Spanish Goat and Asparagus Risotto
If you haven’t had goat before it’s very similar to lamb in both how you cook it and how it tastes although it’s a lot leaner and sweeter meat than lamb, cheaper too. The recipe I made with one of the steaks is a quick marinade with a spanish twist to it with some lemon. It only needs an hour in the fridge too. I wanted to make a pilaf to go with this but I only had arborio rice so a quick risotto it was. I’ve made that here before so I won’t go into it again today and obviously, if you can’t find goat, just use lamb.
Bunny and Lavender Tarts Smell Like Grandma, without the Pee
Bunny and Lavender Tarts Smell Like
Grandma
Bunny and Lavender Tartlet - Makes 40
Filling:
1 Bunny, quartered
2 Liters of Chicken Stock
2 Carrots, sliced
1 Onion, sliced
1 Parsnip, sliced
1 Celery stick, sliced
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
2 teaspoons of dried lavender
Pastry:
250 grams, plain flour
200 grams, butter
120 mL, Sour Cream
Place the bunny, vegetables, stock and herbs in a large saucepan
and bring to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1½ hours.
In a food processor blend the flour and butter until they form a
loose breadcrumb mixture and add the sour cream, just enough to
combine in to a smooth dough. Remove the dough, wrap in plastic and
put in the fridge to chill for at least a half hour.
When the bunny is tender, remove the meat from the bones and some
of the vegetables and allow to cool. Keep the stock.
Melt the 2 tablespoons of butter for the filling in a clean
saucepan, add the flour and lavender and whisk to prevent it from
burning. After a few minutes, ladle in the stock slowly to form a
thick creamy sauce (you will need about 2 cups of the stock). Add
enough of the sauce to the bunny meat and vegetables to make a
moist but not too wet or sloppy pie filling.
To make the pastry cases, pre-heat your oven to 200ºC and lightly
grease a mini-muffin tin. Roll out the pastry to a very thin round
and with a small glass or pastry cutter, cut rounds and slip them
into the muffin cups ensuring that there is no air beneath the
pastry, lightly prick it all over. Fill the tray and bake for 15
minutes until the pastry has puffed and the edges are golden. When
you take them out of the oven, if the bases have risen too much
press them back down with a tea-towel covered thumb or any other
suitable kitchen instrument. Allow the cases to cool and remove
from the muffin tray. These can be made 2 days in advance and kept
in an air-tight container.
Clean out the food processor and add the rabbit and vegetables and
process until a relatively smooth paste is formed. Reheat and spoon
into the pastry cases just before serving. Sprinkle with extra
lavender.
Smoked Bunny Sausage Gratin with Organic Cannellini Beans
The sausages themselves were fantastic, only slightly smokey and with a bit of a cheesy flavour that works well with the parmesan cheese crust on the gratin. The best part of bunny, more dramatically seen in sausage, is that bunny is very low in cholesterol so it's still really quite healthy. Even though the bunny stands out in this dish and there's a very soft fennel back-note, the texture of the beans really stands out pulling the dish together, not to forget the blended beans making the sauce thicker and more substantial.
Smoked Bunny Sausage Gratin with
Organic Cannellini Beans and Wantirna Estate Amelia Cab Sav
Merlot
Smoked Bunny Sausage
Gratin with Organic Cannellini Beans - Serves 2
2 Smoked Bunny Sausages
1 Onion, sliced thinly (about a cup)
1 Fennel Bulb, sliced thinly (about a cup)
1 Capsicum, sliced thinly (about a cup)
400g tin Cannellini Beans
1 teaspoon of dried Oregano
1 teaspoon of dried Parsley
2 Tomatoes, diced (I used halved grape tomatoes instead)
½ cup of Chicken Stock
½ cup of Bread Crumbs
½ cup of Grated Parmesan
Fry the sausages in a little oil until cooked through
In the same pan, fry the onion and fennel until the onion is
translucent. Take half of the beans and their liquid from their tin
and blend to a puree; add this to the pan and stir through. Add the
remaining vegetables, chicken stock and herbs and beans; cover and
simmer for 5 minutes.
Slice the sausages thinly and add mix through the vegetables. Spoon
the mix evenly between two bowles or ramekins and top with the
breadcrumbs and cheese.
Heat a grill or broiler to medium and place each bowl under the
grill and cook until the cheese has melted or the bread crumbs are
golden.
Bunny, Pancetta and Shitake Pasta
They’re cute, fluffy and hop around a lot. I’ve got one named Sneaker and boy is he cute. Except when he’s being a jerk. And that’s a lot. I’ve lost $2000 worth of cabling from around the house that I’ve had to replace (he has a taste for the expensive proprietary Apple kind) and his favourite game is to hop up on my bed an hour before I want to wake up each morning and run around across me until I get out of bed, after which he’ll ignore me. He’ll make a great pie one day.
In the mean time, I happened across fresh grain fed farmed bunnies in the David Jones food hall. Now, I love Sneaker and since I haven’t cooked much bunny before I figured I needed some practice to do him justice so I picked one up with no real idea what to make with it that night.
When I got home I rummaged around and found some pancetta in the fridge and some dried Chinese mushrooms in the cupboard. I didn’t want to have to make a buttery short crust pastry, so, pasta. Easy.
Jointing the bunny was fairly easy; it only took five minutes, slicing off the legs at the joint, and since I was going to be chopping the bunny up after it was roasted I hacked off the saddle with out too much care, just keeping close to the ribs to keep as much meat as I could. The rest of the carcass went into a zip lock bag and into the freezer for a future bunny stock.
The jointed bunny pieces were dusted in flour and fried off in a heavy roasting dish then set aside. The onion and pancetta were fried in the oil left over from the meat. The bunny was added back in along with the diced mushrooms, stock, mushroom soaking liquid and some chopped rosemary. The roasting dish was covered and the lot was roasted slowly for two or three hours. Once roasted, I shredded the bunny meat off the bone with two forks ready to be used to top the pasta.
The pasta was simple, 100gms of flour and 1 egg per person (the should be enough sauce for 4-6 people). Kneaded until smooth then rolled to a low setting through a pasta machine. Once I had the long sheet, I simply tore off chunks (not cut). The pasta was cooked in salted water and then added to the bunny sauce. Tearing the pasta helped the pasta to soak up more of the juice from the sauce.
Served with some lightly grated parmesan.