What I Cooked Last Night

No, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth. I've just been unexpectedly busy, the computer has gone to the workshop, the book has been trying - as in difficult - and an elderly aunt died. It's been one of those weeks where you feel like you're going at a hundred miles an hour but not getting anywhere. Like driving to Sydney in first gear. Apart from all that, everything is wonderful. I'll be back soon.

If we can drag our eyes away from the clouds for just a moment, let's take a look a the grill. Because tonight we are barbecuing, and there are three standout items on the menu. You may choose any or all. The coals are white hot and the beer is very, very cold and the white wine is less cold because if it is, you can't taste it. Never chill white wine too much. (Plus, I hate it, in restaurants, when they put freezing bottles of white wine in those '80s-style plastic wine chillers. Or even earlier-era ice buckets. I always take the bottle right out again. Why pay $20 or more for wine you can't taste?) I digress. I'm like that in late summer, when golden clouds are morphing into strange shapes overhead before disappearing behind the roof and the second gin and tonic has kicked in and there is a delicious aroma rising from the grill ... Oh. The grill. First item on the grill tonight is: corn . It's a late summer staple. Corn on the cob becomes corn on the hob; and ...

No, I didn't set the kitchen on fire. It was just a cloud passing over the house, viewed from the back yard; about 8pm on a hot night after a humid day.

Early one morning, I went into a Safeway supermarket. The regular - small - punnet of strawberries was $4.98. Then I went to the high street fruit market. The double punnet - 500g - was $2.99. The strawberries were better, smaller, fresher. I went into Coles. The 50g pack of pine nuts was $2.99, or $59.90 a kilogram. The toasted ones, 50g, were $3.79. That's $16 a kilo just to toast them, on top of your $59.90. Dried apricots, about $45 a kilogram. I went into the nut shop in the mall. The pine nuts were $24.99 a kilogram - toast them yourself for free - the apricots $23.99. I went into Safeway again. A pack of flat bread was $1.79 - on special . I went to the deli. The flat bread - A1 Bakery brand - was 99 cents. It was fresher. I went back to Coles. The truss tomatoes were $6.99; the Granny Smith apples $5.99 and the the capsicums (green) $4.99. Back to the fruit market, where the respective prices were $3.99, $2.99 and $2.99. And better quality. It took me all morning. Mr Rudd h...

The zucchinis have been plentiful, as have the cucumbers. Basil is raging, of course. But tomatoes? No appearance, your worship. Yet. The plants are fine, they are just not fruiting. This year's were grown from seedlings obtained from the local nursery. I'm not sure whether it's climate or pedigree. Of course it could be faulty gardening on my part. The best tomatoes we ever had were, in order, ones that self-seeded from original stock in the garden of our previous house whose prior owner had been an expert gardener and seedsman; and secondly, ones grown from Diggers' Club seeds. We might have to renew our Digger's Club membership and obtain seeds from there once again. (Digger's Club is a mail-order business supplying 'heirloom' seeds no longer available through usual channels. It is based at Heronswood, a property that sits high on the hill at Dromana and rambles over acres of working ornamental, vegetable and herb gardens, all set amidst massive matur...

We enjoyed Australia Days very much, thank you. Yes, there were two this year. The day officially falls on January 26, of course; but the faceless bureaucrats who decide these kinds of things (and what a great career that would be - plenty of time for morning tea) realised that there would be no time to celebrate on January 26, because being a Saturday, everyone would be playing cricket, and cricket is a game that takes all day, frequently without a result. So they declared that, while Australia Day would officially occur on Saturday, we would all have a holiday on Monday to celebrate it. So we did. Prawns in white wine on angel-hair pasta. I had picked up a bag of fresh cleaned raw prawns - Crystal Bay - from the fishmonger. About half a kilogram. I chopped five cloves of garlic finely and placed this in a heavy pan along with a cup of white wine. No oil necessary. Meanwhile I had the pasta cooking. I brought the white wine and garlic to a simmer and then added the prawns complete wit...

It was a long time ago. A warm night in 1975. I was driving my first car, a white XP Falcon four-door, to the Mornington Peninsula where my family had a holiday house at Somers. I had just turned into Coolart Road, that long stretch that always seemed to take forever. 1975 had not been a good year in music, unless you liked disco ducks or Barry Manilow. As usual, I was punching the radio buttons to find something decent with which to drive past endless pine plantations. I hit a button and a new song came on and by the time it had finished I was most of the way down Coolart Road without even noticing. A kind of haggard vibrato was dragged along by an insane chop of a beat that sounded like a Harley Davidson ticking over and then, near the end, a sax break blew the whole thing out of the water. In fact, it almost blew the speakers out of the car, which would have been a shame because they were only new. That year they were calling Bruce Springsteen the new Dylan. * The other day I was ma...

'Usually,' began the doctor, carefully feeling Thomas's forearm between his thumb and index finger, 'They bounce.' But this time, Thomas hadn't. The doctor sent us off for x-rays that revealed a greenstick fracture of the lower forearm. That was two weeks ago. Thomas adapted to the half cast perfectly well. He wore it like a vambrace, often taking to William with it. An excellent piece of armour indeed. Food was a problem. Fifteen-month-olds play with it. His bandage was covered in mash after each meal. Then Tracy hit on the brilliant strategy of wrapping it in a plastic bag at mealtimes. As well as at the beach and at bath time.

Hardware store owners always look like hardware store owners and newsagents always look like newsagents, but the people who run motels never look like they run motels. I wonder why. The woman in the office was in her fifties and tall, and had intelligent emerald eyes and a sensitive mouth and long hair stacked up in a kind of two-storey nest with a tortoiseshell stick the size of a chopstick separating the two storeys. She could have been a folk singer or a psychoanalyst or a society page editor, but here she was running a sleepy motel in a sleepy town on the northern slopes of the Great Dividing Range. The woman looked up from behind the counter as I entered and I asked her if there was a room and she said, yes indeed, there was, in an Irish lilt. She gave me the key to room two and would I like any milk? Yes, I replied and she disappeared and came back with a small ceramic jug. I got back into the car and handed the jug to Tracy and drove the car fifty metres to room two and wondered...

I lifted the sash window in the loungeroom and a blast furnace came into the room. I closed it again and the blast stopped, but the room was about ten degrees hotter than before. The loungeroom faces north and the wind was a northerly and it was a big wind and it was an angry wind. The temperature topped out at 42 yesterday. The overnight was to be 30, about the same as Tennant Creek and Broome and a degree or two lower than Port Hedland. Why so hot down here, then? The wind sweeps the country from top to bottom, across the dead heart, sucking heat from burning rock and molten sand and dumping it on Melbourne before blowing out across Bass Strait and on to Tasmania, the full point to the mainland's question mark. * The night swam by in a barely-remembered swelter of black heat. The boys slept surprisingly well. Tracy, not so well. I slept like a log. The heat doesn't bother me. William had stood on a bee in the late afternoon. I had set up a small pool on the lawn beneath the s...

7.30 p.m. Still 38 degrees. I was in the bay, a few hundred metres off shore. Tracy was on the beach in the shade of some ti-tree with Thomas, who was snoozing on the big white and blue beach towel. I was playing with William. The water is still only knee-deep here. Another few hundred metres farther out, timber depth markers indicate where the shelf drops off; and beyond that the jetskis go smack-smack-smack one way along the gentle swell and then smack-smack-smack the other way. You'd think they'd tire of it but they never do. Like mosquitos in the night. William and I looked back towards the shore. You know what I miss about the beach? Canvas unbrellas. Espcially the old ones designed in alternate concentric circles of colour and white with fringed edges. Or segmented into primary colours between the ribs; green, red, yellow, blue, etc. You see them in pictures of the beach printed in photogravure magazines of the 1950s; delicately poised on the sand over canvas deckchairs a...

One day, he wore a hole in his trouser knee. The next day he walked, and he hasn't stopped since.

He rang me the next day from a hotel on the other peninsula. He had completely forgotten. I said not to worry about it, we'll catch up later. I might even visit Alice Springs this year, finally. * Back to food matters, Food Nazi posted this culinary summary of the year the week before Christmas. Here is my version, a little shorter, I'm afraid. I don't get about much any more. Dish of the year: Flash-fried steak, a minute each side and topped with a thin slice of blue cheese and warmed, thinned home-made pesto. Rich but stunning. Served with fine chips and a simple green salad. Best eating experiences of the year: 1. See above. 2. A plate of glistening, quivering seafood dumplings at any number of the new Asian cafes that make the old sesame toast, sweet and sour, fried rice places look like something out of the 1950s. Which is what they usually are. 3. Barbecued salmon steaks under a setting sun. Favourite cafe snack: One man's journey through a world of foccaccia an...

In a large bowl, I tumbled quartered peeled potatoes and chunks of pumpkin in olive oil, salt and pepper, set them in a baking tin along with a whole head of unpeeled garlic and some rosemary and placed the tin in the oven. It had been a cooler day. My brother - the vague one from Alice Springs - was coming to visit. He would arrive some time in the afternoon or early evening. He couldn't be specific. Things change. He might see something interesting on the trip from the city to the Peninsula and be diverted. A lot can happen in ninety minutes. The rosemary was starting to get fragrant and I was chopping some more garlic. The radio on the shelf was broadcasting the cricket. I used to listen to the cricket just to hear the voice of Alan McGillivray. Now I listen to it to find out who is winning, if anyone. A five-day game that ends in a draw is a marvellously Victorian thing, like a steam omnibus. Cricket should be heritage listed. Half an hour later. I made slits in two pieces of l...