Friday 19 September 2008

Hey Rocky, watch me pull a wabbit out of my pan!

Joint a rabbit. Add a litre of veal stock, some bay leaves and some chats. Place pan in the dying embers of a wood-fired oven overnight. "Fridge the next day. When you get home, removed chats and bunny bits and warm gravy on the stove top, making sure to get off all the lovely crunchy caramelized bits on the bottom

Add a container of sour cream and some bacon bits. Add bunny back and chats back to pan to warm through, and serve.

I have to say, that despite the rabbit falling off the bone, it was very dry. My intent was to long slow braise it, yet I obviously overdid it. The potatoes, however, were INSANE! More proof of the maxim, "everything goes better with bacon... and sour cream"!!

3 comments:

Griffin said...

I am assuming you don't mean give the rabbit a joint... if only because, and I am no lawyer, but I am sure that sort of thing is illegal.

Also, what are 'chats', other than what you have with your mates or French cats?

Insane potatoes?!! Ulp! ...and yet, which of us is truly sane? Not the rabbit after that joint. And clearly not the potatoes either!

How is it that with all that disgracefully delish food you aren't built like a barn door, eh?

stickyfingers said...

Bunnies, dear luverly, need to be treated like other really lean meats such as roo & venison. They don't have enough fat on them to keep them succulent and protect the proteins from drying out during a long exposure to heat.

Sear at high heat, cook quickly and follow up with a good rest before serving is best. But if braising, you need to do it with a fair whack of fat - like a big gob of duck fat in the mix while you're cooking it. You may have been better served by adding the sour cream and bacon upfront.

Temperature is key too for bunnies braise them in really, really slow oven. But if oven is hot at the beginning of cooking, then you're done for. The only thing you can do then to soften it is to treat the meat with papaya enzyme.

Anonymous said...

Those pesky wabbits. If we all ate one a day, they'd be gone in no time! :)