What I Cooked Last Night

One year, a long time ago now, probably around 2012 or '13, I went to a Christmas Day lunch that was something out of a decor magazine, or maybe a foodie magazine. It was a perfect day and long outdoor tables stretched out beneath the dappled shade of some gently swaying trees, and were covered in expensive Christmas-themed paper, with tapered candles, quality cutlery and delicate long-stemmed glassware. It was midday. Fairy lights twinkled from the trees like electric snow. Soft Christmas music drifted across the scene from some obscured speaker. Drinks came first, just to get the appetite going, and were served by a natural pool. ('By' meaning next to.) Occasional tables were scattered about the setting and bore platters of savouries that kept you from starving before the turkey came out. There was only one small problem. Clouds were threatening. If it were to start raining, the entire scene, as big as a movie set, would have to be moved inside. The hosts kept coming ...

Craven has tried to convince the creative team that two clients in one ad is a good idea . He has asked them to adapt their Buffalo Finance concept to accommodate a second client, and the creative team are nervously waiting to find out which client they have to work into their concept. GUY: Who's the second client, Craven? Or haven't you lined one up yet? CRAVEN: Yes, I have spoken to another major advertiser who is happy to share a spot with Buffalo Finance. ROB: Let me guess: Fenestre Investments? Financing your next investment with Buffalo would work. CRAVEN: No, it's not them. GUY: The new Sniper launch? Cars and finance are always a good mix. CRAVEN: No. GUY: What about Orange Residential Development Corp? CRAVEN: No. ROB: Is it Upton Furnishings? CRAVEN: No. GUY: Well who the fuck is it then? CRAVEN PAUSES FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT, THEN ANSWERS DEADPAN: Snail-Go. GUY & ROB TOGETHER: Whaaat???? CRAVEN (STILL DEADPAN): Snail-Go. Plus I'...

Cannelloni from scratch? Couldn't be easier, as long as you have a piping bag. Fry half an onion until translucent. Boil and drain 50g frozen spinach. Add 500g fresh ricotta, 70g of parmesan cheese, the drained spinach and a tablespoon of butter to the cooked onion. Stir to combine over low heat for about a minute. Make besciamella: melt 60g butter in a pot, add 60g flour, a dash of nutmeg and 500ml heated milk (don't boil) and mix to blend until flour is absorbed. Make tomato sauce: fry half an onion, add a jar of passata and a third volume again of water, add some finely chopped fresh basil and parsley, a shake of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. Simmer to reduce slightly. Pipe cheese mixture into instant cannelloni tubes. You cannot force it in with a spoon, by suction, by gravity or any other way. I found out the hard way and then I went out and bought a pack of disposable piping bags for a couple of dollars at Mediterranean Wholesalers*. Line a baking dish with a ...

Craven is trying to convince the creative team that his radical plan to change the face of advertising will work. He even has some clients in mind who, he says, are prepared to share a spot in order to reduce the cost of television advertising. GUY: Instead of jamming two clients in one thirty second spot, you could just run a fifteen second spot for each client, Craven. Have you thought of that? CRAVEN: Well you could, of course, Guy; but then you also have the possibility of placing two clients in each fifteen-second spot as well. Bear in mind the production cost savings. Two clients, one production. Plus, we can charge each client more than half the production cost so we make extra there as well. Moreover, we feel that the longer on-screen exposure will more than compensate for the fact that two clients are sharing the time. ROB: It's still nuts, Craven. PAUSE And you're a crook if you're using it to expand the margins. CRAVEN: Crap, Rob. It's called mak...

On an unseasonally hot day in October 1965, I was taken to see a movie at the Paris Cinema in Bourke Street, Melbourne. In the film, The Sound of Music , Christopher Plummer played Captain von Trapp, and was later scathing about the movie. Last week I saw Plummer play Ebenezer Scrooge in The Man Who Invented Christmas , this time at Village Airport West, which was a field of thistle with Vickers Viscounts flying over it in 1965. Right now is the time of year when Christmas-themed movies hit the cinemas, but The Man Who Invented Christmas is not really about Christmas. It is about Charles Dickens' struggle to write a book following two 'failures' after several hits. It should have been titled Famous Novelist Suffers Writer's Block for 104 Gripping Minutes , but that would not have helped box office sales. Dickens is struggling to pay the bills, his agent is getting nervous, he is continually interrupted by family members, and his destitute father comes to stay. Th...

Craven, the account man at advertising agency Blake Browning Burns, has been working in secret with the strategy planners to develop a new concept in advertising - two clients sharing one television commercial. He is briefing the creative team in the small meeting room known as 'The Cupboard'. The creative team are not impressed and, after June the tea lady interrupts, the argument resumes. Language warning. GUY: That is fucking INSANE, Craven. ROB: Totally nuts. It can't work. GUY: That's the stupidest idea I've heard since ... your last stupid idea. ROB: For example, the clients would fight over owning the end frame. GUY: Yeah. And whose typeface would you use? ROB: And what about logos? CRAVEN: Pfffffft! Minor details, guys. We have huge fights about all that shit now. An extra client in the ad isn't going to make a huge difference. GUY: Apart from that, where are you going to find two clients who want to go into one commercial? CRAVEN (...

I pulled the EP record out of its cardboard sleeve, put it on the mono turntable and lowered the needle on to the record. It hissed and crackled (the needle was worn) and then a piano introduced the song. In the next room the adults' conversation (God knows what they were talking about) slowly dried up. Someone dropped a tea cup. The parish priest was visiting and they were having afternoon tea. Let's spend the night together, now I need you more than ever. ... I'll satisfy your every need. Now I know you satisfy me ... It was 1967. I was ten. A couple of years later I put an LP album on the turntable. It was a stereo now, a speaker either side connected by wires. Lay lady lay ... lay across my big brass bed ... Again, the adults in the next room turned purple, metaphorically. "What are you listening to?" the adults asked me, somewhat superfluously. I didn't answer such a stupid question, I just held up the cover. It had a smiling man holding a ...

The Herald Sun reports on the changing nature of food retailing , in which RMIT marketing expert Con Stavros utters this gem of wisdom: "Food, in general, has become much more of an experience." More than what? He doesn't say. Meanwhile, floundering dinosaur retailer David Jones spokesman Pieter De Wet puts the following hilarious spin on having a product range of only 6,000 items compared to the average supermarket's 25,000: "If you go to a normal grocery store, you have to go through 25,000 products," he said. "We’ve got a curated collection of about 6000 products. We've chosen the best for our customers knowing what they like and expect. It's a quarter of the number of choices you have to make, we've done all the work for you."

I thought it was a dream, because I hadn't seen a mahogany staircase in a restaurant for twenty years, or maybe I just hadn't been to one. The staircase led up into complete darkness, until my eyes got used to it. I reached a landing, turned and kept going. At the top of the stairs it was still dark enough to trip over the brass strips at the edges of the axminster that led into the vast room. The carpet seemed to have tones of burgundy and deep violet, but who could tell in that light? It looked like the cover of The Zombies 1968 psychedelic album ' Odessey and Oracle ', but it might have been forest green. I looked around. Inset into the north and west walls of the room were four giant tin soldiers, standing sentinel like armour suits in a medieval castle. I thought I had stumbled into a Victorian-era children's nursery at midnight, and had shrunk. The east wall was in almost full darkness, but voices and the flash of light on glass gave it away as a bar. Figures ...

Guy, a copywriter, and Rob, his art director are a creative team at Blake Browning Burns. They have just walked into the meeting room they call 'the cupboard' because it is small and intimate enough for closed-door meetings of two or three people. (It is generally suspected around the agency that such 'meetings' have also taken place after, or even during, Friday nights drinks.) Craven, the account director, follows them into the room. Craven is tall with jet black lank hair, and has affectations, and wears loud suits. He looks like a character from a Raymond Chandler novel, possibly Lindsay Marriott from 'Farewell My Lovely'. 'Craven' is his surname but he uses it as his first name. It fits. In the room, Craven throws a fat manila folder diagonally onto the table with a thump, slewing out a bunch of briefing notes. CRAVEN: Guys! GUY (DEADPAN): Guys what? CRAVEN: I'm just saying 'Hello!' ROB: No, you're not, you said 'Guys...

Chop two onions into fine rings. Evenly line a large casserole with some of the rings. Add a tablespoon of Australian olive oil. (Does anyone still buy the imported stuff ?) Now chop three or four zucchini - depending on size - into rings. Add a layer of zucchini over the onions. Do the same with a couple of sliced leeks, then two or three peeled potatoes sliced very, very thinly. Add half a cup of tomato puree and a shake of salt and cracked pepper. Repeat the zucchini, leek and potato layers and tomato puree. Top with more tomato, chopped parsley, snipped chives and fresh basil. Add a little chicken or vegetable stock to almost cover vegetables. Add cheese if desired. Place the lid on casserole and bake until bubbling.

It is late morning in the boardroom of advertising agency Blake Browning Burns. During the meeting, the account executive, Angelo, has briefed the creative team, Guy (writer) and Rob (art director), on a boring job - to write and design a brochure for an automobile client. Language warning. ANGELO: So that's the brief, guys. Write a brochure promoting the Sniper Roadside Assistance Program. GUY AND ROB TOGETHER: Great. (YOU CAN HEAR THE ENTHUSIASM IN THEIR VOICES. OR YOU COULD IF IT WAS THERE) ANGELO: Happiness? GUY: As happy as we could be on a dreary Tuesday morning having just been briefed on possibly the single most boring job in the history of advertising. ANGELO: Stop complaining. You get paid. ROB: We don't get paid enough for the pain we go through. Unlike you. You just drive up and down from St Kilda Road to your revhead client in Mulgrave and deliver bullshit at both ends. ANGELO: You try it some time. The client hates me and you hate me. But that's ...

I used to have neighbours who were immigrants from India. They used to cook outside in summer, catching on pretty quickly to the local custom. The smoky aroma that came over the fence was insanely wonderful. It smelled like a Goanese street food stall. So I tried to out-aroma them. I came up with the following. Spicy barbecued chicken. Grind or process: a tablespoon each of chili and coriander powder, a teaspoon each of turmeric, fenugreek leaves, peppercorns, and salt, five green cardamom pods, one piece of star anise, two cloves of garlic, one inch each of peeled ginger and cinnamon, one clove, one pinch each of asafoetida and nutmeg, and a teaspoon of sugar. Blend all the spices with about three-quarters of a cup of vinegar. You'll end up with a grainy-textured sludge. Then fold the grainy sludge through a cup of full-fat yogurt and coat all pieces of a chicken which you have jointed and slashed. Press the mixture under the skin and into the slashes. Store chicken in the...

I was driving to Werribee on a warm Saturday. It was just after midday. I turned off the ring road where it swept around onto the Princes Freeway at Laverton and straightened up towards Hoppers Crossing. The traffic was light and I was fiddling with the radio. There was nothing I felt like listening to; eighties rubbish on the commercial stations or boring chatter on the talk stations. I flipped it again. Her voice came out of the radio and I couldn't place it. The song could have been medieval or it could have been recorded yesterday. But it might have been the most beautiful song ever recorded. They lyrics had that special quality so rarely found: once heard they can never be forgotten. By the time it finished, I had arrived. The radio station went straight on to the next track. I looked it up later .