What I cooked last night.

The anti-road protest sticker read: No East-West Link . It was on the back of a car.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I embarked on a campaign to champion the much-unloved vegetable, the Brussels sprout. This robust brassica with its distinctive earthy, nutty taste is one of my favourites and lends itself to far greater cooking variety than it is generally credited with. Linguine with bacon and Brussels sprouts. Trim sprouts and slice in half through the core. Cook pasta and sprouts. This can be done in the same pot. In a pan, cook a few scored cloves of garlic in olive oil. Add two or three slices of short bacon chopped into small squares. Take care not to burn the garlic. Add a slosh of white wine, a shake of white pepper and a third cup of cream. Reduce. When pasta is done, drain. Pour creamy bacon mixture over pasta and sprouts. Top with fresh grated pecorino and chopped parsley. Drink: McLaren Vale shiraz. * The boys are watching the Commonwealth Games. Comment: "Dad, this is not as exciting as the World Cup."

We don't have central heating, so sometimes I warm the place with the aroma of food. Not sure how this works but the smell of a joint roasting in the oven, for example, makes the house feel a few degrees warmer. The following soup recipe does the same as it bubbles away slowly on the stove. It reminds me of coming home after school when I could detect the delicious aroma about a block away, produced by the unbeatable combination of onion, beef herbs and root vegetables. Scotch broth. 1. In a litre of water, simmer 750g of lean beef cut into pieces for two hours. Skim if necessary. 2. Now add half a cup of barley, a chopped onion, a diced turnip and a chopped leek. Cook another half an hour; then add a diced carrot and a few stalks of celery, finely chopped. 3. When carrot is just tender, remove meat, shred it and return it to the pot. Season and add white pepper. 4. Serve broth in large bowls sprinkled with parsley, and hot thick buttered toast on the side. Drink: sco...

The first time around, meaning marriage mark one - many years ago - our two children were in creche or day care or after care depending on their age. We worked; and they came home at six from paid care, and they had dinner and they went to bed. No time to play on weekdays. I was in a career, and a career means you have to have 'quality' time with your children. These days, since I am freelance - meaning quite often not working - I can pick up the boys from school and take them to the football ground and kick the ball with them until darkness. This is the pinnacle of life. It doesn't get any better. I have had a business career, a sporting career, houses, girlfriends, wives, cars, wine, holidays, money, gourmet food, dogs, holidays, books. Some I have lost. (Not just the books.) However, spending endless unharried - and unhurried - hours kicking a ball around on the well-kept lawn of a mostly deserted football ground defeats everything else. Sometimes the sun falls behin...

My Salinger Year is a fascinating 'insight' (a greatly overused cliché) into how a writer met a famous author, whom she didn't know from Jerry Seinfeld. Or else it is a cynical exploitation based on the most tenuous of links. You decide. While the title technique cannot be ignored, has it been utilised to its full search term potential? I have never met a famous author, but I do have an uncle who saw Bryce Courtenay signing books in Angus and Robertson once. He didn't buy one. Me and J. R. R. Tolkien, W. E. Johns, Enid Blyton, George Orwell, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, James Hadley Chase, Raymond Chandler, Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, Ovid, Ernest Hemingway and Dr. Seuss. There's a connection somewhere.

You can't act the expressions on the faces of the Costa Ricans as they shot for goal. And there's no take two.

The flat screen television in the café sits high over the pasta shelf, and the volume is adjusted cleverly so that it becomes audible over the café talk when a goal is imminent or a vital passage in play occurs, thanks to the rising pitch of the commentator's voice. In this way, you miss none of the important action while not having the sound predominate. After 9 o'clock in the morning, when the rush commuters have 'grabbed' their lattes and run for the train, the slower customers arrive: the real estate agents from across the street come in for their takeaway coffees; Moreland council workers hunch over their cups around an outside table; the old Greek men come in and put coins on the counter for another short black, keeping their caffeine/talk ratio meter going. Occasionally the picture on the television pixillates, turning national colours into screen bloodshed. A player runs towards goal, stops unnaturally, shoots forward several inches, and then his head explod...

Take a kilogram of broad beans, pod and peel them (peeling individual beans is optional). Cook two chopped onions in olive oil in a large heavy pan for ten minutes, add two scored cloves of garlic, sauté a few more minutes, stirring; and then add two teaspoons of ground cumin, half a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a dash of ground coriander. Now add the beans and a cup or so of water. Cook on low heat until the beans soften. Adjust fluid if necessary. Add half a cup of lemon juice, two or three tablespoons of olive oil, and stir. Remove from pan and process in batches to a semi-smooth consistency. Reheat when desired, for example, at 2 a.m, when a World Cup game is about to commence and you need food to keep you awake should the game fail to excite. Add chopped coriander or dill for an extra flavour zing, as if it needs it. Ideal on toasted Lebanese or Turkish bread with zatar. Just swipe the bread through the bean mixture and eat. Also ideal as a dip with blanched green vege...

Cook enough linguini for however many people you are feeding. I used to have one of those spaghetti utensils with punched-out measuring holes for various quantities, but these never were accurate. Trial and error teaches quantities best. Meanwhile, warm some olive oil in a large pan and add half a cup of white wine, plenty of cracked black pepper, and two scored cloves of garlic. Cook gently without burning garlic, and then add a dozen or so halved walnuts*. Cook gently for a few minutes, stirring. Add half a cup of cream, reduce. Fold several torn basil leaves through the cooked linguini and add the sauce. Finish with shards of parmesan or the genuine reggiano if you can afford it. *Or if you have pine nuts, leave out the walnuts, toast the pine nuts and scatter over the finished dish.

From Bernie's Two Minute Friday , the weekly St Bernard's Old Collegians email bulletin: Essendon, fresh from another bout of controversy courtesy of the ASADA witch-hunt ... er, investigation, will be fired up to put a scoring-challenged Melbourne team to the sword. No comparison. History's most infamous witch trial went for only fifteen months, from February 1692 to May 1693. This one looks like running for years.

Chop two onions, and fry them in your preferred medium and pan until soft. Take a dozen roasted cashews, a teaspoon of chili, a knob of peeled and chopped ginger, a large clove of garlic (or two small), half a teaspoon each of cinnamon and garam masala, two cardamom pods, a couple of rays of star anise (optional) and half a cup of vinegar and blitz them all together in a food processor. Reserve half the cooked onions and add the cashew mixture to the rest of the onions, and stir in one large can of coconut milk. Simmer gently for a minute or two. Meanwhile, place a couple of tablespoons of raisins into a small pot of just-boiled water, to which you have added a teaspoon of turmeric. Steep for ten minutes, until they fatten and then drain and add them to the simmering sauce. Now cube some firm-fleshed fish such as swordfish or salmon and dredge the cubes through a little salt and pepper. Add the fish to the sauce, stir and cook very gently until fish is just cooked. Adjust fluid...

Recently, six out of ten people, when asked in a survey where peanuts grow, replied: "On a tree." I have nothing to add to that. But it brought to mind the man that used to circle the old suburban football ovals with a hessian sack containing paper bags full of peanuts. "Peanuts, 10 cents a bag!" he'd call out. It was usually around half time, and beer made you hungry. Mmmm ... peanuts, in the shell. * In a pot, I heated about ¾ cup peanut butter, a quarter cup of crushed peanuts, four tablespoons of hot chili sauce, two tablespoons each of tamari and white vinegar, a good squeeze of harissa paste, and the juice of a lime. I like it spicy so I usually use more chili paste and sometimes a raw chopped chili. Serve as a sauce for blanched vegetables such as zucchini, florets of broccoli etc. Or try it with sweet potato: split a sweet potato down the middle, bake it and top it generously with peanut sauce and sour cream, and a squirt of lime juice and a show...

In a large heavy pan with a tight fitting lid, fry two sliced onions in ghee or oil. Stir in a quarter teaspoon each of cardamom, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and pepper when onion has softened. Now add a cup each of basmati rice and rinsed red lentils, three and a half cups of boiling water and two teaspoons of salt. Stir. Lid the pan tightly. Turn down heat very low and leave it for 20 minutes. When the rice grains have ballooned, it’s done. During the twenty minutes, top three red capsicums and remove seeds and pith. Stuff the capsicums with the fragrant rice and lentil mixture. (You'll have some left over.) Replace tops and place stuffed capsicums in a casserole, which should be of a size that roughly holds their tops in place. Take a jar of tomato puree, add a little water and stir through a teaspoon each of coriander and cumin. Pour into casserole so that it comes halfway up the capsicums. Bake until capsicums collapse, about an hour. Adjust fluid if your oven is particula...

3RRR announcer Brian Wise plays plenty of Bob Dylan, but on Saturday he used the excuse of Dylan's birthday - and the announcement of some Dylan concerts at the Palais - to crowd the playlist. We were in the car, on the peninsula under a cold streaky sky alongside a grey heaving sea, heading for town. Music sounds better when you're driving. The two hours made the boys Dylan fans, continuing a long family tradition dating back to me. I told them Dylan's frog-like growl makes him either the worst good singer in the world, or the best bad one. They thought about that for a while. Put his voice over that Warner Brothers cartoon where the frog sings opera, I said, and you'll see what I mean. It fits perfectly. Close to town now. "Changing of the Guards" from Street Legal even took me by surprise. The year that album came out I saw Dylan play a night concert at the Myer Music Bowl; I had an open air ticket, it rained, I could barely hear the music, and I drove h...