What I Cooked Last Night

The whole thing has gone on for well over two years, after the 'blackest day in Australian sport' circus, starring a cast of glowering bureaucrats, politicians and sports administrators. During the two years, the letter writers just didn't go away, like those 4 a.m. mosquitoes you'd like to swat but can't make yourself wakeful enough to do so. Not to mention the social media twits. 'I have torn up my ticket,' they proclaimed. 'I no longer wish to be associated nor identified with such an organisation.' Pomposity meets verbosity. 'I will never attend another game. Nor will my children.' A bit harsh. What if they were to change their mind? 'I do not want my children exposed to such a culture.' 'I am no longer a follower.' 'I have written to the board expressing my dismay.' What, as well as a letter to the editor? Some people had nothing better to do than sit around the house writing sanctimonious lett...

Thanks to Ilana of Inner-FM who played our four-track request on her fabulous Saturday night show Rock'n Roll Heaven on which she plays all the legends. Our set ended with greatest bluegrass song of all time, Bill Monroe's Blue Moon of Kentucky , performed by Mr E. Presley. Thanks Ilana.

NO. 9: ASPARAGUS Although commonplace now, the semi-mystical asparagus still provokes sighs of pleasurable anticipation when served to grateful diners. People go to any lengths (pardon the pun) to collect this delicacy, even risking encounters with snakes and traffic, as Donaldo Saveiro observed: Robust ladies in rubber boots, carrying sticks to ward off vipers, can be seen constantly patrolling the highways and backroads here in Umbria from March through June in a perennial search for wild asparagus ( asparagi selvatici ) that grow along the roadways, so fond are the Umbrians of spaghetti alla boscaiola and tagliatelle con salsa di asparagi . - La Vera Cucina Italiana , Macmillan, 1991 Unceremoniously chopped into pasta is one thing, but chefs are often tempted by the long, delicate slenderness of the asparagus spear to over-design. I was once served twelve asparagus placed radially on an oversize white round plate. A cherry tomato sat in the centre and black drops of some kind...

A panel of experts commissioned by Mr Kitchen Hand has come up with a definitive list of the world's top ten best-loved vegetables. The panel was plied with pizza and red wine during a marathon session behind locked doors before announcing the results. We commence the countdown at No. 10, below. The Top Ten Vegetables of All Time NO. 10: ZUCCHINI . Zucchini is the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde of the vegetable world. Boil the hell out of it and you'll serve up a bland vegetable with a slightly bitter aftertaste - and you'll never cook it again. But treat it with the respect this green marrow-like vegetable deserves, and it turns into a completely different article. Marry zucchini with fiery flavours, barbecue it after marinading it, or stuff it with ... just about anything. Cheap, easy to cook, and widely available, the zucchini deserves its place in the Top Ten, despite the reservations of some of the panel. Steamed zucchini. Sounds innocuous, but makes a great sid...

I've posted the following recipe before, but it bears repeating. It works well at this time of year in Australia when, during the cooler days of early autumn, thoughts turn to casseroles and stews. While today is forecast to reach 28 degrees, the sky is slate grey and the wind is whipping drizzle across the city, where sentimental workers are right now lining up at pubs and bars for Guinness. Irish stew. Roughly slice two large onions; cut four large potatoes into rounds as thick as the head on a pint of Guinness; chop four carrots the same way. Place lamb forequarter or neck chops in a large pot with alternate layers of onions, potatoes and carrots. Add water to just cover; add salt and pepper and plenty of chopped curly-leaf parsley. Bring to boil, skim and simmer 90 minutes. Cool and chill overnight. Next day, remove fat before reheating. Serve with barley, colcannon or simple mashed potato. Colcannon. Some consider this more delicious than the actual stew and they c...

Sometimes you can't help overhearing conversations. Even one-way ones. Occasionally the one-way ones are even more interesting, because having to imagine the unheard replies makes you listen even closer. It was late morning on a warm, overcast autumn day. I stood at the checkout queue by the customer service desk at the Rye store of one of the two major supermarkets. While I waited I daydreamed out the front window towards the beach across the road. A voice behind the service desk brought my attention back inside. It was a middle-aged staff member, talking on the phone, obviously to the store manager. She looked flustered. "A customer is coming to see you. She was here about an hour ago. She bought about six bags of shopping," the staff member was saying. "She rang the store a few minutes ago. I answered the phone. I've just hung up. She wants to bring it all back." Pause. It was the manager's turn to speak. The staff lady again: "Everyth...

This city is obsessed with coffee, that milky, jittery, machined addiction made by poseurs who call themselves baristas. Just look at our major waste problem, the environmental disaster that is disposable take-away coffee cups littering the inner city. Disposable was supposed to mean single use, not throw it on the footpath or out the window or leave it under the train seat or on the park bench. They're everywhere. And now, the disposables are carried in a disposable cardboard multi-cup carrier. Insane. Aside from all that, no drink should ever be taken from cardboard or that abomination, polystyrene. Ban the lot of them. Hot drinks should only ever be drunk from porcelain or glass. All those inner urban Green-voting hipsters should live up to their 3Rs mantras. Reuse, recycle ... or recant, pretenders. That brings us to the superior drink, tea; drunk by the silent minority – perhaps even majority – and appreciated for its loftier qualities, its more subtle pleasures. While cof...

It was just a slightly complicated garden if you were visiting, but if you had to work on it, it was a jungle. I was working on it, first time in years. "Mow the lawn," was the brief, but that was just shorthand for tidy the garden after forty years of neglect. And 'lawn' was a metaphor, albeit a possibly unintended one, unless she was being ironic. Language is difficult. The canopies of some of trees were just about down to the ground so it was hard to get the mower underneath let alone myself, being six feet tall. I kind of laid flat and pushed it under like one of those roller trolleys mechanics use to slide under cars. Other sections of lawn were dotted with various rampant ground cover plantings that had wandered from the areas intended to be covered. I went around these and erred on the side of mowing as much of them back as possible. Half an hour of lawnmower gymnastics and the air was thick with dirt. There hadn't been a lot of grass at many points....

It used to be said that humans can remember up to seven digits easily and it got harder after that; hence the original exchange-based seven-digit telephone numbers. You used to be able to remember the numbers of family and close friends without resorting to that exquisite 1950s Bakelite/plastic relic, the teledex. Yes. I can prove that. Given that the 04 on today’s phone numbers is a given, that leaves eight digits to be recalled. Yet Tracy cannot remember her own phone number ... let alone anyone else's! And I'm not much better. QED, which is an old expression roughly translated into today's language as I told you so. That figure - seven - occurs in more recent research, once again undertaken exhaustively across a control group of five, which showed that on average home chefs retain a shortlist of exactly seven recipes that they rotate regularly. Of course, beyond the magnificent seven favourites exists an infinity of possibilities with which the home chef occasional...

After cheese mac, the world's second favourite comfort food - according to a recent authoritative survey of two people - is meatballs. When you add cheese to the recipe, the desirability of the recipe reaches stratospheric levels. Dishes such as these were frowned upon for years but, recently, 'experts' have decided that cholesterol is no longer harmful. All that wasted energy avoiding cholesterol has probably cause stress-based heart disease in millions of people. So the biggest health tip of all is: never listen to health bureaucrats' warnings. Meatballs with cheddar and mushrooms. Place a large fist-sized ball of pork and veal mince into a large mixing bowl and, with your hands, fold into it two or three very finely chopped button mushrooms, half a cup of grated cheddar, half a very finely diced small zucchini, one very finely chopped spring onion, a chopped clove of garlic, a dash of Worcestershire sauce, a tablespoonful of oatmeal, a sprinkling of polenta and a...

Nothing beats macaroni cheese. It's the ultimate comfort food. Would you rather go home to macaroni cheese or a raw carrot? My case rests. Macaroni cheese is usually made with short pasta, for no better reason than convenience. It's the kind of food people eat while watching television. You can stick a fork in it and not have to avert your gaze from the screen. But I use fettuccine instead, and this one small change takes the dish to a whole new level. As you turn your fork to unfurl the long strands of fettuccine from the unctuous clutches of the creamy cheesy sauce in the bowl, it adheres; producing a combination of texture, taste, aroma and culinary sensuality unmatched in fine dining. You just can’t watch TV at the same time, or you’ll flick cheese sauce all over the couch. Dreamy fettuccine with three cheeses. Melt 60g - just guess - of butter in a saucepan. Move saucepan off the heat and add enough flour to make a roux, stirring. Once combined, add two cups of mi...

Prawns on the barbecue can be boring, especially if they're cooked even a few seconds too long, because they dry out. Baked with white wine, they stay moist and have an enhanced flavour. Just make sure you buy Australian ones, because you never know what the Chinese ones have been swimming in, but I'm sure you can imagine, given recent news stories . Peel, devein and clean two dozen large prawns, retaining heads and tails, and fry quickly in olive oil, barely a minute each side. Throw in four diced garlic cloves at the same time so that they will fry briefly but not burn. Now tip in a cup of white wine, shake pan, cook another 30 seconds and then put the lot into a casserole. Speed is the essence. Tip half a dozen finely diced, very ripe truss or roma tomatoes (or a can of diced tomatoes) into the same frypan, add a few torn basil leaves and a good shake of cracked black pepper. Warm through. Cut a piece of fetta cheese into a dozen cubes of the size you would add to a...

My first mother-in-law collected 1970s trash, which is cool today, but she collected it while the 1970s were still going. Now, her house would be a collector's gold mine. It was an old bloated Queen Anne style with bay windows and draughty hallways and return verandahs; plenty of space to fill up with useless knick-knacks. The living room could have filled a copper mine. Or was it brass? On one wall was a life-size brass rubbing of a medieval knight, taken from some castle in England. Next to that was a massive copper pan hanging by its three-foot wooden handle on a very large hook. You could kill a burglar with it, if you could lift it. One another wall was an imitation knight's shield with an image of an English village pressed into it, showing a church spire, a farmer wheeling a brace of pigs to market, and a curved bridge over a river. It was the kind of thing you'd sit in your chair and look at once, and then wonder why anyone would go to all the trouble. Next to the...

January 8, 2015. A large apartment hanging off a hill overlooking one of the world's most beautiful vistas, the sparkling cerulean waters of Sydney Harbour. "This time we’re going to get him." Grenville turned to Archer, who was gazing at a small craft cutting a wake across the water. Both men were by the glass wall overlooking the harbour, whiskies in hand. "How?" "If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you." Grenville was short, dark, moustached, and ageing. His kidnapping days were long gone, but he still did a little freelance hacking, and he harboured ideas like some people keep pet chickens. "I'm all ears." Archer was tall and slim, with a eagle-like nose. Grenville sipped his scotch and began. "You’ve met my attorney, Shapilo." Archer nodded. He had. How could he forget? Shapilo had been active in the Griffith area in the seventies, which had been a good time for a lawyer with Calabrian connections. "Shapilo ha...