Braised Rabbit w/ Orzo

It's the end of another quarter of culinary school!  Woohoo!  Still rocking that 4.0 GPA, and so READY for these 2 weeks off.  We'll be setting sail on a boat trip in the next couple of weeks with a big group of our friends, so we're definitely looking forward to that.  Pictures will ensue, I'm sure!

In honor or the end of the quarter, I wanted to whip up something special for Andy and myself.  I sent Andy the following text:

Me: Rabbit.  Braised.  For Dinner.
Andy: F yeah! That sounds awesome!
Me: I didn't think you'd complain about that.

And I'm pretty sure he didn't know what it entailed, but the fact that it was something different and unknown, he was all about it.  And neither he or I were disappointed because the first words out of his mouth after taking a bite were "mmmmm."  That's always a good sign right?! 

If you have trouble tracking down some rabbit meat - check your local butcher.  That's where I stumbled across mine!

Ingredients:

2 lb. rabbit, cut into quarters
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced
1/4 cup onions, diced
3 garlic cloved, slivered
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, sliced
1 cup red zinfandel 
1 large tomato, concassee (peeled, seeded, roughly chopped)
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoon fresh sage, minced
2 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
1 & 1/2 cups orzo, cooked
Shredded Parmesan, for garnish

Heat a large dutch oven under medium high heat.  Add olive oil and heat until shimmering.  Season rabbit pieces with salt and pepper, and in batches, brown both sides.  Remove from pot and reserve.

Add mushrooms, onion, garlic, carrot, and celery to pot and cook until lightly browned. 

Return rabbit to pot and add in sun-dried tomatoes, zinfandel, tomato concasee, thyme, sage, and chicken stock.  Bring mixture to a simmer and cover.  Cook for about 45 minutes, or until rabbit is tender and begins to pull away from the bones.

Remove the rabbit from the pot and separate from bones.  Shred into bite-sized pieces and discard bones.

Strain the sauce, but reserve the vegetables.  Return sauce to pot and reduce by half to thicken slightly, about 10 minutes.  Season sauce with salt and pepper, to taste.  Mount with butter for extra shine and flavor.

Add reserved meat and vegetables back into pot.  Stir in parsley and basil.

Serve mixture over hot orzo and garnish with shredded Parmesan cheese.  Enjoy!

This is definitely a fall comfort meal!  We've got leftovers, but I don't think they'll last very long - I'm thinking about having a big bowl for lunch right now!

Have you ever had rabbit?  What's your favorite way to eat it?

Coq au Vin

Yes, it's me again.  Took a little bit of a hiatus, didn't I?  I'm telling you, life.  Life does funny things.  Keeps you busy.  Keeps you sleepy.  Doesn't necessarily keep you bloggin'.  But thanks for sticking around...

Anyway, Coq au Vin.  A classic French dish, but how in the hell do you pronounce it?  I swear I was one of the only people in my Culinary lab to have even heard of it before.  It almost was annoying having to repeat it over and over again after people asked what I was making.  But regardless... it's "Coke (in a nasally kind of tone)-O-Van (again, nasally!)". 

Now that we've gone over how to say it.  What the heck is it?!

The literal translation is "Cock of the wine" (no giggling all of you immature folk, hehe) - but we can use our common sense and say it's "Chicken cooked in wine."

One of the biggest mistakes when making Coq au Vin is that people end up with "purple chicken." You don't want purple chicken.  It's just not natural.  So the best way to avoid purple chicken, you ask?  Get a good coating on your chicken in the first place.  And don't go overboard on the wine.  If you want to go overboard on it, don't put it in the pot, put it in a glass and drink it.  Deal?  Okay, let's get to it!

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, broken down into 8 pieces
flour, as needed for dredging
salt and pepper, to taste
2 T unsalted butter
4 T Brandy
Bouquet garni (the following wrapped in a cheesecloth) made of:
     4-inch carrot stick
     4-inch leek, split in half
     1 sprig of thyme
     1 bay leaf
3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 cups red wine
2 cups chicken stock
2 pieces of bacon, chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
18 pearl onions, peeled
10 button mushrooms, quartered

Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper.

Place the flour in a shallow dish and dredge each piece of chicken, shaking off any excess.  You want to get a good dredging because ideally, the flour that ends up on your chicken will ultimately be what thickens up your sauce throughout the cooking process.

In a large dutch oven heat the butter under medium high heat.  Add the chicken, in batches, and cook until both sides are browned nicely.  Set the chicken aside on a plate.

Add bacon pieces to dutch oven and cook until fat is rendered and bacon is crispy.  Drain all but 2 tablespoons of fat from pot.  Add the brandy and ignite.  Cook until flame dies out.

Return chicken to pot and add bouquet garni, garlic, wine, and chicken stock.  Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer.  Cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour.  Or until chicken is tender and sauce is thickened.

About 20 minutes before ready to serve, add in pearl onions and mushrooms.

Season with salt and pepper.

We served this over some butter sauteed egg noodles and it was just the perfect pairing. 

I know there hasn't been much of a winter (or at least in my part of the world), but this would be the perfect dish to curl up on the couch with and get warm.  It's comfort in a bowl, I tell ya.  The chicken is tender and falling off the bone.  The sauce is rich, yet delicate. 

Hope everyone is doing well, I know I am, albeit busy as hell!  Have a great weekend guys!

Cabbage Au Gratin

Have you ever had one of those weeks, or days, where everything seems to be too good to be true? Or things have just been going so well lately, that you know something is bound to just screw it all up? Yeah, well we've had one of those weeks. Andy's been having Jeep trouble, and so we've been having to survive on one car, and let me tell you... it's not pleasant. Especially when our schedules differ so drastically. And it's not like we can afford having an extra bill of fixing a car, right? But it hasn't killed us, so I suppose it's making us stronger. But I really wish his Jeep would get fixed faster, hehe.

Anyway, I made it through the 1st week of the semester without any problems, so I suppose that's good. Definitely going to have my head buried in a bunch of books this semester though. I think I've already done more reading in this 1st week than I have an entire semester. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but I blame my current headache on this reading.

So I figured today would be a good day for a comfort recipe. You can practically "au gratin" any vegetable, and most of us associate this with potatoes. While potatoes are all well and fine, I had an abundance of red cabbage from our CSA's a while back, and decided to apply this au gratin method to them. I was not disappointed.


Ingredients:

1 cup red cabbage, shredded
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 small onion, sliced thinly
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup white wine
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup parmesan cheese, grated

Bring a medium sized pot of salted water to a boil. Add cabbage and boil to about 2-3 minutes. Drain and quickly submerge into a bowl of cold water in order to stop the cabbage from continuing to cook. (I added ice cubes to some tap water to make sure it was really cold) Drain the cabbage again and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 F.

In a large skillet, melt the butter under medium high heat. Add onion and cook for about 5 minutes, or until beginning to soften. Stir in the garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper. Stir until fragrant and cook for an addition 3-5 minutes.

Add in cabbage and toss well. Cook for another 5 minutes. Add in wine, and cook until almost entirely reduced. Lower heat to a simmer and slowly add cream and parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper, if needed.

Place in a medium sized ramekin and top with additional parmesan cheese, if you wish. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until cheese is browned.


This definitely turned out way better than I had ever imagined. The flavor is so rich from cream, butter, and cheese that there's no way that this could go wrong. And with cabbage? This definitely will turn any anti-cabbage person into an instant cabbage lover. Enjoy and happy weekend!