Week 16 - Favourite Things - 52 images for 2011

Another last minute photo shoot this week - at least my models were cheap if a bit impatient for their salary - paid in dandelion leaves.

They are one of my most favourite things - every year we say - no babies - we have way too many rabbits - and every year I time it wrong and end up with at least two pregnant rabbits.  This year just two mummies with 5 babies between them, but as I am still trying to cull last year's litters 5 is about all we need.

Since moving to our little small holding here, rabbit has become my favourite meat.  It is fantastically versatile, you can roast it, barbeque it, use it in stews, pies and currys, very lean and very good for you.

January's C of Cooking - Rabbit Cobbler - A Rayburn Recipe

This is a slow cook recipe designed for the Rayburn or other wood stove.  For electric equivalent either 120°C for the same number of hours or 180°C for a couple of hours.

Also designed to be cooked entirely in one pot - for those lazy Sunday afternoons.

First take your rabbit - here is one I prepared last year.

Cut him into eight sections, 2 back legs, 2 front legs with rib cage, and the saddle and back into two then halved down the spine.

Brown the pieces in a large oven proof dish - I love cast iron pans because they radiate heat so well for the Rayburn -  TOP TIP - to store your cast iron pans without them rusting, after using and washing, once dry, brush the insides using a pastry brush with a bit of vegetable oil before storing, to reuse, just wipe the insides with a bit of kitchen paper and they are ready to use.

Once the rabbit is browned add a splash more olive oil and 3 peeled and quartered onions and a generous grinding of pepper.  Leave to sauté for a few minutes until the onions start to soften.

 
This recipe calls for stock, but because this is a one pot recipe and it will be cooking for quite a while, there is no need to create or add a separate stock, just make it in the pot you are using, and it will be full of meaty flavour.

To the rabbit and onions add a couple of litres of hot water, then add in some carrots chopped into large pieces, 2 bay leaves and a couple of stalks of celery.  In France it is practically impossible to find celery in the shops in winter, seasonality is very important here, and nobody in my family including me actually likes celery to eat.  It does however seem to be an integral flavour in stock, so I always grow a small patch then chop it and freeze it to use during the year.  (Alongside lots of other frozen herbs).

Season the stock well then bring to the boil.  Add mushrooms - either frozen, or tinned, fresh or rehydrated dried mushrooms, whatever you have to hand.  You will need a couple of handfuls.

Once the stock is boiling, cover the pan and shove it into the centre of the oven for as long as it takes to cook the rabbit so the meat is falling loosely off the bones - in my old Rayburn at approximately 250°F / 120°C that can be up to 4 hours on wood alone.

To serve the rabbit add copious amounts of either dried or frozen thyme.  Season to taste.  Once the liquid is to your taste, throw over the cobbler.

Cobbler is a thick pastry type top that is very easy to make and is a real alternative to a pie pastry, I usually serve it in place of potatoes as it is quite stodgy.

Sift 100g white flour, 100g of wholewheat flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt.  Using your finger tips to rub together to a bread crumb consistency add two heaped tablespoons of room temperature butter and a tablespoon of herb of your choice - here I am using parsley.

To bind together, slowly pour in about 100ml of milk, maybe a tablespoon more, just enough so that the pastry does not crumble too much.  Don't make it too wet as it will need to absorb liquid from the stew, both to cook the cobbler and to thicken the stew.

Make a soft dough, then with floured hands roughly pat it flat and into the shape of your pan, lay over the stew leaving a small air gap around the edges.  Leave to cook for a further 40 minutes (probably less in the electric oven at 180° C°).

Serve in big spoonfuls into bowls for a tasty Sunday dish that takes 20 minutes to prepare, about 5 hours to cook and is totally yummy bunny.

A door closes window opens kind of day

This is my Stinky Eric, very very sadly missed.

But the loss of Stinky gave me Ferguson. Window closes, door opens

But I have had to put down a rabbit today. Did you know that rabbits are carnivorous?  Or more accurately cannabalistic?

I have a hutch with 2 females rabbits in together, which are due for the freezer, but not had a chance to cull them recently.  They obviously got in a fight, and this morning I found that one had been pretty much eaten from the back leg across the spine.  Overnight.

Yuck - in fact very yuck.  Clean thigh bones exposed and spine visible.  Worse than anything in Saw.

I hate losing animals even when they are livestock due for my own dinner table and I know they are destined to be killed, it is the senseless loss that upsets me.

Door closes, window opens - I have just discovered one of the other rabbits about to give birth.

Unfortunately with temperatures at -7°C overnight, they don't really stand much chance of surviving.

Rabbits have the capability to absorb their young rather than birth them if the conditions are not right, so for her sake I actually hope that is what she does, but it may be too late.  Alternatively she may birth them prematurely, and there will be tiny hairless corpses to dispose of.   Just moving her into a hutch indoors out of the extremes of the weather this morning may cause her to abort.

Keeping animals really does teach you a lot about death.

Each tiny death stills affects me, and I hope that it continues to do so.

Another Friday - another dinner party

Tonight's dinner party menu:

Fishy blinis
Rabbit in mustard sauce with garden carrots and 
hedgehog potatoes
Meringue mess

I make my own little blinis in an escargot pan, I remember when I picked it up at a car boot in France, the lady selling it went to a lot of trouble to explain to me how to cook snails, then looked totally horrified when I said that I would be using to make blinis and fry quail eggs in instead.

The batter is a very simple recipe:

1 large fresh egg
3 heaped tablespoons of self raising flour
pinch salt
enough milk to create a thick but still runny batter (thickness of double cream)

To make sweet dipping blinis for chocolate, hazelnut spread and jam, just add a tablespoon of caster sugar and a couple of drops of vanilla extract to the mix.


For the rabbit (this one an even closer to home kill than the wild boar last week as it was in the front garden last year), joint the rabbit, which essentially means separating its back legs from the spine, crack the legs open at the pelvis then cut round with a sharp knife, there is just a thin stretch of muscle then holding them to the spine.  Then with a cleaver, chop through the spine just behind the front legs, cleave in half, then cleave the saddle into two pieces and cleave in half again, you should end up with 8 pieces of rabbit on the bone.

Fry the rabbit in a large casserole dish in a little olive oil with salt and pepper, then add a glass of white wine, 2 large onions quartered, 2 large cloves of garlic, several sprigs of fresh marjoram and a litre of good thick chicken stock - I am using the duck stock I made yesterday.  When this reaches the boil, add 2 heaped teaspoons of whole grain mustard and put in the oven for a couple of hours at 180°C.

An hour before serving add 200 ml of double cream, season again, add a pinch of cayenne pepper and leave to cook in the oven at a low heat for the final hour.

I can not remember where hedgehog potatoes came from but they are really easy and a quick way of making jacket potatoes.  Use a thin skinned potato like a Charlotte, scrub clean and place in a baking tray,  1 large or 2 small spuds per person.  Cut slices along each spud three quarters of the way through, spinkle over sea salt, some black pepper and drizzle with a bit of olive oil, cover with tin foil and bake in the top of the oven for 1 hour at 200°C.

For pudding it was Thea's choice, her favourite and something I only make in the Rayburn because they take a couple of hours to cook, meringues.  A good way of using up surplus eggs too.

I never gave this much credence but having had to make two lots on Friday, I am now convinced that meringues must be made in a metal bowl.  

With an electric whisk whip up 4 egg whites into soft peaks, add a pinch of salt, then gradually introduce 280g of icing sugar whisking continuously to create stiff peaks, then a splash of vanilla extract.

With a metal spoon create separate pools of meringue on some baking paper on a tray, spread well apart.  Bake in a low oven for a couple of hours.

Into these I poured some warmed cherry jam and topped with chantilly cream, then finally a little meringue hat with some melted chocolate dribbled over.

Bouncing Baby Bunnies

After a miserable Friday spent drowning under paperwork and endless calls back and forth to the UK, I was very pleased to see Saturday dawn with some bright sunshine.

With Brendan safetl ensconsed in the pantry and under strict instructions to not come out until the walls had been patched up, Thea and I set to with the rabbits. We currently have 5 babies, one mummy who has just given birth but we don't know to how many babies as they are still buried under straw in her hutch and one pregnant female. A bit of a hutch reshuffle was required to make sure everyone that needed extra room got it and to separate the males out for a bit of a rest so they could recoupe their engergies.

This is Crumble Stud Muffin - so named under the misapprehension it was a male - who later turned out to be a very good mummy indeed, it is her daughters that are pregnant and have given birth recently.

Underneath her is our current stud - Brian Big Nose (from Monty Python's Life of Brian).  They all needed a good clean out and fresh straw so we got started early and soon had a great pile of poo ready to become compost.

As I was so impressed with how well the seedling compost came out, I decided to make some more ready for next year but this time instead of leaving it sitting idle on one side of the garden, I thought I would put the old pantry shelves to better use by making a designated raised composting bed.  These are just some pine floorboards that fit together tongue and groove, to which I screwed a reinforcing bit of off-cut pine  to stop the two planks springing apart, then dug into the ground about a third of the width.  To this pile of rabbit poo will go some fresh Milla manure and some mole cast, and so that it is working for a living - I intend to use it for my pumpkins this year.

I was pleased to see the first cucumber seedlings poking through yesterday.  Every morning now starts with a watering can in the greenhouse and one for the poly tunnel.  With the snow melt still affecting our water table, we have a very full duck pond and an instantly replenishing well, so I have been pumping the well water into all the garden water butts - whilst it has been raining recently, there has not been that much, and I am standing by my conviction that this year will be a drought year. 

Finally with friends coming to dine, I thought I should do a pudding for a change.   I am not a great baker nor pudding maker and all too often I cop out by buying some choccie biccies or asking a neighbour to provide the cake.  This time, inspired by Come Dine With Me, I thought I would have a go at Eton Mess, after all if those guys can whip one up in no time why shouldn't I.  I had bought a crate of strawberries the other day as a family treat at a good reduced price for our tiny budget and with these and the eggs from our chickens whipped up into a meringue with some caster sugar and a bit of double cream - my own Eton Mess. 

Just a quick swirl of a syrup made with the strawberries and a fresh berry to finish.