By Brian R Sorrell
A fella sitting on one of the couches in plain view if you’re looking, but otherwise like anyone at the library on a Wednesday afternoon. Summer and he had a tramping backpack. Probably in from the heat. He looked around the way I looked around. We watched each other, sly, silently ciphering the other’s story.… Read more
This tip, plus technique, plus two secret ingredients, which never really were secret and surely won’t be after I publish this history, are what, if anything, sets my chili apart from others. I don’t follow recipes, which doesn’t mean I don’t use recipes. I use them for ideas and inspiration, but I leave taste to… Read more
you should keep in mind: First, if you’ve rediscovered a wilting head in the fridge, you can revive it. Second, there’s no secret to cooking this stuff; it’s all technique. Now before you start thinking, hey there are more things about broccoli, let me add: there are more things about broccoli. For instance, the stems,… Read more
when it’s hot enough. Better yet, swipe a little oil inside the pan first and get it glistening. Set it on the flame — it better be flame if you’re cooking and you really mean it — and let it set until it smokes. This could take a few minutes, but it’s worth the patience.… Read more
B looked down and saw his childhood dog curled by the blue chair. He hadn’t seen the dog in many years. Across the room a small child picked up a fireplace poker and dropped it. The child did this again. Then again. And so on, revelling in the clanging each time, his hands now blacked… Read more
Daylight fades along the passage, shadows darkening. A piano note echoes from the other side of an air vent made of steel lattice, embedded in concrete thick enough to hold up the earth and to withstand mortar fire. I am in a tunnel carved into a volcano called Maungauika: North Head, a strategic location overlooking… Read more
would run the machines at the concrete company behind our house, just past the hedge under which we’d build forts and draw maps from one pine tree to the next. The pine trees, the cherry trees, the apple trees would flower and bloom and soon winter would set in. And all the while, I’d run… Read more
. Not bicycles with colourful jokers. Just some old deck maybe swiped from a hotel, like that book of matches on the mantel never struck. The pattern was mostly green, though maybe jade you’d say if you were fussy. Looked like a close-up photo of jewellery box draws. The card box itself was not conventional,… Read more
“March 15, 1910 Grampie was” is a warning story. It is a description of life during a time in America that some have recently called “great.” In particular, the essay compares certain aspects of the narrator’s life in America, 1980 with aspects of his life in New Zealand, 2016, providing a insider-on-the-outside’s perspective of the current political… Read more
born. He’s gone 27 years now and I only knew him the first 15 of mine. That’s strange when I think about it because I think about him enough that “gone” doesn’t mean the same as it does for that fish that wiggled off his line that one time he took us fishing, or that bike… Read more
, smooths the bitter of unadulterated root beer extract. I know this because I tried and I tried because root beer without the sweet is liniment. And nobody drinks liniment. Sophia is twelve and she is American and she lives in Auckland with her parents who are our friends from California (though they grew up… Read more
the Sefton Pub, no sense that anything was out of reach. We had traveled all day. We made a loop around the Canterbury region on part of Inland Scenic Route 72, starting at our rented bach (pronounced “batch” meaning a holiday (meaning “vacation”) house) just outside downtown Christchurch, just outside the zone leveled by an… Read more
. It’s about noodles. I never made my own pasta until I was forty one years old, and that first time was yesterday. As a kid I worked as a cook in a Sicilian delicatessen and I can’t help but wonder what took so long to get around to this. After the deli owner trained… Read more
with one egg, one cup of “00” flour, a splash of extra virgin olive oil, and a dash of salt. I can’t say I’ve ever been one to measure, and though that habit doesn’t pan out in such pursuits as carpentry and cobbling, with respect to pasta it seems to work. Recipes are ideas, and… Read more
fire was in Sefton, half hour north of Christchurch. If you go by car that is and stick to the main roads. There are plenty other ways to go, you find. Just happened to pick this one. Burning the stubble they call it. The leftovers. The chaff that didn’t make it into reapers or bales… Read more