What I Cooked Last Night

She's only been in it for a year or so, about time she hosted lunch. In my family, when we have lunches or dinners, everyone brings something, even though whoever is hosting always says 'No, don't bring anything, everything's provided', so there's always w-a-a-a-y too much food. It's like a smorgasbord, and we don't even have Swedish blood. (Well, not as far as I know.) Are other families like this, or are we totally weird? Twenty-two attendees, big sister and partner, four children with assorted partners and friends, little brother with partner, littlest brother without partner who is overseas, son and partner with three children, mother. And me. And partner. The spread yesterday included: A mild yellow curry made by my mother (the one she's been doing since like about 1959) cooked for a long time so that the chicken is falling off the bone and the potatoes are almost melting. Another, hotter, green curry made by my brother. (After ...

Italian-style, with the fragrance of the four Italian essentials, onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Sweat onions and garlic in oil. Do not burn. Add carrots and celery, diced as finely as you can be bothered doing (I couldn't be bothered last night so the pieces were larger than they should have been!) stirring around and adding salt and cracked pepper. Sweat them for a couple minutes then remove them to another dish. Now add your minced beef or lamb (shepherd's pie is by definition lamb but since you're not a shepherd the meat your pie comprises doesn't have to be lamb). Brown it well, then add the vegetables along with a can of diced tomatoes and a generous slosh of white wine, maybe a cupful or so. Let it simmer away while you prepare your potatoes by cooking, draining and mashing them well with whatever you fancy - milk, butter, olive oil (I like potatoes with olive oil whipped until they are creamy, seductively, unctuously smooth like velvet!), parmesan ch...

My partner took her special education students on an excursion to the new museum yesterday. (It's less of a museum than a politically correct 'space' featuring angular architecture, minimalist exhibitions and post-modern jargon. I preferred the old one , packed with more old stuff and fewer 'interactive' exhibits and curated 'opinions'.) When they arrived back at school, she asked the students what they liked best about the museum. One nominated the elevator. Another said the autumn leaves in the park outside the museum. And a third was most impressed by the seagulls flapping around in the park competing for lunch crusts. Gotta love those kids - they are sweet!

Make a stock of miso and add asian greens, green onions, and meat of your choice - I used cubed chicken breast. I also used some soft tofu, cubed. (Be careful, it falls apart but is delicate, sensous and yummy.) Cook the Udon noodles - plunge into boiling water, drain, repeat. Add the noodles to the soup. Also add chile or soy or both. (Miso is already salty.) I like to mix a little soy through some wasabe for a sensational salty hot combination. Add it to the soup or have it on the side and dip your tofu in it. Yum.

On a cold, rainy night after a long run in the park, where better to dine out with some friends than a cosy Italian cafe? TiAmo is a good place for our running group (motto: 'for some people training is just an excuse to meet people'!) to eat - they actually sponsor the club and understand our needs, plying us with huge platters of fresh bread and copious bottles of chilled water. (Runners have massive appetites - one of our group is a 6'7" 200lb+ marathoner in training for the Gold Coast Marathon . What to eat? The schiaffatelli bella napoli, almost like gnocchi but with no potato? The maccheroni della zia with mini meatballs and eggplant? The spaghetti don giovanni with mussels, clams and chilli? The risotto nero with cuttlefish? The veal shanks, tender and falling off the bone on a huge bed of garlic mash? The veal scallopine in white wine and cream? The tortellini tartufe? With a menu like that, I don't care, give me anything! I wound up with the sc...

Billy, our beloved adopted Greyhound, died last night.

There are several markets for commercially made pasta. First is the commodity market - cheap pasta at a low price. This is fine, after all, you can't really go wrong with pasta. Good for families on a budget. Then there's the gourmet pasta market. This comprises a wide range of brands at wildly divergent prices. I've seen dried pasta at anything up to $20 a kilo, favoured by foodie yuppies who think mama is out in the kitchen caressing the stuff in her loving hands. If you want that fantasy, learn to make it yourself. Case in point: I can pay 89c for a 500 gram pack of perfectly acceptable Ambra pasta from my local shop. Or I can pay $8.10 for what is largely much the same thing . There is a third market. This third segment grew out of post-World War Two immigrants wanting 'genuine' home-style products, but who were not willing to pay a 'gourmet' price. They were catered for by small manufacturers - often originally set up by European immi...

Five years ago exactly, my partner bought me a fig tree, a fifth anniversary gift. It was just a little one. I put it in the ground on top of plenty of rotted matter in the back yard of our beach shack. We wondered how many years it would take to fruit. The last few weeks have been busy. We hadn't been down the coast for a while. We left the city early Saturday morning and within ninety minutes we could see the twinkling waves. Arriving, we unpacked the car and put the dogs into the yard. There sat the fig tree, now doubled in size, enjoying the sunshine all on its own. On its still-slender branches were three perfect, ripe, purple-black figs, warm and soft to the touch after a morning in the autumn sun. I sliced the figs lovingly (if using a sharp knife on something can be described as loving!), and lay the slices on a plate. Then I sliced some fresh mild mozzarella and lay that on the figs. I grilled it and we had tenth anniversary figs and cheese. No...

Food 'bloggers don't always eat gourmet meals. Sometimes they just stand at the 'fridge and eat last night's cold pizza. (Well, I do. I'm not speaking for others.) Last night I opened the 'fridge. Inside was a couple of cold roasted potatoes, some olives, half a pale green zucchini, a leek sausage (Greek 'loukanika' - delicious), an eggplant (who put that in the 'fridge? store them at room temperature - the cold rots their skin), some hommous, a jar of tahini, a small amount of left over greek salad (onion, tomato, cucumber, fetta), some basil and parsley, half a bottle of cream and a dozen eggs. You already know what I made, don't you? The 'everything' omelette. I beat half a dozen eggs (it's going to be big with all those fillings, you can add cream if you wish). Sloshing some olive oil in a non-stick pan on a low heat, I poured the eggs in. Then I carefully placed the roasted potatoes, sliced; the zucchini, ve...

I got out of the shower, dried myself, ran a brush through my hair and unscrewed my contact lens case. Carefully lifting the left lens out of its saline solution, I placed it on the tip of my right index finger and applied it to my still-sleepy left eye. A blinding, burning pain seared through my eye as if I'd poured acid into it. I quickly withdrew the lens and plunged it back into its case. I looked in the mirror. My eye was red and the tears were welling. Then I remembered: last night I sliced a chile pepper with my bare hands. (And a knife, of course.) I found it on a little chile bush, obscured behind some other shrubs, in the garden. I had picked the other chiles (green) quite some time ago - they were hot, but not that hot, if you know what I mean. So this one li'l pepper had stayed on the chile bush, unseen, for a couple of months. And, unlike its fellow chiles, it was bright fire-engine red. So did I pick the others too early? Or this one too late? ...

Braised steak and onions. What a combination. The dense creaminess of mash, laced with butter or cream, and the homely, honest flavour of beef and onions in steaming gravy which has been cooking away for hours on end, filling the house with an aroma so tantalising it is impossible to resist. If you're salivating already, as I am writing this, here's a quick and easy way to make this all-time favourite dish. Seal your beef, cubed, in oil after dusting it in plenty of flour. Place it in a heavy ovenproof lidded baking dish, place your quartered onions (about the same in weight as the beef) over the beef and cover with beef stock, salt and pepper. Dash of paprika if you wish. Cook away for as long as you like, but at least a couple of good long hours. Prepare your potatoes. Cook them (with garlic if you wish, just toss a clove or two in the water with the spuds) then place them in a big mashing bowl, add copious amounts of cream or butter or both, garlic if you...

What to do with a zucchini, a red pepper, a green pepper, some pumpkin and a carrot? Chop them and steam them while you cook up a pot of rice. When it's all done, place the rice in big bowls and top with the colourful steamed vegetables. Now it gets interesting. I combined in a mixing bowl some tahini, chopped spring onions (green onions), a tablespoon of pinenuts and a handful of raw sesame seeds. Then I spooned this nutty, yummy, crunchy mixture over the steamed vegetables. Delicious Monday night dinner. More, please.

That old song - 'and the fruit of the lemon is impossible to eat' - couldn't have got it more wrong. What were they thinking (or smoking) in the 'sixties? A couple of years back in my previous house I had a lemon tree that produced in excess of a thousand lemons annually. I never counted them of course, but I was always able to go out and pick a bucket of fifty or so lemons, and I did this at least every fortnight. The tree was perfectly positioned in a sunny north-sloping corner, receiving all the benefits of full sun with protection from too much wind - in fact, total protection from southerlies. (Bear in mind this is the southern hemisphere.) There were so many lemons we did not begrudge the scores that were eaten by (o)possums - only the way they ate them: they ate the peel off of the lemon, leaving dozens of perfectly naked lemons hanging on the tree. With lemons in abundance you need to be more prolific in cooking with them than just by squeezing a ...

This is a dish I grew up with, because lamb shanks were cheap and the meat, when it falls off the bone, is unctuous and delicious. The soup's OK too: Lamb Shank Soup. How easy is this? Place your lamb shanks, trimmed to your liking, in a large pot with a cup of soup mix (barley, lentils and dried peas), a diced onion, a diced carrot, a diced turnip, a couple of sticks of chopped celery, a bay leaf, maybe nip the top off a rosemary sprig and toss that in too. Season. Cover with water. Boil. Turn down. Simmer very slowly for a couple of hours or until the yummy aroma gets too much and you have to have a big, steaming bowl of delicious lamb shank soup RIGHT NOW. Dice a potato or two and place in the simmering soup half an hour before serving (or earlier if you like your 'tatties to turn to mush, they're yummy that way too). Decorate with parsley. Eat with dark beer (Guinness) or a strong cup of tea. There are, of course dozens of variations on this recip...