Gammon knuckle with sweet sauce and pease pudding

We talk about food a lot here In fact it's definitely in the top 5 topics of conversation, along with technology, the arts, frivolities and the Limehouse Cut coots. Oh the footballers in the park get some attention too but that isn't important right now. We also like to think that we are frugal, economical and sensible in our spending habits which is why we were in Canary Wharf looking at handbags, frocks and sparkly blue shoes. On our way back from Capitalism Waters we stopped off at historic Chrisp Street market for some food bits and some pithy social observation.

The area is extremely diverse and the local butchers demonstrate our community beautifully; five halal to the single traditional English butchers. As befits the Contrary Kitchen, we required either oxtail, pork knuckle or offal, depending on availability, so we opted for the most appropriate vendor. We joined the queue and tried not to giggle as the large gent in front asked for 8 saveloy and 4 faggots...and the tall one was immediately transported to northern dreams of dirty food circa 1970. After spending the princely sum of £5.48 on 6 eggs, a cooked turkey leg and a pork knuckle, we stopped by the co-op for more bits and hungrily staggered home.

I had a vision for my pork and this is the recipe I came up with

1 huge gammon knuckle
2 small onions
scrag end of a droopy celery
5 hairy carrots
1 small bottle of good cider
a handful of chopped prunes, apricots and apple rings
bay leaves, teaspoon of allspice
a good grinding of pepper
a drop of water

Pop everything in the slow cooker for 5 hours and go have a nap and do some reading. Also make some curried open turkey sarnies. Drink ginger beer. Soak the split yellow peas in cold water.

Once the meat is done, cook the drained peas in half the stock and veggies. Add a little more water, pepper, ground cloves to the pan. Simmer till the peas are a pastey consistency which took about an hour, then beat in an egg and turn the mix into a warmed oven proof dish. The one I used was too shallow so it went a little dry - next time I'd use a deeper one so you would have a loaflike texture and the lovely crunchy top. Mine was more like baked polenta.

Remove the meat from the pot, discard skin and bone leaving the pink flesh. Thicken the remaining sauce with a little cornflour and then serve with the pease pudding. Wash down with lashings of sherry or more ginger beer. Or cider.

Mardi Gras, Oh Mercredi Gras aussi

The thing about the food here is that it's Mardi Gras everyday.

We had a splash of pancake mix left, enough to make 3 and a disaster so for stuffed pancake leftovers, I whipped up some extra mix and tossed six perfect little rounds onto a dish. This is how I made the filling:

2 x tubs of corner shop special soft cream cheese (I only used one tub)
1/2 small tub of soured cream
1/2 punnet of finely chopped mushrooms
1/2 pot of fresh grated Parmesan
2 finely chopped spring onions
Squished garlic, black pepper and grating of fresh nutmeg
A couple of nuggets of frozen spinach (from the Ice Age by the looks of them)

I beat these ingredients together and thickened a little with some cornflour to make it gloopy. I left it to look at the pancakes for a bit.

Into my pancake (lazy) pan, I poured a box of sieved tomatoes, added cayenne pepper, plenty of ordinary pepper, a squirt of Daddy's sauce and let it simmer for 5 mins or so.

The ceramic dish went in to the hot oven until it was burny handy, then I ladled a bit of the tomato mix into it so the bottom was covered. Taking the first pancake, I placed an amount down the middle, rolled it up on the thigh of a maiden and placed in the dish. I repeated this 5 more times and then ladled more tomato over the top. Then sprinkled the top with the rest of the Parmesan.

Place in the hot oven until it looks appetising. My goodness that smells good!

Ohayo gozaimasu おはようございます

A long time ago, in another life, I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to learn Japanese. The company paid for this and, every week, an ever decreasing set of people would trundle in to a meeting room for an evening of linguistic torture. I chose the title because, right rightly the first phrase I learned as ohayo gozaimasu, good morning, a greeting, part of the delightful formal exchange I would come to love deeply. I loved the logic of the language too. As a software person I appreciated the clarity of overloading phrases in a consistent matter, for instance o genki desu ka, essentially "are you well?" would lose the question and become a confirmation, genki desu, "I am well".

Beautiful.

I enjoyed the times I went to Japan after I was taught a little, it suddenly became a less terrifying place. It's not the people or the place that brings terror, it's the lack of understanding of signs, they tended to be written in a combination of kanji, hiragana or katakana. I could just about translate hiragana, via romaji into to english, things became clear. I began to understand and feel comfortable with this country of deeply civilised people.

Which brings me to the present.

400 years ago this year an English ship landed in Japan and our trading relations creaked in to being, though it was a little tortured at first. However, an englishman was already in Japan, one William Adams. He'd arrived, drifted in really, in 1600. An astonishing tale. Fortunately for Adams he was open minded, keen to learn, explore, challenge and, ultimately, integrate. He is the sort of man that would have been welcome at an Elizabethan Contrary Towers, forsooth.

So what's the connection?

Well, I received a text on Friday from my lovely friend @Feinics11 asking if I'd like attend a matinee performance of Anjin: The Shogun and The English Samurai, being shown at Sadler's Wells. Did I want to go? Duh! As it happened I was double booked, so I had to initially decline. Fortunately though (actually unfortunately as I was looking forward to a meandering day with a friend) I became free so skipped to the DLR and headed for the scary, dark, delights of Islington...

I took garlic, a wooden stake and a silver bullet just in case.

The play was simply astonishing. I haven't enjoyed one quite so much in ages. Not only was it beautifully produced, but it also provided the intellectual challenge of seeing how much Japanese I could actually remember as whilst the English parts were in English, the Japanese were in full on, idiomatic, Japanese. I was in heaven.

This was no Tokugawa Shogunate 'allo 'allo.

Don't get me wrong, if you don't speak or understand a word of Japanese you should still go, it was so well acted you knew exactly what was going on without having to refer to the subtitle screens (Japanese for English, English for Japanese). The story unfolded with a measured, unrelenting throb of culture, politics and unlikely friendships. True there were parts that made me feel deeply uncomfortable as, yes, I believed my European forebears could have been that ignorant and arrogant. It was also interesting to see how the Jesuits were portrayed as they worked to convert the Japanese people to a Papist vision of Catholicism. Fabulous stuff.

Sadly, the play is only on until the 9th of February. If you can get to it then go! You really won't be disappointed.

Handbags at dawn

My long suffering flatmate causes hysterical laughter in the morning. No, not for that reason, she always looks amazing but The Handbag of Doom always puts a smile on my face.

I’m there drinking tea in my fluffy white dressing gown or smug running gear, or whatever, and there she perches on the edge of the sofa looking like one of the more pathetic Furies. Surrounded by female detritus. Looking for unimportant things, like keys.

So today she wrote out a list of what she keeps in her bamboozlebag which inspired me to do likewise, just to show how insanely different we are. We are alike in so many ways but this handbag issue just keeps making giggles bubble up like a glass of Veuve Cliquot’s finest. Oooo…don’t mind if I do. Sorry I got distracted there.

I know it is not the ladylike thing to shout about what’s in your handbag but, in for a penny. The flatmate has a posh John Lewis handbag of label*, whilst mine vary from New Look’s synthetic finest to a Lidl carrier bag. Anyway mine contains:

• One ancient dog eared purse with the usual stuff as well as expired arty memberships and about 5 library cards. That reminds me, must take some books back
• My dongle
• One pair of broken headphones. FFS, can’t they make them Clare-proof? 
• Security pass 
• Oystercard 
• Battery back up. Flat 
• Crème brulee lip balm. Oh. Wondered where that had gone 
• A lippy. Useful to make notes with 
• A pen. *surprised face* 
• A mangled Prets napkin 

My phone is on my desk.

Everything works to plan unless I do a mad thing like bring library books into the office in my rucksack. So now my keys are in there. Happily I shall be taking everything home tonight so there will be no panicking about my keys.

Oh. So I am exactly like my flatmate then.

*Due to an *offended face*, an addendum. Apparently it's one of these. No I have no idea either.

Call me Ms Poppins

My bag hates me

No, really, it does. Not only does it hide my keys/wallet/fan/glasses without even a look of mild remorse, it does it with a regularity that defies belief.

Earlier I was looking for a piece of paper. This piece of paper has been in the back of my filofax for, well, weeks. Gone. Sucked up by the evil bag dwellers that somehow conspire to distort the perception of space and time and make it take me for ever to find everything.

So I emptied by bag out (again, I did it this morning) to reorganise. In it I found...

• Fan (I suffer from hot flushes, okay)
• Purse, several bits of paper, none of which were the one I wanted. I'll not go in to details
• 2 loose receipts, one from Tesco for water filters (£6.70) the other for the grocery shop I did in Lidl the other night (£25.02)
• One cellphone, my faithful Galaxy SII
• A banana (ooh, must finish my lunch!)
• Glass case, no glasses as I need them to read, so, err, wearing them
• One paper hanky. Best not ask.
• One Parker Sonnet fountain pen loaded with majestic purple ink
• One Totes brolly, unusually in its holder thingie
• One pair of very elegant gloves
• One Oyster card in a holder from The Parlour in Canary Wharf
• One pocket Kendal filofax (dark brown) with another Parker Sonnet fountain pen, notes, stamps and my passport
• One glass cloth that had escaped the case above and I've been looking for
• One elasticated ladies belt for those days when I need a little more definition. Also handy as an emergency sling if you come across a cyclops you need to down with a single rock
• One tube of hand cream (applies)
• Two reusable bags, one from Tesco, one from Sainsbury
• One pack of unopened paper tissues
• One plastic box that had my soup for lunch, all inside a ziplock bag incase the box leaked
• One small mirror
• One watch I need to get a battery for *sighs*
• Another receipt from Tesco (morning juice, £2.30)
• Earphones on a handy-dandy cable tidy thing
• The keys for Contrary Towers
• 2 lemsip capsules
• One pack of opened paper tissues
• One spare battery for said lovely Samsung
• One lipfinity lipstick and its friend the gloss
• Two post-it page markers
• One bottle of Sally Hanson Hard As Nails nail polish
• A third of a roll of extra strong mints
• A memory stick
• My banking access fobs (personal and business)
• One copy of The Pinball Effect by James Burke
• And finally, the office keys

So, that's hardly anything. I keep my spare tights, nail file, wipes, spoon in my desk drawer, so not even carrying those. And yet, mysteriously...

Things still get lost.

Desperately seeking ginger

It's that moment when you've just thawed out and you can't be bothered venturing into the cold again. But it's Friday and there is no wine in the flat (someone probably drank it when your back was turned). So you gaze hopefully into the fridge hoping a bottle of pink pinot grigio will materialise in front of your eyes.

It doesn't, sadly.

So you reach for the apple juice and prepare for a night of healthy abstinence. Then you notice the cooking brandy which is reserved for the Christmas pudding feeding. Looking alternately at the apple juice, the brandy, an idea forms.

Generously scoop ice into a glass and splash the brandy over. Making 'stuff you' signs at the Christmas pudding (the old soak) helps at this point. Add thin slices of fresh ginger to the mix and top with apple juice. Stir in the merest hint of orange flower water.

Sit back enjoy the music, blogging and rather lovely festive mix of flavours!

Contrary o'clock

We were chatting today, which, let's face it, is not exactly news, we chat every day. This time though, the capricious one decided that we should both blog this evening. Which is all well and good for her, but one of us was a teensy weensy bit irresponsible last night and is a bit tired.

The problem was... What to write about.

And the answer lay gently ticking on my wrist. Or at least would have done if I realised it had stopped this morning and needed a little persuasion to get going again.

Just like me then.

So. Time. My perception of time is vague at best. But I do know some things. First one is it's now been nine months since we moved in to Contrary Towers. Let's think about that. Nine. Months. And we've still not killed each other. I should point out that the nine months doesn't explain why I have a suspiciously large belly and get offered a seat on the underground. Oh no, that's simply down to pies.

The nine months was made of three distinct sections.

Firstly there was my Notting Hell period. This was mostly made up of me being deprived of culture and finding that if I booked anything then TFL would conspire to make me late, stressed and just a little bit cross. For time I also found everything was an hour. I simply couldn't manage the commute faster than that. Which was really frustrating. But I did get a lot of reading done as I slowly meandered my way from Mile End to Ladbroke Grove in those lonesome four months.

Next came the period of domesticity. And trying to find new work. For someone that had previously managed hours out of work the days turning to weeks then months became a little wearing. But it wasn't all bad and I took the time, in true contrary fashion, to think about stuff, make plans and then... Ignore them and turn my world upside down.

As you do.

The upside down turning happened near the end and was as quick as the preceding three months had been slow. Time has now taken on a degree of elasticity. For instance, no matter what I seem to do I am always late by roughly the same amount. This morning I should have been epically late owing to an extended discussion of last nights events, but no, same degree of lateness as normal. You see, I now have choices. I can significantly shorten my journey time if I'm prepared to travel the Central Line. A journey so pleasant that  it's listed in the River Styx guide to London as "best avoided".

Week in, week out I'm able to tweak my time experience with the careful stewardship of my watch. Except it's usually wrong. And today it stopped. I didn't notice.

None of this should be a surprise. The Contrary Towers dedication to time-keeping is remarkably lax. Take Saturday as a for instance. A good friend of the capricious one had arranged for her to meet the artist Chris Orr at his studio somewhere in West London. So I came along for the ride. The general plan was we'd go there for an hour come back, have a nap, and then go to our respective evening events.

We should have know there was a problem when we got there nearly ten minutes early after a mad panic before we left having realised that we needed to be somewhere near Penzance, or Chelsea, not sure which it was. The next bit went well too. Chris was an utter delight and certainly had me enthralled as he talked about his inspiration and technique. All too quickly we were finished and headed off to see if we could find food. By now it was noon and it's a truth universally acknowledged that my flatmate has to eat when she's hungry.

Luckily, we stumbled on the Battersea Grill which claims to be the best diner in Battersea. Ahuh. The food was wonderful, the portions... Crippling. As we still had loads of time, the decision was made to meander through Battersea Park, over the river to Tate Britain and then jump on the boat to Tate Modern and finally Canary Wharf. There would be enough time to nip in to Waitrose, grab some things and head home for that nap...

Which was why with the clock ticking oh-so-loudly we were both in a wild panic in Waitrose at 5:30 wondering where on earth the time had gone and, more to the point, who stole the promised nap?! And that's the thing with time. The sneaky bits add up, a ten minute wait here, a 40 minute stroll there, a minute or two at lights, a meandering walk by the river, thinking about collapsed scaffolding. All congeal together in to a singularity from which not even light can escape ensuring that what went on is actually hidden behind the event horizon.

It's the only possible explanation.

So with a quick hug I sent the capricious one off in to the Jubilee Line to head for an evening of tapas, whilst I sorted myself out and decided which 277 to catch up to Victoria Park to visit my bezzie. Now keeping in mind how much we had lost time during the day, you can imagine my surprise to arrive fifteen minutes before the agreed meeting time. Eh? It was my pesky timepiece again. It was by now so fast that the bus I thought I was catching was the one some ten minutes earlier. I thought I was doing so well.

The next day I had a plan. You can see already this is going to go well. I was going to wander to Wilton's Music Hall, then pop to Asda in search of a slow cooker. Then have a nap. I do like a theme.

A friend of mine saw I was considering Wilton's so suggested we meet up for lunch. Excellent idea, I like lunch. This then changed a little more and I was invited to a recording of Amnesty International's Secret Comedy Podcast. Oooh. I deleted my plan. It was a lovely afternoon, a meandering walk up from Fenchurch Street to Spitalfields, lunch at some fancy burger place and then a few hours almost in tears of laughter. Before I knew it, the day was gone and I was happily walking back to Tower Gateway and the trip home to Contrary Towers.

I think the problem with time is it really can't make its mind up. It's all about perception and, let's face it. my perception really can be epically bad without even trying. And even though I do try to pander to the demands of time and feign an interest in the passing numbers, it still somehow confounds me.

None of this matters. I got to spend real time doing what I enjoy best...

Being with friends