tomroyal.com

There are few foods as versatile as japanese curry. In Tokyo we saw it served on or with just about everything, but katsu-curry (breaded pork fillet with cury) and curry rice (yes, that's just curry with rice) are staples of good-but-cheap food. If you want to make your own here in the UK, there are three options.

Of course, you can make it from scratch. This would provide both curry and an air of smug satisfaction, but it requires both a recipe and some skill. I have neither. If you're in the same situation you can buy it ready-made in a packet that must then be boiled or microwaved. I've tried these, and they're OK, but there's a definite air of Vesta about the whole business, plus they're very expensive.

There is, fortunately, a third option – and here it is:

This is ready-made curry roux. and you can buy it from just about anywhere that stocks Japanese food. It's cheaper than ready-made, plus you get to choose exactly what goes in the curry, and there's a certain degree of smug satisfaction to gain from doing some of the work yourself. So, what's the downside? Well, er:

Yes, that's the recipe. If you don't speak Japanese, or like me you speak a bit but know hardly any kanji, you're in for a world of translation-related fun. What you need, in fact, is a curry dictionary – and so, courtesy of the ten minutes I spent wrangling with my pocket kenkyusha, here's one I made earlier:

I've pasted this in as an image so it should show on any computer rather than relying on Japanese display fonts. Note that this may not be perfectly correct – I'm guessing that "sarada oil" is vegetable oil, but it seemed to work for me. Any corrections gratefully accepted. And so, on to the recipe.

Armed with that vocabulary and a packet of roux it should be easy to make out the necessary ingredients. For five servings, using Golden Curry roux, the recipe asks for the following:

• 200g meat
• 300g onion
• 100g carrot
• 200g potato
• 1 spoon vegetable oil
• 700ml water
• one packet of roux

Double these for the full ten servings. I had no meat, so I just added more carrots and potato – it's not an exact science. Chop the whole lot, add the oil to a pan, and cook the meat followed by the vegetables (or just chuck the veg in for a bit, in my case):

I cooked it until the onions were softening up nicely, which took a few minutes over a low heat. Next, add the water. The packet calls for 700ml, or 1300 for 10 servings:

The packet, if I'm reading it correctly, says to simmer for 10 minutes, or 20 if making ten servings. I found that about 15 minutes were needed to cook the potato chunks. Anyhow, after ten to fifteen minutes, it's time to break out the curry. Here's what's in the box:

If making ten servings we'd use both, but for five only one is needed. Open it up and chuck the incredibly attractive contents into the pan:

Obviously it's less than a feast for the eyes at this stage. Stir gently for a few minutes, though, and as if by magic:

Curry! Stir it for a few mintues more (be warned, it'll stick and burn given the chance), then serve on rice, katsu, or just about anything else:

Brown, glutinous, chunky, probably packed with MSG and yet strangely delicious. Enjoy.

By way of an introduction, here's a very incomplete list of things I like:

• Cats
• Ramen

Armed with this information, you can probably see why a cartoon series called Neko Ramen (noodle-soup-cat – often transliterated to 'neko rahmen', with an 'h', for some reason) appeals to me. And it is quite wonderful. Here's episode one, courtesy of a website that allows embedding – the subtitles are a bit crap, but you get the idea:

Just down the road from Hither Green lies Kidbrooke, and what's left of the Ferrier Estate. Built in the 1960s-70s, it's now in the process of being "developed" – development, in this case, meaning knocking much of it down and starting again. Many of the buildings are now sitting empty, windows smashed out, Sky dishes aiming pointlessly up, wet curtains billowing in the wind. Plants are even beginning to grow into and over some blocks.

It's an interesting place. On one hand, its current state of delapidation is almost epic, and past residents have written of its numerous problems: crime, gangs, rats, water supply problems and ants (see comments here). The buildings, created from huge slabs of concrete, have not aged well, and have a depressingly monolithic look to rival the kind of Soviet housing you see in much of Eastern Europe.

But despite all that, take even a quick glance at what's left of the Ferrier Estate and you see what the GLC was aiming for when it constructed it. The huge low-rise blocks were to provide large quantities of much-needed social housing, set in landscaped grounds rather than rows of terraced blocks like those near Waterloo, and with communal spaces even above ground level courtesy of the walkways – a bit of classic modernism.

A huge boiler was to provide heat and hot water for all, and there were schools on-site. These pictures from the time show the estate as it was when newly constructed – it's unclear whether these were posed, but even if so you get the idea of what the GLC was aiming for.

And, of course, it all fell apart. The boiler system failed, the covered car park shown in the second photo above had to be removed for security reasons, and the open walkways were divided off. Now, 40 years on, the whole thing's about to be taken down.

With 20/20 hindsight it's easy to judge this kind of project harshly. It'll be interesting, though, to see what people are saying about the new, replacement housing that's due to be built after it's been up for 40 years – and if it even lasts that long.

The colour photos here were taken yesterday – more can be found in my Flickr set. The black-and-white photos were taken around the time the estate was built by the GLC Architects' Department, and are reproduced here from Iqbal Alam's excellent Flickr set, which also contains some excellent information about the Ferrier Estate and the GLC. These photos are presumably copyrighted, but it's unclear as to who owns those rights now.

.. and the inner workings of the global economy are explained in a splendidly blasphemous fashion by the latest episode of South Park. South Park's official website doesn't stream to the UK (although it's worth trying just to see the apology they've put up) but you can find it online, unofficially, here.

The other two episodes of the new season are worth looking out for, too – one is a timely demolition job on Disney, the second a neat spoof of Watchmen.

You get some amazing stuff through your door living in Lewisham – mostly adverts for quack healers and hellfire priests, though, and as I'm not currently posessed by Satan (well, I think not) they're of little use. Today's delivery brought something far better – a Job Guarantee*:

The website – URL removed above – claims that the company is "one of the largest financial training academy’s (sic) in the UK", which speaks of high standards. But before we all rush out to grab this free training, there's more on the other side – this time with a different company name (same phone number, mind you) and a Free Laptop*:

So, it's a choice between a guaranteed job or free laptop? Tricky. I wonder how many responses they get per hundred flyers, and what kind of training those who apply actually end up getting. Will pull the details from Companies House at work tomorrow and see what's what.

If you have half an hour to spare, I'd recommend listening to this morning's edition of Beyond Westminster – here's an iPlayer Link – which was on (the not at all contentious topic of) religion and politics.

The main body of the programme is fairly interesting – who knew that the press are excluded from the prayers that take place every morning in the House of Commons? – but the discussion at the end is more so. I was particularly interested by the views of A C Grayling – as an atheist I often find my side of any religious discussion represented in a vaguely hysterical manner that strikes me as counterproductive and rude even if well intentioned, so it was nice to hear the whole debate completed in a measured way. Have made a mental note to seek out some of his books.

(As an aside, Richard Dawkins seems to be selling atheism T-shirts. This is bizarre. Also, it appears that theists have all the good typography.)

From the "rather old but worth reading" file comes this New Yorker piece on the Golden Gate Bridge and the people who jump from it. It's a macabre subject, but one that's treated respectfully, documenting the sad stories of those who leap – like the fourteen year-old who took a taxi from school directly to the bridge – as well as those who are persuaded not to and, most amazingly of all, those who jump but survive. This quote in particular, from one Ken Baldwin just glows on the page; it's almost perfect in its context:

"I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped."

Tangentally, this article was apparently the inspiration for the song "Jumpers" on Sleater-Kinney's album The Woods. First track (brilliantly described here as a "deterrent for weak-eared listeners") aside, I'd wholeheartedly recommend a listen – it sounds rather like an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band that are mad as hell about being trapped in an echoey shed. And that's a compliment.

Overheard on the way to work this morning:

Small boy: When I grow up, I want to be a nurse.

Mother: You could be a doctor!

Small boy, determinedly: I want to be a nurse.

Mother, encouragingly: If you become a doctor, you'll have more authority.

(pause for consideration)

Small boy: I want to be a nurse.

And good for him.

I was a bit annoyed by the news that Heinz had chosen to pull a television advert following 200 particularly stupid complaints to the ASA. Apparently the complainants wrote (presumably in pencil, in a mixture of capital and lower-case letters, on the back of an old copy of the News of the World) that it was "offensive" and "inappropriate to see two men kissing". A few even went for the "Will somebody please think of the children!" approach, claiming that it had forced them to answer awkward questions from kids- questions such as, presumably, "who on earth would want to buy flavoured mayonnaise?".

Today, though, I've realised that this is actually a golden opportunity. If all it requires is 200 nonsensical complaints, just imagine the power that a small but committed group of people could exercise. One short letter writing campaign, and:

• No more Eastenders / Coronation Street / Emmerdale / Neighbours
• No more Big Brother
• Pretty much the entire BBC3 schedule destroyed in one fell swoop
• The new "let's have a conversation" Channel 5 news? Gone, gone away
• Living TV? Not any more
• And so on

In short, the world could be made exactly 147.24% better (and yes, I can prove this with a calculator) in less than a week. Marvellous. If anyone's interested, I could even knock up a template letter: Dear XXX, I consider your programme, XXXX, very offensive. What if a (parakeet/armchair/plank of alder) had seen it? I could have been forced to answer awkward questions about (mockneys/Stockholm Syndrome/the BBC's commissioning policy/the merits of viewer interaction in a news programme/idiots). Yours sincerely, XXXX.

Incidentally, in case anyone isn't in the habit of trawling the ASA's complaints and adjudications pages looking for news stories, I do recommend a visit. The pettiness of some complaints and almost incredibly serious tone of the adjudications can be fantastic to behold. Example complaint:

A TV ad, for the Nicer Dicer, stated "Love to cook but hate the time and hassle of preparation and cleanup? You need the Nicer Dicer from JML. Look how perfectly it dices this tomato. And these onions are chopped in no time with no tears. … A viewer, who believed food to be diced in the product had to be sliced beforehand, challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that the product could dice whole foods.

And the ASA's response? They took said product to the ASA-super-testing-kitchen-cave and put it through its paces:

The ASA tested the Nicer Dicer. We noted that, while the product was capable of dealing with whole foods, it did not dice the food into cube shapes but merely seemed to slice it; that result was the same for food cut in half. We noted that, for the product to dice food into cube shapes, food would first have to be sliced into roughly the thickness of the desired cube.

Oh no! Surely not. But do go on..

We considered that the composition of the ad, particularly the name 'Nicer Dicer', the claims "Love to cook but hate the time and hassle of preparation and cleanup" and "Look how perfectly it dices this tomato", accompanied by an image of a tomato cut in cube shapes, implied that whole fruit and vegetables, or at least food cut in half, could be diced into cube shapes. Because it could not, and because it did not show that food had to be sliced before it could be diced, we considered that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising), 5.2.2 (Implications) and 5.2.3 (Qualifications).

Fantastic. For the full, thrilling saga, click here, or for gory details of an advert featuring "Colonel Sanders, grinning maniacally whilst holding a chicken by the legs in one hand and a kitchen knife pointing directly at it in the other", here.

Please go to this page and read what is a frankly awesome comic strip about the Panda Research Centre, its staff, its pandas, and what happened there during the recent earthquake.