Only an emergency because there turned out to be considerably less rabbit than there should have been.

I bought the rabbit from Furness Fish and Game at Borough. This was a mistake in itself as the next day I found a Manor Farm stall at Notting Hill market and they sell them for nearly a  pound less! Usually Furness are fine but this time it was a bit different. I got the rabbit to make something similar to this for myself and Goon.

I had told Goon to put the rabbit in to slow braise while I was still in the office. Then I met up with him and his friends briefly at the pub before heading over to cook. He was still out when I got back. I pulled the casserole dish out of the oven. At first I wondered how Goon had managed to fit the rabbit into such a small container. Then I realised. This rabbit must have been a very sad rabbit as it only had two legs.

So quick improvisation was needed. I decided to stick with the idea of a creamy sauce with mustard and mushrooms but added some left-over turkey to make up for the lost rabbit. The result was actually very tasty.

The sauce was made with cream, mustard a bit of white wine, rosemary and thyme. Sliced mushrooms, cooked bacon, turkey and rabbit were added and then the sauce was tossed with tagliatelle.

The meal was good… but just wait until I get back to Borough… someone will get an earfull.

It’s all a big rush here at the minute, but since I’m tired and hung-over I thought I’d relax and dedicate a few hours to updating the blog. Beats marking undergrad’s work!

Goon said he wanted canneloni as, like me, he used to like it when he was little and hadn’t had it in ages. This gave me the perfect opportunity to try out an idea that had been swimming around in my head for a while.

My parents had given me a can of lobster bisque at the beginning of the summer and I thought of making a pasta sauce for shellfish from it. Then the idea developed into a seafood canneloni filled with scallops, prawns and white fish in in the thickened bisque. The top would be covered in a saffron cream sauce.

As luck would have it, there were scallops on special offer at Tesco and also haddock, which I used to bulk out the canneloni filling. I got a few king prawns and a couple of squid to add to the mixture too. I thickened the bisque and added chopped parsley,crushed garlic and a dash of cream. Then I used it to gently cook the squid, prawns and flaked haddock. Finally I seared the scallops and stirred them in.

The topping was just cream with dissolved saffron and some grated mozzarella to make the top brown.

My one mistake was to use cooked dry lasagne sheets. The damn things were a little bit too narrow which made the whole job of rolling them up very difficult! I eventually managed but it was after much stress and shouting at Goon for convincing me to make canneloni.

I had a quick flash of inspiration for the veg too that evening! I planned to have fresh spinach but instead I cooked it and mixed it with some cream cheese and nutmeg. It actually worked very well! 

And also… therre was the last slice of my cherry cheesecake.

This was a remnant from the three course meal I cooked on Friday. More on that when Simon sends me the pictures!

On Saturday night I was lucky enough to return to Imperial Wharf and visit Saran Rom. This place is very special indeed. From the amazing food to the perfect service, you are guaranteed to have a great experience here.

The restaurant itself is stunning. A great deal of thought has gone into the layout and each table looks beautiful with its perfectly matched cutlery and glasses. The menu has a very wide range of delicious sounding dishes. I am lucky in that I got to sample quite a lot of them. The starters in particular are very exciting.

This was a plate of prawns wrapped in rice noodles. It was a little dark in the restaurant for my camera, but rest assured all the other dishes were just as beautiful.  The duck spring rolls were probably my favourite in terms of flavour but the beef with green curry sauce came a close second. The green curry was as good, if not better, than the green curries I had in Thailand.

The highlights in the main courses were the smoked duck curry and the crispy red snapper with mango sauce. I had a herby spicy venison dish which was also very tasty.

The team serving us were faultless in every way. Our waiter, Greg, was fabulous through the entire meal. He has obviously come to know the menu very well and is always ready to give good advice on the dishes. The style of service is fairly formal but not intimidating.

The highlight of the meal has got to be the amazing Irish cofee. They make this in front of you at the table and it really is spectacular!

So if you are in London and like Thai food, give this place a try. You won’t be disappointed.

Here is Saran Rom’s website (needs Flash 8  ).

I appear to have been neglecting the blog a little this week. I’ve been busy ‘perfecting’ the  recipes I’m writing for a student magazine. On the occasions when I haven’t been doing that I’ve either been cooking huge 3 course dinners (more on that later), visiting restaurants (more on that later too) or persuading Goon to cook for me. This was his latest attempt which, in my opinion, went quite well.

That is chicken with a white wine and cream sauce. Apparently Goon already knew how to make a version of this. It was one of the things he tried before settling down to his staple diet of plain noodles in stock. His version involved simply mixing equal portions of cream and white wine then adding chicken and heating until cooked through. 

There was plenty of room for improvement there, I thought. The first thing I did was get goon to add some flavour to the sauce. Goon sliced the chicken into strips then sauteed it in a little oil until it was just cooked through. Then he removed it from the pan, added some chopped onion, sliced chestnut mushrooms and garlic with some fresh thyme and parsley and cooked this gently until the onion went soft. Then he deglazed the pan with the chicken stock and wine.

This time I managed to convince Goon to let the sauce reduce. We let it halve it volume, then added double cream and let it bubble until the sauce was thick. Finally we stirred the chicken back in and served it over rice.

It was very tasty apart from some chicken pieces being a little overcooked. Next time I may leave Goon unsupervised in the kitchen to see what happens!

Ok, so I finally settled on two things to send to the student magazine The-sis.

The spicy crispy turkey concoction,

and my old recipe for Pork Ribs with cola BBQ sauce which I have improved by adding smoked paprika. 

I wonder if any students will actually try these.