Wabbit Wabbit Wabbit Wabbit Wabbit Wabbit
Firstly an apology; I did mention that I would post a picture of the aforementioned pork belly. 2 cans of Polish beer and some rioja conspired against me last night and dinner was righteously scoffed before I remembered I was going to snap it.
During my walk to the butchers yesterday I whiled away the 15 minutes it takes to get there by dreaming about what I would buy. Not content with buying "normal" meat I postulated over the prospect of something gamey. Imagine my delight when I saw a little bit of bunny cowering behind the glass window. Mercifully the fluffy leporid had been relieved of its fur, twitching nose and imploring eyes.
I can remember being in a brasserie in Nice and devouring a rather tasty portion of rabbit, braised in cider. I will try to replicate this dish this evening. The appley cider (sweet not dry) combines excellently with the rabbit.
My intention is to turbo-charge the dish by browning off some pancetta at the beginning - encouraging it to release its salty fat. Then I will remove the bacon and brown off the rabbit. After removing the rabbit I will add the usual trio, some onions, celery and carrot and sweat them off with some garlic. Finally the pancetta and rabbit will be returned to the pan which will be deglazed by the cider, bulked up with some water and then slowly cooked for about 1.5 - 2 hours.
I've never cooked rabbit before, so this should be an interesting experiment. Hopefully I won't get too tipsy this evening and will remember to take photographic evidence of my culinary expertise.
i never gotten why people cook rabbit so long. my mom used to do that too and untill i met jeroen (my culinary god, the man with the golden hands when it comes to food) i never ate it differently then it being cooked till the legs or back falls into pieces and it gets this dreadish structure like you can pull the fibers apart. nowadays we just cook rabbit in a pan, melt some butter hop the rabbit in, pepper&salt. allow the rabbit to colour a bit. add a little dash of white wine and just leave it for like 20 minutes i'd say. then add some sjalots, raisins or died plums. see if it needs some more white wine and give it another 5 minutes. resulting in a firmer piece of meat where you have less the fiber structure and more taste in the meat itselve. i'm ok with stewing meat but rabbit is so subtle in taste that it doesnt really benefit from a long cook time. give it a try next time and try to add ognions or sjallots at the end not the beginning :p and also what wine did you drink with this? (oh and blame stoo, he told i could stalk you on here)
ReplyDeleteHoi Vie!
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned in my blog this is the first time I have cooked rabbit before (in fact it's not even cooked yet, I'm cooking it tonight). I had a look on the interweb and saw a recipe for braising rabbit (in my opinion braising is always a slow cook).
I actually bought some Perry to cook this in (if you don't know, and I'm sure you probably do, as you're a sommelier Perry is made with perry pears as opposed to apples (cider).
Wine-wise. Good question, I wasn't sure whether to go white or red. In the end I went for a Spanish Monastrell, hoping that its medium-bodied nature would work well. I'm pretty sure a nice Frence aligote' or chablis would work well (something mineraly and flinty).
I'm going to cook this rabbit slowly and see how it is. If I don't like it then I'll go with your idea next time and keep it to 20 mins.
Hope you're well. And thanks for reading my blog!