What I Cooked Last Night

I hadn't slept very well, so I thought breakfast in town on the way to the office might be nice. It was one of those cafes that start with 'B'. Why do they all start with 'B'? What's wrong with the other 25 letters of the alphabet? Becco. Babka. Bruno's. Benito's. BluFish. Baa. Bello's. Baloo. They could call it Garbage Truck or Strong Smell of Liniment for all I cared. As long as the coffee was good the name didn't matter. The coffee was good. So were the scrambled eggs and bacon with hash browns, fried tomatoes, spinach and mushrooms on toasted sourdough. Should get me through to an early lunch, say around 12.30-ish. I browsed through the complimentary morning papers over the second coffee and then, after paying the bill, I winked at the waitress on the way out. Can you still call them waitresses, or are you up against some workplace discrimination law or other, and get hauled before a Human Rights Commission, of which we seem to have abo...

Or it might have been Thursday morning. I didn't know the time. It could have been three in the morning. I woke with a start. I don't usually wake in the middle of the night. Why should I? What have I got to be worried about? Suddenly, something someone had said to me yesterday on the phone came back to me, for no reason at all. I had only been half-listening to him at the time, because I only ever half-listen to suits. Usually it's only quarter-listen. Often I don't listen at all. They talk rubbish and are a blight on the industry. For some reason three words stuck in my mind. The three words were 'review' and '$20 million'. I didn't know why something like that would bother me at three o'clock in the morning. Or why it should keep me awake for two hours. Once, something like that would never have bothered me. I must have fallen asleep around five. The warm, softly curved shape under the sheet next to me had not stirred.

Yesterday at the agency was horrible. So this morning I called in sick. But do you think they had the human decency to leave me alone? The bastards called me three times. I couldn't believe it. I could have been at death's door and they would have had no consideration or sympathy whatsoever. Advertising is truly a cruel industry riddled with uncaring egotists thinking only about themselves. The first call came on the second fairway, the second call on the fourth, and the third at the seventh hole. When the third call came, I really lost the plot. It totally destroyed my concentration. It was that idiot suit who had dragged me out of bed unnecessarily yesterday. (Of course, I should have turned the phone off, but I was waiting on a call about lunch with a friend from the office who had also called in sick that day, a coincidence that would not go wasted.) Seeing his name on the screen, I didn't even wait for him to speak. I shouted into the phone (it was quite win...

The idiot suit, Phil, had arranged a client meeting for 9 a.m., when I am usually inoculating myself with coffee to steel me for another nerve-wracking day. Worse, the meeting was to be miles away in an outer suburb, so I had to be in the agency at the crack of dawn. At 8.15 a.m. we climbed into Phil's look-at-me BMW. I noticed with distaste the personalised number plates that read CL3V3R. I told him 1D10T would have been closer. Half an hour later we were in Bayswater, a land of high-visibility vests, and HiLuxes, and tradies, and plumbing businesses and BWS outlets and run-down factories. Every city in the world has its industrial areas, and their takeaway food places all have the same names. Ed's Takeaways . Eat & Go . Or even just Hot Pies . Phil drifted the BMW to a stop on the gravelled forecourt of a warehouse which had a rubbish skip out the front. We walked in through a metal door and entered a cold room with bare white walls. A low timber reception desk bore a s...

A satire. I rocked into work about 9.40 a.m. just as several earlier arrivals were exiting for morning coffee at one of the dozens of cafes down the street. Years ago people made coffee from the urn in the kitchen in twenty seconds. Now they disappear for forty-five minutes and come back with six takeaway plastic-topped cardboard coffee cups set into a cardboard carrier the size of an aircraft carrier. Productivity Commission, anyone? After chatting with that strange breed of office workers who are always in the kitchen, I finally reached my office around 10 a.m. and commenced the twenty-first century white collar drudgery of 'checking my emails'. Naturally, I deleted most including the stupid jokes and idiot cat pictures, etc, that the cretin from the studio keeps emailing to all staff. I replied to one or two of the work-related ones in as few words as possible, and without a sign-off line. Having done with the office emails, out-of-office bouncebacks and meeting request...

Process the following: 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 Half a teaspoon of sugar Three-quarters of a cup of vinegar Once processed, fold one cup of yogurt through the resulting mixture. Joint one chicken. Coat the chicken pieces with the spicy yogurt mixture, pressing it under skin or into slashes. Place chicken a large covered dish and store in fridge at least a couple of hours and preferably overnight. Barbecue time: place chicken pieces on grill. Cooking time is dependent on grill, weather conditions, wind direction, etc etc. Sprinkle cumin seeds over the chicken and serve with plain basmati rice with a salad of tomato, cucumber, coriander, white onion on the side and wedges of lemon to squeeze.

Chronic sarcastist Tim Blair's article in Monday's Daily Telegraph was titled The Greatest Steak Sandwich Ever Built . OK, the sub-editor writes the headlines, but it is still misleading, in the sense that someone might try his recipe and find it wanting. Tim discovers: ... the missing ingredient was brute force. But what steak to use? I've always been confounded by steak selection. Choose a substantial quality cut and it'll be too unwieldy for sandwich use. Pick something cheaper, thinner and meaner and you’ll endure a terrible chewing challenge. The trick is to find a small, thick cut and then bash it thin. I presume he means fillet. But this no way to treat it: ... commence whaling upon it with your steak mallet. I use a half-kilo bruiser liberated from my in-laws' old restaurant. There is no meat it cannot beat. Wrong, Tim. A steak mallet is designed to break down the fibres of cheaper cuts of steak. It will turn fillet into steak tartare, or roadkill that ha...

The expensive French restaurants in New York are nearly all east of Fifth Avenue. In most of them, depending on what wine he drinks and whether or not he orders cognac with his coffee, a man and his date can spend the equivalent of the U.S. legal weekly minimum wage in an evening, or the price of a case of good Scotch or a TV set or the complete recorded works of Beethoven or a ticket to a political fund-raising ball. It is possible that in the last instance, the restaurant dinner is the better bargain; but the price is still rather steep. And for this reason, and for the benefit of impoverished lovers of French cooking and for bona-fide Frenchmen stuck in New York in average-paying jobs, the unfashionable area on the West Side has seen a mushrooming of moderately priced French restaurants. Some of them approach a good Paris bistro; others are only slightly better than the restaurants on Second and Third avenues that cater to the skid-row derelicts, with the day's bargains chalked ...

We spent New Year's Day at a lunchtime barbecue hosted by friends at their country house outside Maldon. It was a hot, windy day and the wind was whipping the dust up. Gold dust. I read recently there is more previously-unobtainable gold under the ground in Victoria than has ever been dug up, and that technology is now becoming available to get it. We talked about the gold but it was too hot to start digging. Eventually our host switched on the grill. It was about one o'clock. The girls were playing in the butter house (the old churn plinth is still there) and the boys were tearing up and down the four acres, having been told not to go in the long grass. We were still talking about gold. More goldfields prospectors died from snake bite than any other cause of death aside from dysentery. Imagine finding gold and then being bitten to death by a snake. Horrible. Then the other diggers might fight over your gold, leaving your body to bloat in the sun. Perhaps they would be hel...

In a boardroom high in a tall building in a big city. Through the window of the tall building can be seen scores of other tall buildings full of thousands of people doing important work useful to society in myriad ways, just like the people in this building; in fact, just like in this very boardroom. If you were to look out the window and downwards, you would see ants walking around. The ants are people. These people are not doing any important work useful to society yet - except for the lunch delivery people - but they are on their way to do so, such as working in government departments or robbing a bank. Guy, a copywriter, and Rob, an art director, are not staring out the window. They are sitting at the boardroom table looking at Craven, an advertising account director. Craven has a piece of paper in his hand and his gaze is directed at it. The piece of paper is a television script . Language warning. CRAVEN: Guys, this is not a TV commercial, it's a fucking Raymond Chandle...

I lay on the sand in the dappled shade of a ti-tree and picked up the book and started reading it. I finished it two hours later. Not bad for 214 pages, plus appendix, plus index. When I read history I like to read it incomplete; as in the history, not the book. Rock Revolution stops dead in 1976 because that is when it was published. It is all the more interesting for that, as you get a mid-seventies view of what rock music was - but, more importantly, what it was becoming. The headline above is a quote from Chapter 5, 'The Rolling Stones: Ecstasy and Evil'. The book is a collection of essays from Creem magazine which proclaims it 'is not intended to be a rock'n'roll textbook', alluding to some of the obtuse music writing that was around even then. Lester Bangs contributes several articles, concluding in the above-quoted chapter 'that the Stones' tour in the summer of '75 ... boded well for the future of the Stones and (implicitly) for the fut...

Account Director Craven is the first to arrive in the office after the Christmas break. He unlocks his office and steps towards his ship-sized desk before noticing a folded piece of paper that has been pushed under the door. He stoops to pick it up. A scribbled note on the outside reads: I think you'll find we haven't let you down. R. & G. Craven takes the paper to his desk, unfolds it and starts to read. It is a script for the proposed television commercial featuring two clients. Changing his mind, Craven stands up and crosses to his luxurious sofa, sits back and puts his feet up. He is still the only person in the quiet agency. Far down below can be heard the faraway drone of the traffic. THE SCRIPT WE OPEN ON A BEAUTIFULLY MANICURED LAWN IN FRONT OF A MASSIVE NEO-COLONIAL MANSION THAT PROBABLY HAS ONLY ABOUT EIGHTY ROOMS. THE LAWN STRETCHES AWAY TO INFINITY WHERE IT IS EDGED WITH MASSIVE EXOTIC GARDEN BEDS. THIS SPECIAL PARADISE IS COSSETTED FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD ...

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'...