What I Cooked Last Night

The first time I visited New South Wales was by river. I swam across the Murray when I was a teenager. Why walk across the bridge when you can swim? I wouldn't do it now; happy to read a book by the bank while the sun goes down. I never read before mid-afternoon. One of those habits you slip into after a lifetime of enforced academic and, later, work-related reading. But I'll read well into the night, light and eyelids permitting. Right now, it was the time of night when the birds in the trees have shut up at last and the only sound was the far-off groan of trucks on the Murray Valley Highway. The book started this way: I had just finished breakfast and was filling my pipe when I got Bullivant's telegram. It was at Furling, the big country house in Hampshire where I had come to convalesce after Loos, and Sandy, who was in the same case, was hunting for the marmalade. All right, that brings me to another curious first. This was the first book I read completely online: ...

2012 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the first Christmas celebrated in my mother's house. She and my father moved into the just-built house during 1952, after spending the first eighteen months of their marriage living in her mother and father's house in Ascot Vale; the second half of that period with a baby. West Essendon was a new suburb then, with nothing farther west except thistle and the Maribyrnong river valley. Over the years Christmas lunch attendance grew as six babies followed the first, receded as grown-up children pulled up roots and ventured overseas, and then grew again when they returned and settled down and had their own families. We all thought the annual Christmas event would eventually become a moveable feast, but it hung on grimly in Deakin Street, staunchly defending moves to extricate it to new surrounds, failing only one year during the innovative '80s when some brave pioneer thought a Christmas picnic at Brimbank Park might be a good idea. Not a...

This is the kind of thing that is ridiculed by the purists and loved by everyone else. I walked half a mile to the dusty Foodworks supermarket in the small country town that the river winds through - or should I say the town built around several bends in the river - and bought a tin of cream of chicken soup, a packet of grated parmesan cheese and some fresh button mushrooms. From its wine shop annex, I bought a bottle of Deakin Estate chardonnay. Then back to the river. I set some water to boil over the flame and, in a pan on a cooler part of the fire, I warmed some arborio rice in olive oil. When  the water bubbled I carefully and gradually poured some into the rice, interspersing it with white wine. I opened the tin of cream of chicken soup and folded the contents through the simmering rice, once again gradually. Its aroma was so good I was tempted to eat some of the salty, chickeny ooze straight out of the can. (I actually did this as a child - canned soup concentrate is del...

My sister is two years and six months in the photo, taken by my father one hot January day in 1966, with date and location written on the back. Question: which Melbourne CBD building hosted this rooftop carnival? The fragment of building in the background may give a clue. Or not. Take a wild guess in comments below. Answer in a couple of days.

If you have the ingredients, this is easily achievable when camping if you’re good at juggling pots and pans over a slow fire. Not literally, of course; although that no doubt would entertain your fellow campers should the river rolling by cease to amuse. In any case, couscous is just instant pasta and the lamb is just a straightforward stew with a few exotic spices. But the aroma! If you thought the last recipe was an outdoor drawcard, don’t cook this in a busy campsite. A kilogram of onions gently frying with cinnamon and raisins? Paddlesteamers would tie up. * Place one kilogram of cubed lamb, a big chopped onion and 1.75 litres of water into a large pot over hot embers. When it comes to the boil, throw in a teaspoon each of ginger and cinnamon, four cloves and a good shake each of salt and ground black pepper. Too easy so far. Open a cold beer. Keep the pot on a low simmer for half the afternoon; i.e., from lunchtime to afternoon tea, or from that to dinnertime. (Or ditt...

Janis Gore of Gone South is now posting at Radar Love . I like the music references.

'Big, sharp and dangerous' is how one gardening writer described rose bush Lorraine Lea's thorns. 'So don't plant one near driveways or pathways,' the writer continued.  I have one in the front garden but clear of the pathway. I did, however, almost sever a tendon when pushing the lawn mower under an arched Lorraine Lea branch, and a thorn cut through the top knuckle of my clenched fist like a shark's fin cutting the water. At least it was a clean cut. Lorraine Lea is also a climber. A few years ago, after pulling out a too-rampant jasmine, I put one in the east sideway where, once it reached the top of the fence, it could ramble. About twelve feet away, I planted another rose: Albertine. Twelve feet wasn't enough. Albertine is winning the turf war, its unusually narrow stems overtaking Lorraine Lea, and its soft, smallish delicate pink buds now appearing to grow on Lorraine Lea stems. Lorraine's are a denser pink with a faint yellow tinge....

So they turned Victoria Bitter back into a beer, reissued the earlier pack design and brought back the old advertising line, a hard-earned thirst needs a big cold beer . Good*. I cooked up the following stew while camping along the Murray River recently. Browning the meat takes a little extra effort and an additional implement or two. Optionally you can throw the whole lot in together. When your pot starts steaming, the aroma will drift along the bank and you'll have visitors. Beef with beer. In a large pot over the camp fire, place one chopped onion, a dash of oil, 500g diced beef (dredged in seasoned flour and browned), a chopped carrot, two sticks of chopped celery, a bay leaf or two, a chopped leek, a sprig of thyme, two tablespoons of tomato puree or paste, a tablespoon of brown sugar, one can of Victoria Bitter and enough beef stock to cover. Let it bubble away for a few hours. Serve with potatoes wrapped in foil and buried in the coals for an hour or two ...

The last thing the world needs now is another chorizo recipe. Chorizo is a cliché. Pick up any newspaper or magazine and there’s a recipe for chorizo. But there’s a reason. It’s good; the dried Spanish-style sausage is packed with chilli and garlic. It pairs well with pasta as long as all the ingredients are robust. I use rigatoni instead of the usual clichéd penne. Recipe Cook 250g rigatoni. Halfway through, place one or two chorizo sausages in the cooking water. Cook five minutes more. Drain. Combine pasta in a pot with a tablespoon of good olive oil, a drained tin of borlotti beans and half a tin of diced tomatoes. Slice chorizo, fold through pasta, place in serving bowels, add halved cherry tomatoes and a little crumbled feta. That covers most of Europe.

Wouldn't normally post a picture of a face-painted child but the quality of the artwork was outstanding in this case. He'd been to a party. Thomas turns six tomorrow. Here he is at a few days old in 2006. I can see a bit of tiger about him now, come to think of it. * I'm the king of the jungle They call me the tiger man I'm the king of the jungle They call me tiger man If you cross my path You'll take your own life in your hands (Lewis/Burns)

Late in the afternoon, we were on a beach on the southern side of the Murray River. The sky was that shocking blue you get in the inland and the day was still hot. The river was flowing north-east, which means the beach was on one of those bends that doubles back on itself, a billion-year-old fluke of nature. The water was silent and deadly. You could see the current out towards the middle; fast busy wrinkles that would have you downstream in a flash. The boys waded to a small island near the shore that was just mud with an ancient gum tree growing in it. The gum was bent and its lower limbs dragged in the flowing water and it looked like an old fisherman trying to hold a net. No wonder the aborigines saw spirits in everything; the quality of light and the depth of the shadows out here makes figures of everything. They practised going along in the softer current close to shore. I stood downstream a little and showed them how to swim towards the bank with the flow, and not against i...

Dropped down into the tea tree to the west flashed; colours sat moved along red head blue sun flashing; gold wings? gone. Thomas saw it first. Seven am on a spring morning.

It was one of those cold nights that creep up on you in early spring. I was on the train. Every passenger was wired, but they call them customers these days. "Attention all customers: the 7.40 from Frankston has been cancelled due to overhead works. Fingers tapping and flicking. Necks craned down. Eyes fixed on screens. Automatons. Earlier that day, one of my clients – a consumer goods manufacturer – had asked me for help with his Facebook page; meaning his company's Facebook page, not his own personal Facebook page. Yes! Companies have Facebook pages! The page's message board or wall or whatever the thing is called had been beset with negative comments about one of its products. Many were factually incorrect, some were abusive, and some were unpublishable in mainstream media. He wanted to design a kind of pseudo app within the page that would get complaints off the wall and into a forum so that the comments could be sorted and the genuine ones dealt with individually...

Obscure quiz question: what’s so special about the following football score? Carlton 18.6.114 Richmond 10.9.69 Answer at the end of this post. (If you’ve already picked it, you are a football tragic with an eye for detail, or a Richmond fan who never forgets.) * Richmond was Struggletown for most of the twentieth century, a hazy suburb of worker's cottages jammed in amongst factories that made glue and paint and matches. The Bryant and May matchworks and the Rosella cannery employed thousands. When there was a northerly, the smoke from the factories drifted across the river and got in the eyes of South Yarra residents. * Every year I spend four weeks – sometimes more – in Richmond, one of the world's great inner suburbs. It's work; but I like to pretend it's a holiday. I enjoy walking the narrow streets at lunchtimes, gazing at the mostly renovated worker's cottages amongst the jumble of factories, warehouses and buildings of no clear description that c...