Advanced Bachelor Food Part 1 - Chilli

I am told that I have a signature dish. This is quite an achievement for someone who once didn't know which end of a knife to hold (OK, so I was only one-and-a-half but I learnt quickly - and the hard way). I was brought up with no cooking experience whatsoever. My culinary experience as a child was mostly meat and three veg cooked by my mother. In the best of Aussie tradition the veg were often overcooked or included dry and lumpy mashed potatoe (it was years after leaving home before I could bring myself to eat it again). My father cooked the barbies, still does.

So there's a lot to be said for spending at least a decade of your life in shared accommodation. What began as toasted sandwiches and pasta sauce in jars has developed into gourmet pizzas and spaghetti bolognese made from scrach (more-or-less). My greatest discovery was that bolognese sauce is the base for all manner of Italian and Mexican dishes, and if you stretch the analogy far enough, all sorts of curries too (and probably stews but I haven't got that far - yet).

But there is still the spirit of the bachelor (or the backpacker for that matter) in my cooking - use a minimum of utensils, avoid recipes and go with your gut instinct. What 's changed since those carefree days? Time and quality. The longer a sauce bubbles, the better it is. And buy the most expensive ingredients you can find.

So here we go - my contribution to the culinary world - my recipe (or lack thereof) for Chilli...

Ingredients:
2 cold beers
A bottle of wine
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (the expensive italian type)
1 tin of kidney beans
2 average sized red capsicums cut into smallish pieces
1 onion chopped into even smaller pieces
some garlic cloves (your call - how much do you like garlic?) crushed
1/2 a kilo of the best quality mince you can find
3 small hot chillis cut into tiny pieces OR a few scoops of hot chilli sauce (sambal is ideal) OR chilli flakes
small carton of sour cream
salt
pepper
Tabasco sauce
white rice
enchilada tortillas

And if you want to take a short cut...
1 jar of hot taco sauce

What to do with this stuff:
Open the first cold beer. Have a couple of gulps. Whack the onion in the biggest saucepan you have with some oil. Stir until it goes soft and a bit brownish. Add the capsicum and the chillis and keep stirring for a couple of minutes then add the garlic and stir some more. Rinse the tin of red kidney beans in cold water and throw them in. Keep stirring.

Have a couple more gulps of beer.

I hope you have strong wrists because now you're going to add the mince. Stir and fold and stir until the mince browns and the whole lot starts smelling yummy. Add the tin of tomatoes and all your spices (how much is up to you) - your chilli pastes, powders, sauces or flakes - and a splash or two of water (enough to wash out the tins is probably plenty). Don't forget the tabasco - add plenty. Salt and pepper to taste.

Drink some more beer. This is hot work and you don't want to dehydrate.

Keep stirring (what do you mean you stopped - don't) until it's all mixed up and it starts to bubble. Turn down the heat and let it bubble away for at least 1/2 an hour but preferably 45 minutes to an hour tops. Finish your beer and crack open the second one. Drink it while you wait but stir the chilli every 10 minutes or so. If you have an electric stove make it every 5 minutes - don't let it burn whatever you do - add more water if you have to but avoid this if you can.

Now the hard part - in an ideal world you would have done all of the above the day before or at least a few hours before you wanted to eat it - the longer it sits in the saucepan the better. But realistically you came home from work and it's already 8:00 and you're starving - so it's time to serve up.

Put the rice on 20 mins before you're ready to eat.

Serving suggestion:

Eat the chilli with a lover - use your imagination for what to do while the chilli cooks (but don't forget to stir - the chilli that is).

Open the bottle of wine and pour two or more glasses.

Warm the tortillas (microwave is fine) and serve on a plate. Warm, reheat or just put the saucepan in the middle of the table with a ladel, ditto the rice. Put the sour cream out too. Eat it however you like - I prefer to whack the lot in a tortilla - it's messy but so what - you cooked it - your lover/partner/dinner guests can clean up. Take large sips of wine between bites.

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One Limp Closer To Sporting Greatness

Injuries are the curse and the pay-back for the sportsman (or woman). Injury goes hand-in-hand with competitiveness, professionalism, intense training and pushing one’s body to the limit. All sportspeople will have injuries at some stage of their career (except for Mat Rogers who has them at all stages of his career). They often dominate the discussions on the backpage of newspapers and make medical experts of us all. There’s no real reason for any of us to know where an anterior cruciate ligament is or what a depressed eye-socket looks like, but we do.

So it was with pride and pain that I twisted my ankle in my first game of competitive touch football in ten years. At 36 I’m at an age where most sportspeople are retiring. Andre Agassi, 36, retired weeks ago. Michael Schumacher, 36, retired last week. Glenn McGrath, 36, should have and Shane Warne, 36, is a freak and a moron but I want to be him anyway (only a true moron wouldn’t realise how much of a moron he is).

I, however, have just reached my sporting prime, grand final winner in 3rd division indoor cricket and finalist in 2nd division tennis at the New South Wales Catholic Lawn Tennis Association (I’m not Catholic, the courts are just cheap and convenient). These are my greatest sporting achievements since I bowled a strike on the final bowl to win a match in Melbourne in my capacity as 4th ranked junior ten-pin bowling Jew in New South Wales in 1985.

Twisting my ankle was the icing on the cake. It became quite swollen and bruised and I have been out of action for four weeks already, although I did heroically strap-up the ankle and played through the pain to go down fighting and limping in my tennis final 6-2 6-2.

Previously I’d only ever missed one-off sporting matches for such piddling amateur injuries as a split webbing or a sprained finger. Sure I would have liked to have broken something or even better have been collected by an ambulance or picked up by a helicopter and placed in a neck brace but beggars can’t be choosers.

I’m contemplating whether I need to spend some time in a hyperbaric chamber to speed up the recovery process or perhaps issue a media release documenting the slow pace of recovery and my contemplating of retirement. Alas I’ve missed the opportunity for some choice coverage of the ankle wrapped in ice packs and me struggling with crutches and being limited to laps in ice cold water at Coogee or St Kilda the day after the game.

Perhaps I could publish photographs of the ankle for printing in newspapers so that my concerned public could concentrate on the image, producing good vibes and speeding the recovery. I would hope that the ankle is giving me an opportunity to get over my other niggling injuries (sunburn, a cold and a shaving nick) and concentrate on non-impact exercise regimes such as eating and drinking.

My comeback will be well documented. Australian Story might be interested. There could be a Good Weekend article about my triumph over adversity. I’ll be better for the rest and come back fitter and stronger and will lead my teams to world domination.

Or I’ll just wait a few more weeks and start from scratch. It’s all good.

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Heckling the Heckler, Insights, and One That Should Have Been

You may have noticed by now a certain bitterness that the inner journalist inside me feeds on. It is fertilised by petty jealousy and envy and all revolves around the innate desire to be published, fawned upon and recognised in the street. Don't give me for an instant that celebrities (even of the Dancing with the Stars variety) don't love it. Take it away and they would be, well, me.

Anyway, I share this desire to write (or perhaps cajole, bicker and whinge is more accurate) with a number of friends. One of them penned this for a Sydney Morning Herald Heckler a few years ago. It should have been picked up of course but wasn't because Fairfax are taking over the world (unless News limited take them over first) and there's just no place left for witty sarcasm and dry senses of humour.

Take it away....

Finally - A Sensible Immigration Policy

I like backpackers.

I was a backpacker once, as were many of my friends. And while my backpacking days are now behind me, I fully support the whole backpacking ethos.

If not for backpackers who would work in our cafes and bars? Who would pick our fruit? Who would be the backbone of our ailing tourism sector?

That said, there is a class of backpackers who should either be refused entry into this country or, if already here, deported. I’m talking about the Soccer Shirt Wearers. You know, those mainly British males who insist on wearing soccer shirts in public.

On the whole I can live with backpacker fashion – the beads in the hair from Bali, the woolly yak hats from Nepal, the lobster red skin from Bondi. But the soccer shirt (or as they call it, football), symbol of mindless enslavement to the sport marketing machine has to go.

The Soccer Shirt Wearer represents the lowest common denominator of society. Those who are content to wear their sad, empty lives on their chests as a badge of pride. Who think that it is some sort of symbol of sexual availability rather than a brightly coloured warning.

The soccer shirt is worn by those who have no imagination, style or confidence to dress themselves in anything remotely original. It is a lower point in fashion than the thigh high ugh boot, the pashmina wrap, the comb-over or the mullet.

Soccer shirt wearers are clearly not trying to integrate into our society. They are openly scorning our values and our culture. They are saying: I may be here drinking your beer and leering at your women but I’d rather be watching football, the world game. The game which has locked the battling Aussies out of its World Cup year after year by unfairly forcing us to play a better team in order to qualify.

Are these really the people we want clogging up the bunk beds of our illegally converted semis? Are these the people we want buying our clapped out combis? Are these the people we want to be keeping our life savers busy over the summer?

I don’t think so.

So I have come up with a few easy to implement immigration controls:

1. Any backpacker stepping off a plane in a soccer shirt will be automatically refused entry and deported.

2. A visa application question along the lines of “Are you or have you ever been a supporter of Manchester United?”. If the answer is yes the person will be automatically refused a visa. If it is no and they are later found to be sporting a red soccer shirt then they will be sent to Port Headland for a few weeks to show them we mean business and then deported.

3. As people are waiting for their luggage an official is to yell: “Hey, isn’t that David Beckham?” Anyone who turns to look will be interrogated and searched.

4. Any soccer shirts found during baggage searches will be confiscated and destroyed. Similar rules would also be applied to outgoing Aussies to save embarrassment overseas.

Already John Howard has seen the light and has forgone his telco promoting Wallabies jersey on his overseas jaunts. Alas, he has replaced it with a (admittedly logo-free) Australian cricket tracksuit so there is still room for a ‘correction’.

There would, of course, have to be some exceptions.

Visitors to the Rugby World Cup will be permitted to import and wear team jerseys for the duration of the tournament only. Registered members of the Barmy Army can bring in and wear whatever they want, as we need them to keep The Ashes interesting. And anyone is permitted to wear an Australian soccer jersey because Soccer Australia needs all the help it can get.

I know this all sounds a little draconian. But you have to remember we have the right to determine who comes to this country and the clothing in which they come.

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What's in a Euphemism?

The pantheon of Rock 'n' Roll history is littered with great band names. I'm not about to start trawling the internet to find out which band was the first 'The' somethings (now there's a great name for a band - unfortunately though it's already been taken - they're a UK based covers band available for parties, weddings, festivals and private and corporate functions).

I'm also not going to go looking for which band was the first to not be called 'so and so and his orchestra' or 'somebody and his band'. These would not be good names for a band - and hence they don't exist. Of course there are many clever band names and they take their inspiration from a variety of sources (however I've always wanted to ask Dave Grohl what is Foo and are you fighting for it or against it?).

Sex is an obvious inspiration for a band name. After all, it's why most young males get into Rock 'n' Roll in the first place. Perhaps the first such band was 10CC. Deriving their name from the volume of semen ejaculated by the average male, 10CC were highly successful in the early 1970s and pioneered to some extent the pop rock sound of the time. My research (2 minutes on the internet), sheds no light on why this name beyond that they were a little wacky with their tabaccy.

But for blatant sexual euphemism one can't go past the Sex Pistols. The pioneers of Punk, the purveyors of apocalyptic 70s anti-Thatcherism, Johnny Rotten and his mates rewrote all the Rock rules, how it should be played and sung and even how to market it. And what to name it. The Pistols emboldened a whole generation of Punk and post-Punk music, such as the anti-Pistols Celibate Rifles and the all-girl The Slits (at least when it comes to names). The Buzzcocks (I really hope) took it one step further by naming themselves after an artificial (vibrating) penis.

Today it is open slather when it comes to sexually euphemistic band names. Many blatantly reference penises, such as the Enormous Horns, the Hard Ons and Tool. Pearl Jam, in the spirit of 10CC, describes what comes out of the penis. And you can't have sperm without Testeagles. And don't forget anuses - Chocolate Starfish and the Butthole Surfers certainly haven't.

Sexual positions also provide fertile band naming ground, including Machine Gun Fellatio, the Butthole Surfers (again), the Red Riders (apparently, though to be honest I can't actually work that one out) and the Scissor Sisters (although whether it's a lesbian sexual act or a description of lesbians I don't know but it's a wonderful word picture in any case).

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to add to this list. Surely there are many more sexually explicit, sexually perverse or just sexual band names out there. I will though make one request – they do need to have been decent musicians (the exception being the Sex Pistols) and have had at least one single in the charts.

Your time begins…now.

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