Breakfast at Contrary's

It's Sunday in Contrary Towers and we were both planning on being ever so diligent. I was going to clean my bathroom, walk along the tow-path to the Tesco in Bow to buy tights and then do some work during the afternoon. Clare on the other hand was going to go running and then spend the afternoon translating 15th Century german. As you do.

Which is why we spent most of the morning discussing every subject under the sun including the travel implications of a UK exit from the EU. And what that mean vis wandering off to Italy for a touch of food and come sta tuo padre
Eventually though Clare went running and I disappeared in to my bathroom to do the long promised deep clean. It wasn't as much fun as I'd convinced myself it would be. Post diligence I started thinking about heading down the tow-path, but, as ever, my lovely flatmate had a better idea.

Let's go perfume testing in Canary Wharf...

Now this was an excellent plan, I could still buy tights and maybe a refill for my bedroom scent. Perfect. The perfume testing, it has to be said, turned in to a bit of a giggle fest. By the time we reached the mini John Lewis above Waitrose the 417 different scents we'd tried were obviously making us giddy with, well, giddiness. Especially funny being the fact that every time I found a perfume I thought I liked I would test and discover it just didn't work on me. And we were running out of skin to test the perfumes on. *sighs*. In the end we decided to hit the coffee shop, clean our arms and try again post coffee...

Which lasted right up to the point when we saw the Waitrose recipe suggestion card for Scotch Egg Pie. Oh yes.

This always happens. We thought it looked nice, but decided we'd have filo pastry instead of puff. To be healthiez. And with this a plan was formed. Waitrose, then Boots, finally Tesco and home to cook whilst Clare wrote. What could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out, nothing. We ignored bits of the recipe, substituting Heck 97% sausages for sausagemeat and thought we should use the last of the wholegrain mustard. Fab. So, the recipe...

• 7 eggs (6 for the portions, one for gluing and glazing)
• one pack of Heck 97% sausages
• 8 sun dried tomatoes chopped as finally as I could be bothered
• 6 spring onions slice really thinly
• 30g of grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• A decent hand-full of parsley and thyme from the Contrary Garden
• A pack of frozen lazy arse filo pastry
• The remainder of a jar of wholegrain mustard
• Cayenne and ground pepper

I put six of the eggs on to boil for ten minutes or so then sliced the skins off the sausages adding those, the parmesan, spring onions, chopped tomato, parsley and thyme, cayenne and ground pepper all in to one big bowl and blended them together. Once the eggs were cooked they were cooled for a bit.

Assembly...

Having whisked the remaining egg, I divided the meat mixture in to 6 even sized balls. One sheet of filo was taken, folded in two and then a teaspoon or two of the mustard was spread about. I took a meat ball, halved it then spread it flat on the filo and mustard. Next an egg was placed on the top with the remainder of the mix.

Folding was done carefully... One corner right over the top of the egg and mix until it almost fully wrapped the egg and mix, next the opposite corner, a dab of egg and a push down before being repeated with the final two corners. Once done I gave it all a bit of a gentle squeeze to shape the lower meat mix. Finally the pastry was glazed with some of the egg.

A few minutes later all six were ready and were placed on some greaseproof paper on one of the oven shelves. We really should get a baking tray. The oven had been pre-heated to 200C. Which is gas mark 6 apparently. The pies were placed at the lower part of the oven for about 30 minutes and we waited...

Fortunately, they made it! A add moisture and texture I did a pan of spicy beans which is...

• one tin of baked beenz, we prefer Cross and Blackwell which they sell in chez Lidl
• a decent slug of cayenne pepper
• ground pepper
• oregano (quite a bit)

The whole lot is mixed and then cooked slowly until thick and gloopy. Nom.

As a final touch, and to make sure the plants realised nobody was getting away with it, Clare chopped more parsey as a bit of a garnish.

contrary pie

The worrying part of trying something new is knowing whether it will (a) taste okay and (b) be cooked... Honestly, it was, a really tasty way to have breakfast pie. At 17:45.

What else did you expect from Breakfast at Contrary Towers other than Contrary Pie?