A GODFATHER on the MURRAY.(Brief Article)(Play)

With celebrity chef Enzo dei Pomodori

SCENE: A makeshift al fresco kitchen beside a billabong, billy boiling over gum-twig campfire, hessian-covered Coolgardie safe swinging from a branch, primus stove creating bushfire hazard, drowsy murmur of blowflies. Enter chubby little chef in white uniform.

CHEF: 'Allo, benvenuti to our traditional Aussie bush kitchen beside ze famous Murray River where I'm going to show you how to run up some really fantastic dishes like my lovely sweet old grandma used to prepare for my huncles in Italy when they come home tired and `ungry after a hard day putting bombs in magistrates' cars. Not that everything she cooked went down well, we lost three huncles in one lunch after she forgot to throw away the mussels that hadn't opened and two more the day she trod On her specs and picked the wrong funghi, but as I found in my first wonderful TV series--fantastic viewing, best programme of the year--the the most--`ow you say?--`umdrum Italian rood is enough to make viewers squeal with pleasure for the simple fact that it isn't the boring old Anglo-Saxon cuisine they grew up with. So I tell myself, "Enzo, you can cash in on that." Fair enough? OK, let's get the pot on and (moves across studio as camera pans to vast stainless steel range with sixteen hotplates against rear projection of Albert Namatjira landscape) go for it, as us dinki-di Aussies say.

Now, because we're here in this great wonderful country of Austrylia where we have ze best ingredients in the world I'm going to make an Italian dish with an Austrylian flyvour, I'm going to do cane toad with eucalyptus ravioli (kisses fingertips) mmmmMMM! the way I do them at Salmonella's, my beautiful restaurant up here named after a very exclusive fish plyce in Nyples where the Camorra--that's a kind of Rotary Club, Italian-style--used to hold theft business lunches with my huncle Luigi in the chair (till he went to America and finished up in a different sort of chair, but that's another story). It's funny, a lot of people don't like cane toad but they didn't like kangaroos not long ago so that just shows how dumb people are. To make this dish to perfection it's important to remember that any old pot will do as long as it's Alessi or Le Creuset and it's also really important to remember to have lots and lots of really good olive oil, the best is the kind my huncle Corleone make up here at 'is beautiful factory, he got a kind of oleificio and marijuanificio combined, and I like to put in lots of fresh 'erbs like nightshade and the leaves off the tomato bush, that's a trick I learned from grandma.

Right, check the temperature and it's into the pot with the cane toads, vun, two--ow! you little stronzo, bite me, will you? They're really aggressive, these little ...