What I Cooked Last Night

Guy, a copywriter, and Rob, his art director are a creative team at Blake Browning Burns. They have just walked into the meeting room they call 'the cupboard' because it is small and intimate enough for closed-door meetings of two or three people. (It is generally suspected around the agency that such 'meetings' have also taken place after, or even during, Friday nights drinks.) Craven, the account director, follows them into the room. Craven is tall with jet black lank hair, and has affectations, and wears loud suits. He looks like a character from a Raymond Chandler novel, possibly Lindsay Marriott from 'Farewell My Lovely'. 'Craven' is his surname but he uses it as his first name. It fits. In the room, Craven throws a fat manila folder diagonally onto the table with a thump, slewing out a bunch of briefing notes. CRAVEN: Guys! GUY (DEADPAN): Guys what? CRAVEN: I'm just saying 'Hello!' ROB: No, you're not, you said 'Guys...

Chop two onions into fine rings. Evenly line a large casserole with some of the rings. Add a tablespoon of Australian olive oil. (Does anyone still buy the imported stuff ?) Now chop three or four zucchini - depending on size - into rings. Add a layer of zucchini over the onions. Do the same with a couple of sliced leeks, then two or three peeled potatoes sliced very, very thinly. Add half a cup of tomato puree and a shake of salt and cracked pepper. Repeat the zucchini, leek and potato layers and tomato puree. Top with more tomato, chopped parsley, snipped chives and fresh basil. Add a little chicken or vegetable stock to almost cover vegetables. Add cheese if desired. Place the lid on casserole and bake until bubbling.

It is late morning in the boardroom of advertising agency Blake Browning Burns. During the meeting, the account executive, Angelo, has briefed the creative team, Guy (writer) and Rob (art director), on a boring job - to write and design a brochure for an automobile client. Language warning. ANGELO: So that's the brief, guys. Write a brochure promoting the Sniper Roadside Assistance Program. GUY AND ROB TOGETHER: Great. (YOU CAN HEAR THE ENTHUSIASM IN THEIR VOICES. OR YOU COULD IF IT WAS THERE) ANGELO: Happiness? GUY: As happy as we could be on a dreary Tuesday morning having just been briefed on possibly the single most boring job in the history of advertising. ANGELO: Stop complaining. You get paid. ROB: We don't get paid enough for the pain we go through. Unlike you. You just drive up and down from St Kilda Road to your revhead client in Mulgrave and deliver bullshit at both ends. ANGELO: You try it some time. The client hates me and you hate me. But that's ...

I used to have neighbours who were immigrants from India. They used to cook outside in summer, catching on pretty quickly to the local custom. The smoky aroma that came over the fence was insanely wonderful. It smelled like a Goanese street food stall. So I tried to out-aroma them. I came up with the following. Spicy barbecued chicken. Grind or process: a tablespoon each of chili and coriander powder, a teaspoon each of turmeric, fenugreek leaves, peppercorns, and salt, five green cardamom pods, one piece of star anise, two cloves of garlic, one inch each of peeled ginger and cinnamon, one clove, one pinch each of asafoetida and nutmeg, and a teaspoon of sugar. Blend all the spices with about three-quarters of a cup of vinegar. You'll end up with a grainy-textured sludge. Then fold the grainy sludge through a cup of full-fat yogurt and coat all pieces of a chicken which you have jointed and slashed. Press the mixture under the skin and into the slashes. Store chicken in the...

I was driving to Werribee on a warm Saturday. It was just after midday. I turned off the ring road where it swept around onto the Princes Freeway at Laverton and straightened up towards Hoppers Crossing. The traffic was light and I was fiddling with the radio. There was nothing I felt like listening to; eighties rubbish on the commercial stations or boring chatter on the talk stations. I flipped it again. Her voice came out of the radio and I couldn't place it. The song could have been medieval or it could have been recorded yesterday. But it might have been the most beautiful song ever recorded. They lyrics had that special quality so rarely found: once heard they can never be forgotten. By the time it finished, I had arrived. The radio station went straight on to the next track. I looked it up later .

I'm not sure if there was ever a horse called Gado Gado, but there was once a Gatum Gatum, which won a Melbourne Cup*. I was standing up to my ankles in wood shavings in my father's workshop (he was building a boat) in November 1963 when he stopped planing some timber to listen to Bert Bryant's call on 3UZ. It was one of the earliest Melbourne Cups I can recall. Now it's a lifetime later and Winx is burning herself into the memories of a new generation of children. Alex rode her first proper horse (meaning not just going round in a circle on a Shetland pony at a fair) on the Mornington Peninsula recently, and probably imagined herself steering Winx to victory. She wants to be a vet or a jockey. * In possibly the weakest segue ever written in this blog, we now move on to today's recipe. Gado Gado. Chop five or six potatoes into quarters. Chop four carrots into batons. Boil them. When half done, drop in four cubes of cabbage into the pot and, towards th...

The parish bulletin of 14 October carried the following notice: "Archbishop Denis Hart has regrettably had to cancel his visit to St Paul's parish and school on Wednesday 18th October and Saturday 21st October due to a strained wrist. He told Fr Ray that he was looking forward to this visit as he enjoyed the last visit last March." That's a week's notice for a strained wrist. The parish bulletin went on: "We pray for him in his time of need and recovery." That sentence is either the kind of exaggerated clerical cordiality as satirised by comedian Dick Emery's character 'The Vicar' ... or bitingly vicious sarcasm. I'm not sure which. But I could take a guess.

We just sat at the same table exactly six years after the event below.

The tomatoes are in, assisted by that three-day heat wave we just had. Now it's raining.

The electricity generators, newly converted to the green religion, are planning to pay you to turn off your air-conditioning . The politicians love it: Mr Frydenberg said the pilot program could save enough power to support more than 100,000 homes — or as much as is generated by a small power station. How about I turn out the lights as well and you can shut another one and give me money? NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin compared the plan to the way people learned to reduce their water use during the last major drought. Bad comparison, Mr Energy Minister. Everyone has water, but not everyone has air-conditioning. Water falls from the sky, humans generate electricity. At least, they are supposed to so that people's life support equipment doesn't go off, among other things. (See Arthur Hailey's Overload , 1979.) Aside from that, I never installed aircon, so can I get the rebate for all the power I never used? Ms Zibelman ... said it would make the power system more reliable ...

Front of Himalayan Pink Salt pack: This salt is 250 million years old. Back of Himalayan Pink Salt pack: Best before April 2019.

2010: Playing computer games with your children can be just as valuable as reading to them, an expert claims. ... Jeffrey Brand*, head of media and communications at Bond University ... likens concerns over the effect of computer games to 19th century fears that reading novels was bad for children because it would stop them from playing outdoors. ... And he believes it's only a matter of time before there is a "canon" of classic computer games, just as there is a literary canon of classics by great writers such as Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens. (For 2010's 'computer games' read today's more correct 'hand-held devices'.) 2017: Tech consultants won't tell you, for example, that excessive screen use transforms your child's brain structure, which can result in issues with emotional processing, executive attention, decision making, and cognitive control. They won't tell you that it also may result in a myriad of psychological and physi...

Another cat has appeared. It visits late in the evening when I sit outside on my north-facing porch and gaze across the impatiens and roses and lavender, and the viburnum and photinia beyond them, to the clear horizon. Collarless, it is all-over grey and has a white face and white paws. It prowls up the pathway from the street, and turns left onto the porch and buffets me with its head, just like the last one did. Is history repeating ?

Throw half a cup of flour, a teaspoon of salt and the same of pepper into a plastic bag. Now add two veal shanks. Twist the bag closed and shake it to coat the shanks in the seasoned flour. Warm some oil in a heavy pan and sear the shanks. It is difficult to sear a cylindrical shape all over, so roll them around by shaking the pan gently. Remove seared shanks to a baking dish and add to the pan a finely chopped onion, a diced carrot, a diced zucchini, two scored garlic cloves and a splash of stock. Shake the pan, put a lid on it and leave it for three minutes to steam the vegetables. Then tip the whole thing into the baking dish and add a cup of red wine, a tin of diced tomatoes, a tablespoon of tomato puree, a couple of dozen pitted black olives and enough stock to cover. I also empty the rest of the seasoned flour from the plastic bag into the dish to help the fluid thicken. Two hours in the oven should do it. The meat will fall off the bone if you're not careful when removin...