Rick Stein's Leek Cannelloni Nightmare

I tried a recipe today, from a cookbook and everything. I've never been a big advocate of recipes, partly because they almost always require ingredients that can only be found in small farm shops on the North Devon borders, and partly because they almost always involve a number of counter-intuitive processes which take about 70% longer than they need to and invariably go wrong (see Delia Smith's advice on boiling eggs if you don't believe me. Actually that's a whole other article).

Still, Cannelloni, what can go wrong eh? Well, this one took SO long that I have diarised events for easy digestion.

If you want to try to ruin this dish for yourself, you need to pick up a copy of Rick Stein's "Food Heroes". Hey I hope you didn't think I was going to tell you the recipe and risk legal action? I've got an unhealthy food habit to support!

Leek Cannelloni diaries:

1715: Went to local shop for ingredients. It was lashing it down, the heavy rainfall slowing my progress and my sodden clothes inducing minor chafing. On arrival attempted to explain the concept of lemon thyme to Lebanese shopkeeper. He lauged at me.

1720: Went to organic food shop for ingredients. Freindly helpful cockney chap also laughed at me. Rick Stein, is there such a thing as lemon thyme? Are you laughing at me?

1735: Arrived at my house with ingredients (not including lemon thyme, which no-one has ever heard of). Decided to have a little rest. Pacified girlfriend with tea whilst I tried to build this page. Cursed the God of HTML a lot (mental note, learn better programming language. OK, I know, I need to learn HTML first).

1835: Began cooking. Relaxed and jokey.

1935: Still not really sure what I'm doing. Lots of cooking stuff happening at once. Angry and confused. Spend at least 25 minutes walking from the recipe book to burning ingredients only to forget the information I had gleaned, before returning to the recipe book only to discover I forgot what it was I needed to find out to begin with. Begin to blame girlfriend.

1940: Next door neighbours arrive begin and discussing New Year' Eve arrangements and asking after my Christmas, whilst four things are cooking at once. Attempt to be polite. Angry and confused, but outwardly genial. Manage to avoid mentioning how much I hate Christmas. Blame girlfriend.

2000: Everything is dried out and cold. Need to reassemble various component parts, assemble canelloni, and get it in the oven before the girlfriend dies of starvation. Pressure on now. It's her fault, surely. Recipe book is still gibberish to me. That's Rick Stein's fault actually.

2030: Canelloni goes in oven after girlfriend does everything for me. Will be ready in half an hour, according to Rick.

2115: Still not cooked.

2120: Suddenly the ends go black. Served with salad.

2150: It didn't taste like 3 hour's work. I think it needed lemon thyme.

leek cannelloni, Rick Stein, lemon thyme

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