't walk. The term was graphic: it made me think he had a lopsided 45rpm record inside his torso. I carried the virtual bullet around in my back for ten long agony-filled weeks. Doctors gave me painkillers. A chiropractor fussed delicately over my back with spindly fingers and then, without warning, folded me in two; the biggest mood swing I have ever experienced in a medical specialist, if that's what chiropractors are. Nothing worked. It was worst after sitting. If you have back trouble, throw out your chairs. The chair is to the back sufferer what the wheel was to a medieva...

The hottest summer on record, they said. What a fizzer. Here in Coburg, we did not get through the half-price twenty-visit family ticket for Moreland aquatic centres. Five visits left. Barely any days over 40C. Hottest on record? Hardly. (Incidentally, that 30C-plus day last week was described by several newsreaders as a 'heatwave'. A heatwave used to be a run of high temperature days, but its meaning has been manipulated to indicate a single day of hot weather.) * And here we are at the last day of summer. Tonight: a dish I call warm pasta nicoise, because it contains some of the ingredients of the classic salad. I use linguini for the pasta. Pasta nicoise. Cook the linguine, drain it, and reserve a tablespoon of the liquid. Sear a slice of fresh tuna keeping it still pink in the middle. Cut into cubes. Return the pasta to the heavy pan with the liquid, a dash of olive oil, some very finely sliced onion rings and a crushed garlic clove. Add the tuna, some sliced tr...

I got off to a bad start with eggs. I was nineteen, out of home, and cooking for three. I started with an egg. (Another time I cooked five sausages by placing them into a red hot pan to which they fused. Ten minutes later I had ships of raw sausage meat decks over carbon holds.) I placed the egg in a saucepan and placed the saucepan on the stove and lit the stove. So far so good. Then I went into another room and did something else. I don't know, putting clothes away, reading the sports section, making a landline phone call. Could have been anything. Eight minutes later I came back into the kitchen. I sniffed the air. But it was too late. There was a sudden explosion, like a light globe being shot out. Something hit the ceiling. In fact, a lot of things hit the ceiling, and the upper parts of the walls. And they were all pale yellow. I had forgotten the water. The egg had heated up and exploded. It took me a day to clean the ceiling and I was still finding bits of egg a...

Pasta with onions raises eyebrow; but veal parmigiana stole tomato sauce and cheese, so why can't pasta hijack something more commonly associated with meat dishes? Pasta with onions, red capsicum and anchovies . Chop two large onions into fine rings and saute them in a pan with olive oil. Add a little sugar to help brown them. Meanwhile, bake a red capsicum until the skin chars. Remove from oven, and place in a paper bag to cool. The skin will now be quite easy to peel away. Cut the flesh into strips. While the onions are melting into soft, fragrant brownness, cook the pasta. Slinky, slippery fettuccine works well with this dish. Check the onions again. Do not allow to stick, let alone burn. Add a squeeze of lemon for a dash of acid and give the onions a stir. Drain the pasta. Twirl it into a large serving bowl, add strips of roasted red pepper, several anchovies; and then top with the fried onion.

Yet again we delve back into the archives of Kitchen Hand's head, from his ongoing life as a copywriter in advertising. Every one of these stories is 100% true and accurate, even the slightly exaggerated ones. Only the names have changed. Reminder: language warning, but no worse than in every agency - or construction site for that matter - across the land. * Another morning in the advertising agency. Another awards night over. Another trophy in the cabinet. Another lost night. Another hangover. Another growing feeling of dread about what happened, where it happened, and who it happened to. Another hamburger with the lot from the café over the road, cooked to order on the greasiest part of the grill to soak up as much brain-soothing fat as possible. Another account service person walks into Leopard's office without knocking. Leopard is the creative director whose name was Leonard until he got into advertising. Thinking his name a little tame for a creative director, he emp...

Home made gnocchi makes the manufactured variety taste like footballs. Used footballs. Tough and leathery. Simply fold some flour and an egg through mashed potato, roll into cylinders, flour them and cut them into one-inch lengths. Place on a floured tray until cooking, by dropping them into boiling water. Simple. Never buy the packet ones again, unless you like chewing on old footballs. I made a roux of flour turned through melted butter, added a cup and a half of milk and warmed it on a low heat until thickened. Then I added half a cup of grated cheddar, a large knob of very mature blue cheese and half a cup of parmesan. Add milk if it gets too thick. The resulting bubbling lava was poured over cooked gnocchi which was flecked with chopped parsley and cracked black pepper. The plate was then placed under the griller until the cheese started developing a very appetising golden crust. Probably the finest pasta dish on earth.

January is a good time to work. I often pick up a week or two of freelance work at a number of advertising agencies when their writers are on holidays. Sometimes the agencies are busy, but often there is not a lot to do apart from checking proofs, signing off artwork, advising account executives on basic points of grammar or spelling, going out for coffee at Brunetti's in the city square, browsing the collectable books in Kay Craddock's; that kind of thing. A couple of weeks ago I spent a few days in a large agency with not much to do. While I was waiting to be briefed on a job, I was idly reading through the agency's mission statement. It was a Monday morning and the job, a six page brochure for one of its financial advice clients, would be briefed in at the work-in-progress meeting at ten o'clock in the boardroom. Mission statements are merely long-winded expressions of a strange blend of political correctness and the latest business management fads; and this w...

Once upon a time, butcher shops had blue tiles on the outside, an inwardly slanting main window for easier viewing of the displayed product from the street, and sawdust on the floor. The sawdust, combined with the smell of fresh meat, produced a curiously sweet aroma. The butchers used curly-leaf parsley to decorate the meat trays. The rich green of the parsley muted the sea of red meat and made it more appetising. My mother's parcel of mince steak from R. J. Gilbertson in Puckle Street Moonee Ponds would often contain a few sprigs of the green herb, which would be cooked into the resulting patties. Later, parsley was made obsolete as a garnish after the butchers invented those green plastic edging things. These days, the butcher's window itself has all but disappeared from the streetscape. Greek-style meatballs with parsley and mint. Put 600g of lean minced steak into a large mixing bowl with a cup and a half of finely chopped parsley, half a cup of finely chopped mi...