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 !
