What I Cooked Last Night

Last week - but the photo is a year old. Gift: first pair of football boots, half price at Rebel Sport. End of season is a great time for football fans to have their birthday. They get twice the value. Second gift: vintage 1950s sheriff's badge and holster set in original unopened packaging, made in England and found in Essendon op shop. Gold for a seven year old. Tom said it was his best birthday ever. Five friends visited after school for an early dinner of spaghetti bolognese.

Although you could, of course, polish your shoes with Vegemite. One of these products is celebrating its 90th birthday. I'm not sure which.

On October 23, before even the Melbourne Cup has been run! A radio commercial for Mercedes Benz cars, backed by Angels We Have Heard on High , the voiceover urging people to 'secure' a demo model Merc, the faux-upmarket jargon designed to impress the cashed-up bogans who comprise today's Mercedes Benz market. MB could at least have spent some money on an original composition rather than a tune in the public domain. I'm off to the supermarket to secure a carrot.

It was a nice stew, almost perfect. It's only taken several decades to refine, but I'm almost there. It can't be taught. You have to learn it by trial and error. How small you cube the beef. The few extra seconds browning it. The amount of flour, salt, pepper. The heat of the pan. The weather. Whether or not you have had coffee yet that day. Where the planets are. Whatever. Even so, it is still better some times than others. That bit is chance. But even the children ate it the other night. Then they wanted more. That proves it. I used oyster blade, which has a thin layer of connective tissue running through it like a vein of gold in quartz, which melts during long cooking and turns the meat molten. I browned it in seasoned flour in a very hot pan, but browning is the wrong word, so we will not use it again. Seal it only. Browning will cook it. The word browning should be reserved for Robert, or the gun. Then it was all routine. Beef stock, a carrot, an onion, a stick of...

Subtitled: The Hunt For Red Cabbage in October. * Why are menu descriptions in restaurants so long and pretentious? Because it helps them sell the meal. A restaurant menu would never offer 'cabbage risotto' because no one would order it, would they? Of course not. It doesn't sound very nice. But it is. Risotto with leek and red cabbage. Finely chop an onion and a couple of inches of leek, and score two cloves of garlic**. Saute these in a generous amount of olive oil until just soft. Pour in a cupful of Arborio rice. Stir the rice to coat in oil. Pour in half a cup of white wine. Then add enough boiling stock to cover the rice. Stir to stop the rice sticking. If you turn down the heat low enough, you can leave it for a while; but remarkably, many stoves can't go down beyond a certain temperature. I used to have an electric stove and found it perfect, but most people don't like them. Finely slice a couple of red cabbage leaves. Add. They will give off the...

Saturday afternoon we were at the indoor pool. It was built some time in the 1980s overlooking City Oval. They put it right behind the northern goal, and the entire south wall is a window, making it a virtual grandstand. You go for a swim and get a VFL football game thrown in, with a view across the brilliant green to terraces, mainly empty, that rise away and almost obscure the Edwardian roofs beyond. The shadows creep across the green late in the afternoon, and sometimes rainstorms blow in from the west. The old grandstand is at the other end. I followed VFA decades ago when Essendon had some lean years and some Essendon players transferred to Dandenong, then a VFA power. Now it's VFL, a blend of the old VFA and the then-VFL reserves. On Saturday, they put the AFL grand final on the loudspeaker system and we - the boys and I - played pool volleyball and listened to the game. The place was almost empty, like two grand finals ago . Everyone goes home and watches it on television,...

Leeks are the world's most under-rated vegetable, except by those in the know, and the Welsh. They can even play a starring role in pasta dishes. While many people think of pasta sauces as either tomato- or cream-based, or rough equivalents, this recipe contains neither, but is as unctuous as the cream versions, and packs as much flavour as the acid-edged tomato ones. Rigatoni with leek, mushroom and gorgonzola. Slice one large leek finely into very thin rings. Rinse to eliminate grit. Slice half a red capsicum into fine dice. Slice six button mushrooms. Place leek, capsicum and mushrooms into a pan and cook slowly with olive oil and a little butter until the leek has 'melted' but not caramelised. The capsicum and mushrooms will look after themselves, the latter shedding a little fluid to keep the whole thing moist. Meanwhile, cook your pasta. For this, I used rigatoni. Drain pasta and fold through the leek 'sauce'. Top with chopped parsley. Perfect as i...

And then, by chance, I was back in the college shown in the previous post, one cold sunny morning in early September. The recently deceased spouse of an older relative had specified that his wake be held on sacred ground. And so, there we were – three cousins, amongst a large crowd of friends and relations – gazing through the panoramic window of the new sports pavilion overlooking the main football oval. At the bottom of a steep hill, a natural valley carved out by Steele’s Creek, the oval is hemmed in by dramatic terracing that rises away at just the right angle to make it a perfect, natural amphitheatre. It’s the only original part of the entire complex. Human architects could not improve it. We watched as a tractor made manoeuvres in the middle of the ground. I think it was preparing the wicket for the cricket season. Beyond the oval, way up on the hill, a Ryan’s bus roared up the Buckley Street ascent towards Essendon Station, just like they did forty years ago when we stared, bor...

St Bernard's College celebrated sixty years in West Essendon last Friday. The college started in 1939 on a postage stamp sized block of land in Moonee Ponds, and the story of how the land in West Essendon was purchased is legendary, with an enterprising Br Murphy intercepting an estate agent with a cheque late one night to stave off the signing of an early morning developer deal. The proposed streets, never to be built, had already been named and printed in that year's Melways street directory, in a pre-emptive strike by the developer. ( See my book Murphy's Lore and Other Stories: A History of St Bernard's College as Told by Those Who Were There .) The sixtieth anniversary was shadowed by the death of 2008 graduate Christopher Lane, who was murdered in Oklahoma, USA last week. R.I.P. * Photo: looking to the west, the original building on the West Essendon hill; not a house to be seen, and a faint row of trees on top of the hill where Milleara Road runs today. I...

Cook pasta - spaghetti is ideal for this olio e aglio -style recipe. Toss spaghetti in a little olive oil. Cut up a dozen anchovies into small pieces. Cut a fresh chilli into very small rings. Toss anchovies and chilli through the spaghetti. This simple dish packs an amazing flavour punch. It's been on high rotation here for years. * I saw a man gazing up into the tree. It was him: the council arborist. "It will have to come down," he said, continuing to gaze at the tree. "But not because of the mistletoe," he went on, confirming the theory, "But because prunus is prone to borers which weaken the forks, and it's too close to the wires anyway." We'll have a new prunus in a couple of weeks. I have a particular fondness for prunus: my mother's street used to be lined with mature trees, and in August they would put on a show. When visiting at night I would turn into the street at the bottom of the hill, flick the headlights onto hig...

Investigation via Google proved fruitless. So I called the council, because who would know more about trees planted on council land than the local government arborist? I held on for a long time, because it was the week the rates notices went out; and half of Moreland was on the phone to council, waiting in silent rage to vent their anger at the huge annual increase in rates. Finally I got through and I said I wanted to talk to the arborist; and the receptionist said which arborist, because they had several; and I said any arborist would do, and then she asked me to describe the growth before she put me through, adding that I sounded like an arborist myself; and I said I was as far from an arborist as a maltster is from an automatic transmission mechanic. That was the end of the conversation, and she put me through. I got the arborist's voicemail. He hasn't called back yet. I suppose they don't hang around the office too much, especially in this weather. There was a gumt...

Tuna pasta usually means tuna from a can - either cooked with a napoli sauce and sludged over spaghetti; or the non-tomato version in which peas nestle in the burrows of pasta shells blanketed with melting cheese. Both are delicious; but I often make another version using fresh tuna. Pasta nicoise. This needs a chunky pasta such as the common rigatoni; I prefer tortiglioni, a similar cylindrical ridged pasta. Marinate a piece of fresh tuna in lemon juice, chopped garlic, salt and pepper for a short time. Cook pasta. Meanwhile, sear the tuna in a little olive oil and white wine. When just done, cut into fat cubes. Trim a dozen green beans, chop into thirds and steam until just done. Do the same with some asparagus spears. Chop two or three very good vine-ripened tomatoes. If very good tomatoes are not available, use semi-dried ones. The tomatoes can be warmed through or left cold, the latter particularly good for a refreshing spring version of the dish. When pasta is don...

OK, so let's investigate. First, a walk down the street. Oh, no! Next door's nature-strip prunus has the same odd outgrowth; but in two or three places. Are we descending into a strange world of Edward Lear-like Bong trees where the leaves of one grow on another completely different type? Evergreen leaves on a deciduous tree? Or is there something more sinister at work? I never read much science fiction but I did read all of John Wyndham. Now let's climb. The parasite appears to have germinated in forks of the tree. These very old prunus are subject to attack by borers of some kind, which leave small deposits that take on a muddy consistency after rain. This mud lodges in the forks. Let's presume it provides a fertile medium for germination. Closer inspection reveals tendrils encircling the bough below the infestation. Hybrid roots? Perhaps. My correspondent, Melbourne Girl, suggested Mistletoe of some kind. But does mistletoe have exterior roots or invade its hos...

Why do I see, way up at the top of the very old and very large deciduous plum tree on the nature strip at the front of our house, a bough which appears to be growing evergreen eucalyptus leaves?