April 2014 Food Roundup

I left it far too long to do these posts individually, so here's a summary.

31 March - 13 April 2014

Grilled swordfish with croquettes made from left-over mash. Very good, but the croquettes are a bugger to kepp in any kind of shape during cooking.
Salmon Teriyaki style. Always tricky to get a teriyaki sauce sticky enough without being too sweet.
Chicken "curry". Not really a curry but more of a oniony stew with a few spices. Quite good with the fresh coriander.
Pork cutlets and risotto with morels. Sadly not very good. Pork overcooked although tasty, crackling inedible, risotto strangely flavourless.

25 April - 27 April 2014

Rabbit in red wine and mushrooms with Pappardelle. Two rabbit legs cooked slowly with mushrooms, bacon, leeks and fennel. Tasted way better than it looks. The meat was deliciously tender and the flavour of the sauce just right.
Fish and black bread. Smoked salmon and matjes with a little horseradish. Great!
Pot roast pork with tomato and leeks and fries. Very tasty meat and sauce, but failed crackling again. My chips have not be very crispy lately but these still tasted OK.
Swordfish steaks on the teppanyaki. The only thing I had big enough to cook these huge steaks. A little overdone, to be honest. We had them with just bread and salad.

Peppered Rabbit Stew

Friday, 20th December 2013

Joint the rabbit, coat the pieces in seasoned flour. Fry some bacon lardons in a casserole and add and brown chopped onion and garlic. Remove and add the rabbit pieces to brown all over (in batches if necessary. Remove the rabbit and deglaze the casserole with red wine, scraping up any bits. Put the rabbit, and bacon and onion mix back in, with some rosemary twigs and a handful of pink peppercorns, and add more red wine and stock to cover the meat. Cover and cook in the oven for 2 or 3 hours at 120°, so the gravy is just bubbling.
Add some sliced wild mushrooms and peeled button onions and cook for another 30 minutes. Remove all the meat, mushrooms, onions etc. to the upturned casserole lid and thicken the remaining gravy with beurre manie. Served with sautéed potatoes and steamed cabbage. Fantastic, especially the gravy. The pink peppercorns are peppery when bitten but not powerful, rather with a sweet, fruity undertone.

Rabbit and Beer Stew

Saturday, 6th April 2013

Rabbit appears so rarely in the local supermarket, I feel compelled to buy one when it does.
In this case I tried this recipe. I did the marinading, although I did have to use a german wheat beer instead of the dark belgian beer suggested. In Köln, if you don't go to a specialist store, you can only buy Kölsch (probably 19 different ones), Pils or Wheat Beer. Still the wheat beer worked fine.
A little carrot is enough for me, so I reduced the amount of that and added some turnip as well. I left out the prunes and marmelade (even more difficult to buy in Köln than dark beer!), and substituted a big spoonful of my partner's plum preserve. And we used arrowroot and water, instead of cornstarch and milk.
And I added dumplings because, well.... why wouldn't you??
Delicious! The plum preserve was an inspired touch and the sauce was fantastic. The veggies were perfectly cooked, and the meat was tender and juicy. It was a whole rabbit, so there was way too much for two. I had the left overs a couple of days later (re-heated in a double boiler) and, if anything, it was even better.

Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit

Sunday, 30th December 2012

Rabbit stew and dumplings, with boiled potatoes and "Spitzkohl".
My local supermarket is large but has surprisingly little variety of fresh meat and vegetable. However, whole rabbit does appear on the shelves at festivals like Easter and Christmas, so I like to take advantage.
I jointed the rabbit, coated it with seasoned flour and browned the pieces in dripping. Then browned onions and root vegetables in the same pan, and transfered everything to the slow cooker with a large amount of chopped herbs, a few squashed juniper berries and the rabbit heart, liver and kidneys in a muslin bag. I covered the meat with a mix of white wine and stock and let it cook on medium for about 7 or 8 hours.
For the cabbage (there seems to be no special English name for Spitzkohl), I friend some diced bacon and then sautéed the chopped cabbage in the fat for 10 minutes or so, then added a splash of white wine vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar and mixed in a good knob of butter at the last minute. Topped with diced tomato.
I still cannot get dumplings right. These were OK, but too greasy and didn't rise enough.
The rabbit had a lovely flavour but was a bit overcooked. Should have used the low setting on the slow cooker for that length of time. The cabbage was excellent.
For future stews I think I would try red wine and also add fried bacon and chopped rabbit's innards at the beginning (as in this Alpine Rabbit Stew recipe).

Rabbit Stew with Dumplings

Sunday, 25th March 2012

I had about half a rabbit, basically the back legs. Dusted them with seasoned flour, browned them is a casserole and removed them to a plate. Added bacon, onions and garlic to the casserole and cooked until the onion was starting to brown, then removed those too. Added a good quantity of red wine and let it bubble while scraping up the bits from the bottom. Put everything back in, added some chopped fresh tomatoes and rosemary and shoved it in the oven with a lid on, medium heat, for a couple of hours. Then added some chunks of leek and dumplings, and turned the heat up a bit for a half an hour. Served with simple roast potatoes.
The rabbit was tender and flavourful and the sauce was really delicious. My dumplings are getting a bit better, I'm paying more attention to getting the amount of flour and fat right (2:1), but these were still not as light as I've had recently at a friend's house. More practise needed.

Rabbit Stew with Prunes

Friday, 13th January 2012

We've had whole rabbits available in the supermarket lately, so I got one for this stew (The Cook Book p251), although I put in more things than the basic recipe calls for.
Flour the rabbit pieces and brown them in butter, remove from the pot and brown bacon and onions, then put the rabbit back. Add a good deal of red wine, some chopped tomatoes and tomato puree. Simmer for 90 minutes and add mushrooms, prunes and leeks after an hour or so. Then raise the heat a little, add dumplings and cook covered for another 20 minutes.
I served sauteed potatoes cut like thick chips, but I burnt the butter before they went in, so I had to use duck fat instead, which turned out rather well!