Duvel

3rd rabbit’s the charm ... After two stews there was a bit of family pressure for a different dish. As I wanted to do a cold preparation, I looked into some rabbit terrines and patés ... I narrowed it down to a rabbit and prune terrine from this recommendable book ... And the straightforward rabbit terrine with Armagnac from this excellent book. Family voted for the latter, so it was decided. I do cook a lot, but never had any formal training. That is usually not an issue, but with certain tasks it is a disadvantage. My way to debone the rabbit (despite reading/watching some instructables and freshly honing the knives) put a new meaning to the verb „butchering“. I will spare you the progress picture and will just proudly present you with about 700g of rabbit meat from a 1300g rabbit, chopped into small pieces ... This was mixed with ground fatty pork, some cubed ham, garlic, onion, pepper, fresh thyme, parsley and pink salt, then a glass of Armagnac (whisky, as @liuzhou suggested, would be good, too) was added. The mixture was tightly wrapped and marinated overnight. The next day freshly ground crustless white bread was soaked in milk, squeezed and mixed with egg and some quattre epice. The mixture was combined with the marinated meat, some extra pepper & thyme added and filled into my grandma‘s round terrine form. It was closed tightly with two layers of tin foil (too lazy to make the traditional water/flour dough to seal it) and popped in a bain marie into the hot oven for 2h. The leftover masse was put into ramekins, covered and baked for 30 min, both to a core temperature of 72 oC. Before ... After ... They‘ll all cool overnight and tomorrow I will add some gelatinized stock with wine as a cover and the we‘ll have a tasting ... looking very forward !

And I was thinking Germany had cheap pork meat ... is this from a regular butcher/supermarket ? It definitely looks good, but(t) for that price I‘d probably only get roadkill here 😉

Fried leftover Trinxat (think thick potato cabbage pancake) with fried egg and blood sausage ... not exactly the sustenance one requires if merely working from the homeoffice, but oh so yummy 🤗

With pleasure. This potato dumpling, or „Knödel halb und halb“, is a common side dish in Thuringia and Lower Saxony (where I hail from). It is made from 50% boiled and 50% raw potatoes, as the name „half and half“ implies. You divide your potatoes, grate finely half of them and let them drain. Typically the water is collected, the starch settles after a while and is put back into the mass to bind it. I forgo this and just potato starch. The other half of the potatoes is cooked and mashed. Both parts are combined with egg(s) and starch plus some flour and a bit of nutmeg and then formed into dumplings and cooking in barely simmering water for about 30 min. They are tricky and sometimes disintegrate for no reason. A good recipe is found here (sorry, only in German).

Tonight we move from Catalonia to Germany to a true classic: Hasenpfeffer! I hope that @chromedome will forgive to make this first - I am looking very much forward to your version! This is again a triangulation between this version (which is in the tradition of the Rhineland) and a more simple „housewife“ version from Thuringia ... Hasenpfeffer is a robust dish that works well with hare (hence the name), but is equally good with rabbit. The stew is usally thickened with rabbit blood, which poses a difficulty if you buy the rabbit already butchered. See below for a decent workaround. I chopped up the rabbit yesterday night into 9 pieces, that were marinated overnight with salt, pepper, thyme, garlic, onions, cognac and red wine. Tonight, some bacon cubes were fried and subsequently the marinated rabbit parts were fried in the bacon fat. The rabbit was removed and onions plus carrot were fried, dusted with flour and fried some more. In parallel, in a enameled cast iron pan icing sugar was caramelized, some tomato paste was added and fried briefly before being deglazed with the rabbit marinate. More wine was added, together some garlic, juniper berries, peppercorn, bay leaves and all the prefried items from before. In the oven it went, and 45 min later the meat was ready. The braising liquid was filtered, given onto chopped up Flönz (a soft pure pork blood sausage) and the resulting sauce pureed - done ! The Hasenpfeffer was served with potato dumplings (the Thuringia addition) and apple sauce (the Rhineland addition) and enjoyed worh a cold Kölsch ... Manöverkritik: This stew was unanimously deemed more tasty the yesterdays conill amb xocolata. The sauce was more intense and rounded, the meat itself was complementing the sauce. The usage of blood sausage worked well tastewise, but didn’t thickened the sauce. Thank you, potato starch. Overall quite good ... this I will make definitively again - and I think it should be nice with duck legs, too. Next time !

My friend - where is the downside ?!

Bath oil ! Makes a great gift, too ...

And so it begins ... I purchased three rabbits today. First one will - of course - be featured in a Catalan dish: Conill amb xocolata (or Rabbit with chocolate). It was not the smartest of choices. Once I told my family what we have for dinner, my wife responded that she loves the dish as her grandmother always cooked it. There was not the tiniest bit of a chance for expectation management from this point ... her grandma was a perfect cook and spend essentially a week prepping for the big (~15 people +) multi-course, hour-long Sunday lunch, that usually ended around 22.00h ... but hey - no pressure 🙄 I triangulated the recipe from my two favourite Catalan cookbooks, leaning more toward the English version that would result in a lighter dish. I don’t care for fennel, and substituted a star anise. Rabbit was chopped up and intestines reserved for a later point in time. Other ingredients ... Floured rabbit was browned, removed, and aromatics added. Vi ranci was added, evaporated, topped up with the stock and rabbit simmered in the mixture for a little less than an hour. As a little reward the flash-fried liver was consumed by the busy cook, together with a highball ... In the meantime the Picada was prepared. Think Catalan pesto to thicken sauces. Garlic, bread, almonds and pine nuts were roasted in olive oil and then pureed. Once the rabbit was cooked tender, the chopped up chocolate was added & melted and the Picada added. Simmered for 5 more minutes and done ! Conill amb xocolata was served with Trinxat (mashed potatoes with savoy cabbage, bacon, garlic and olive oil - think Catalan colcannon). Enjoyed with a fruity red from the Mont Sant denomination ... Little one enjoyed ! Manöverkritik: the rabbit was nicely cooked, consistency of the meat was good. It was a bit to chocolatey - my wife explained that grandma‘s version contained less chocolate, even though I used the lower amount of both recipes. The sauce had a slight bitterness to it - not unpleasant, bit noticable. I suspect the chocolate brand and will look for different options next time. The combo of conill amb xocolata with the Trinxat worked great and helped with the bitterness of the sauce. The dish will not make it into my regular rotation, but I will give it another go with another brand of chocolate ...

Great 🥳 Rabbit liver, fried in butter to medium and sprinkled with sea salt - ‘nuff said ...

The Ichiro‘s Malt MWR is really great, but if you have difficulties sourcing Hakushu, Ichiro‘s Malt might be even more of a challenge. Nikka Coffey Grain is good and widely available, especially if you are into smoother whiskeys. So is Nikka from the barrel. Good for sipping. The square bottle is Suntory Toki, a blend of the younger expressions of Yamazaki, Hakushu and Chita. At 30€ is is very reasonable and it makes A great highball ... And - if you are in a spending mood - this:

Rabbit or hare ? With innards ?

Both !

Lagavulin is nice, but I am very Japanese-centered ... During the first Covid wave I build a „mancave“ in the cellar and stocked up. I recommend Hakushu 12 ...

Sure, but ... Karashi - Japanese mustard - is equally sinus-clearing as wasabi ! The most popular Japanese sausage is called Schauessen (German heritage): it is small, but very savory and has a crunchy texture. Japanese go crazy over it ... Schauessen, karashi & Asahi beer 🤞

It is regular futomaki, so a big roll made from one piece of nori and rolled around a generous filling. The difference is that futomaki is usually sliced up, while ehō-maki is eaten as a whole (there are some connotation on that in Osaka, but I won’t get into details here). And the ehō-maki should be eaten while facing in a certain direction and in silence. So, nori, sushi rice and some filling - I used dashi-tamago (and omelette flavored with fishstock and sugar), avocado and smoked salmon. I also added pickled daikon for crunch. Roll up (kids can help) and enjoy ...

While mentally working on the rabbit cook-off, I am of course observing important festivities ... such as Setsubun ! 鬼は外! 福は内, everyone ! Traditionally eaten are ehō-maki, large maki sushi, consumed while looking into this year’s auspicious direction (south south west). Augmented by Asahi, Gyoza (Ajinomoto), copious amounts of sake and one of the best movie of all times, Tonari no Totoro ...

I cleaned out the fridge: broccoli soup with Philadelphia cheese, chopped up leftovers of some confused flatbread and browned cubed Leberkäse to sprinkle in ...

Here, the rabbit you purchase contain the liver, kidneys and heart (plus the lungs, for which I haven’t found any application yet). The liver is fantastic: very sweet, no metallic (iron) aftertaste ... and it is huge, compared to the size of the animal. One of the perks in the upcoming days will be to have 2-3 livers to eat ...

Rest in peace, Suzi ...

I am looking very much forward to this ... and coincidentally, my favoured supermarket has rabbit on offer this week 🤗 My sister used to have pet rabbits as a kid, so neither her nor my mom eat rabbit. Thus I had my first taste of rabbit in my late twenties on my first visit to a certain small village in northern Spain. Rabbit is a priced food in Catalonia, where my wife hails from. Naturally now, we have it far more often than the average German household. Recent exploits cover spit-roasted rabbit ... Rabbit liver yakitori (right side) ... Flash-fried liver on toast ... ... and Catalan style, with garlic and wild mushrooms. Not to bore you, I will check out some other dishes to try this week !

Thanks ! I aimed for a pizza bianca, but olive oil got in the way 😉

Sure, my apologies. I’ve linked a good English version in my post above. Feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions ... Edit: there are a couple of videos of Gabriele Bonci floating around where he demonstrates how to gently handle the proofed dough. They are worthwhile to seek out, even just for watching how careful he treats the dough not to deflate it.

Sunday night is “pizza / focaccia / flatbread” & movie night ... Dough based on Bonci’s recipe, half covered with crushed tomatoes and mozzarella di buffala, other half with olive oil, sea salt and some rosemary. Served with some salami spianata romana and some coppa, and a fruity Primitivo. All while enjoying “Christopher Robin” 🤗

Now, I am neither quarantined nor do I hate mushrooms or cauliflower, but I’d be happy to get your chicken parmesan with the pasta any time !

Nope. YMMV.