minestrone

I can cook. Quite well. I just don’t cook often. I enjoy it once I organise my mise en place and start chopping onions and garlic, the base of every meal I concoct. I do up huge pots of stuff and live on them for a week to ten days.

The rain is pissing down—is this the wettest, coldest, most miserable winter ever, or what?—so I’m spending time at the kitchen bench. I have a crisper full of semi-saggy former vegetables so minestrone is today’s pick of the culinary bunch.

First task is to whack on stout shoes and wade into the remnants of my vegie garden for a couple of portly spring onions, two skinny leeks, two small crisp capsicums, and a handful of grubby finger-thick carrots. The last of the basil and some spotty oregano top up my colander.

Cooking to music is the best. iTunes labels today’s mix ‘soft rock oldies’—mostly Fleetwood Mac, ELO, Suzi Quattro, Cher. The beat should get me slicing and dicing quicker but my good woman would do this in half the time. She rustles up grub super fast. I need to schedule a whole day to get my pot of minestrone simmering.

I don’t cook a range of dishes: I rotate three plates. Mixed dhal and lemon and saffron rice is my staple. It’s formidable with yogurt and sweet mango chutney. Minestrone accommodates every leftover thing in the fridge but I only cottoned on a year ago. Another favourite is three-minute cod and onions done in the microwave with steamed vegies—carrot, potato and broccoli, beans or cabbage. Oh, yeah!

Occasional dinners include nachos, pasta with pesto when the basil crowds the garden, and boiled eggs on toast. Over the years pasta casseroles, pasties, patties and spicy spaghetti have topped the menu. Down below comes apple crumble, apple pie and rice pudding.

In my twenties I baked breads of all sorts—yeasted, sourdough, banana, and spicy fruit loaves. I’ve made one perfect batch of Anzacs, and countless duds.

I’ve held one or two Indian banquets—green fish curry, prawns dhania marsala, spiced snake beans and dry potato curry. But the best thing is the sweet punani pungency that sticks to the walls after I make my annual batch of mango chutney.

Rock on.