A new GG Winter creation

Regular readers will recall that when I was Paris recently, I had the opportunity to cook rabbit - a meat I really love and one that I think is overlooked and underused in Australia. The meat is very lean, beautifully tasty and really lends itself to a flavoursome and comforting winter dish. I came up with this recipe a couple of weekends ago when I was spending the weekend on the Central Coast of New South Wales and purchased a wild rabbit. I decided to create something new that satisfied my desire for comfort food. What I came up with was this slow braised rabbit, flavoured with herbs, mushrooms, eschallots, bacon and proscuitto - and given a bit of zing with a touch Dijon mustard and a splash of dry vermouth. The result was just delicious - the sauce is to die for. Don't waste it - I served the dish with super creamy potato mash so that we got every last drop.

Look, if you are a bit skittish about eating rabbit (and I know many people are) you could easily do this with skinless chicken pieces as a substitute. But - if you have never eaten rabbit, this would be a great way to give it a try. I have used wild rabbit in my recipe - it tends to have a stronger flavour - but you will mostly find that rabbits sold in Australia are farmed and will have milder tasting flesh. Check with your butcher who will be able to tell you whether yours is the farmed kind of one of the wild ones. I bought my rabbit skinless, gutted and whole (with the kidneys left in) - I preferred to butcher it myself now that I know how, after learning when I was in France - but your butcher can do it for you if you would rather not.

I made my own Bouquet Garni to flavour this recipe (instructions below) but if you really can't be bothered, you can buy Bouquet Garni sachets from the supermarket - although I can't promise that the herbal flavour will be as nice as using the fresh product, it should still be ok.

This style of dish is even better if you make it the day before you want to serve it - it allows the flavours to develop further and is perfect for entertaining. Make it when you have time and then just reheat when your guests arrive. This will freeze well too. I used a heavy cast iron/enamel pan to cook my rabbit dish - something that can go from stovetop to oven is ideal. Who wants to fiddle around with extra pots? I don't. So here it is, served with buttery mash....

GG slow braised rabbit with mushrooms, bacon and proscuitto

You will need: 1 whole rabbit (I used a wild one for this recipe but most that you buy these days will be farmed), 1 cup diced celery, 1 cup diced carrot, 1 cup sliced leeks, 10-15 whole peeled eschallots, 10-15 button mushrooms, 4 slices roughly chopped proscuitto, 3 slices roughly chopped streaky bacon with the rind removed, 3 or 4 cloves garlic, 2 bay leaves, 6-8 sprigs fresh thyme, 6-8 sprigs parsley(with stalks), kitchen twine (to tie up the herbs with), a square of muslin or cheesecloth about 12cm square, 1L chicken stock, 1/3 cup dry Vermouth, 1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard, a generous splash of olive oil, 1 tablespoon butter, salt and pepper.

Method:
First, you will need to cut the rabbit into 6 pieces. Remove the front and back legs (with the thigh attached) and set them aside. Now remove the large fleshy part that remains at the back end of the rabbit (this is the "saddle"). Cut this into two halves. The rest of the rabbit/bones can be frozen for use in making stock another time - it will have very little meat on it. Before you do though, have a look inside the cavity - if your butcher has left the kidneys attached, gently cut them off and dice them finely. They will add to the lovely layers of flavour in the dish. If they have already been removed, no problem - the dish will still work well. And of course, if the thought of trying to butcher a rabbit is a bit much - ask your butcher to do it for you!

Now, make the Bouquet Garni - take the parsley, thyme and bay leaves, place them in the cloth and tie them up in a bundle securely with a piece of kitchen twine.

Season the rabbit pieces with pepper and a bit of salt. Heat a generous splash of olive oil in the pan and brown the rabbit pieces in batches of 3. Remove the rabbit from the pan and set aside. Add the bacon and proscuitto, chopped kidneys (if used) leeks, carrots, celery and escallots to the pan and allow to cook for about 5 minutes. Now add the garlic and Bouquet Garni and cook for another 5 minutes. Splash in the Vermouth and allow it to bubble up, realising all those lovely precious caramelised bits on the bottom of the pan.

Add the stock and stir it in well. Cover the pan and bake in a moderate oven for 1 1/2 hours, stirring every half an hour or so. If the dish is drying out too much, add a bit of water to the pan.

Add the mushrooms, Dijon mustard and butter and allow to cook for at least another 1/2 hour. to 45mins. Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve with creamy mash and a sprig of fresh thyme.

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Paris Cooking School

Hi everyone - well this weary traveller is back from a month away, still a bit jetlagged and adjusting to having to get up for work every morning and be back in the real world again. I had a fantastic time away, and over the next few weeks you will be seeing and hearing a little of some of the food experiences I had in my travels. I have returned home with a whole swag of inspiration and ideas for dishes, as well as some new skills (I now know how to butcher a whole rabbit!) and some great kitchen hints and techniques. My trip took me to London, Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Paris - all very different places with different produce and different food traditions. But I thought I would begin with an account of my cooking school experience in Paris.

Starting the day with a cafe au lait before heading to cooking school

I woke really early on my second day in Paris very excited that I was heading for cooking school that morning. Students had all been instructed to meet outside the Jules Joffrin train station where we would meet our instructor, Chef Pino Ficara. We would then walk to the nearby market to purchase our fresh ingredients and then up the hill to the school itself for class.

Our first market stop was a fromagerie (cheese shop) where Pino gave us a lesson in the various kinds of cheesemaking techniques which had us all spellbound. Cheesemaking is such a scientific and magical process and many recipies and ways of working have been around for literally hundreds, if not thousands of years. I learned about how the fromageries were set up, in order to have the cheese at it's best, and also to prevent the stinky cheeses from cross contaminating the more delicate ones- a lot of the cheeses are not refrigerated and virtually all of the cheese is made with raw milk. In Australia, it is illegal to sell raw milk products (an exception was only recently made that allowed 2 kinds of Roquefort to be imported, but our laws are ridiculously antiquated) so I was so excited at the prospect of having a raw milk cheese fest.

A tiny sample of the huge selection of cheeses I came across in the fromagerie

And a fest it was. I tasted no less than 15 kinds of cheese (there must have been a couple of hundred in the shop) - all hand made - some made by monks, some aged in caves, some preserved in straw, cheese soaked in wine or basted in beer, cheese from cow milk, sheep milk and goat milk, bright yellow hard cheese and creamy milky white cheese, cheese that tasted of clean air and pure milk, cheese that was sticky and deliciously foetid, cheese covered in ash or studded with wild herbs and lavender,tangy and crumbly cheese, velvety white goat cheese so delicious it made your eyes roll back in your head! The shop itself was so beautifully set up. The aproned staff expertly cut and lovingly wrapped our selections and we headed to our next stop - the charcuterie (butcher)

Some of the poultry and game on sale at the charcuterie

If you are squeamish about raw meat or you are only used to buying your meat wrapped in sanitised plastic packets, then you might have been a bit freaked out on entering the butcher shop. Much of the meat such as poultry and games is sold in one piece, with head, feet/ claws all still attatched. Not only are these used for stock, but they also allow you to ensure that the meat is fresh. The selection available was so exciting - including pheasant, squab pigeon,quail, duck, about 7 or 8 varieties of chicken, venison, rabbits and hares. I love game and particularly rabbit so I was thrilled when it was decided that we would cook rabbit that day. We bought two whole rabbits (skinned, but with the head and all left on, as well as the liver - we had plans for that) which were wrapped up by the butcher in brown paper and string and we headed down the street to the fishmonger.

Oysters and fresh live crustaceans for sale at the local fishmonger

The selection of fish, and particularly shellfish was spectacular - so many varieties of oysters! (they are never pre opened, they are sold closed or you can get the fishmonger to shuck them for you), mussels and clams, periwinkles, live crabs of all kinds, langoustines, prawns and lobsters - also smoked fish, snails and fresh kelp. The first thing that strikes you is that the fish doesn't smell fishy - it is SO fresh that it just smells like seawater. Everything looked so superb - we chose two large silvery bream that we planned on turning into a starter for our menu.

Delicious berries, destined for our kitchen

Pretty fresh radishes and onions at the greengrocer

Next stop, the vegetable market- a riot of brightly coloured reds, greens,oranges. Tight bunches of scarlet radishes, bundles of emerald green and creamy white asparagus, all kinds of herbs displayed in large wicker baskets big enough to put your washing in - and the berries! That luscious aroma of fresh strawberries again, cherries, melons... Everything looked so abundant and beautiful. We decided on what we wanted to serve with our dishes and came away with bunches of sweet smelling herbs, celery root (celeriac), wild asparagus (which I had never seen - delicate, with thin stalks and small pretty tapered ends), endive (witlof), fresh carrots, eschallots, garlic, a punnet or two of ruby coloured raspberries and some sweet smelling strawberries.

Gorgeous fresh artichokes for sale

Final stop on the way back to school was an artisan bread maker (who Chef said is quite mad and obsessed with perfection - but makes the best bread in Paris - using a centuries old woodfired oven, grinding his own flour with a stone grinder and keeping his sourdough culture literally locked in the basment because he is scared someone will steal it!) The bread! Oh.....the bread! The best I have ever eaten in my life. We chose bagettes, walnut bread, and a fruity rye loaf that we planned to serve with our cheeses. We munched on still warm bagettes happily as we walked up the hill to school in the sunshine.

Fresh bread from the artisan bakery - baked 4 times a day

The class was amazing and I learned so much - so many great tips and techniques as well as learning more about the actual chemistry of what happens to ingredients when you combine them or treat them in a particular way. It was also SO much fun. I learned to make proper creme patissiere (the beautiful custard that goes into choux puffs or tarts, and also butchered my first whole rabbit, which was like conducting surgery. In Australia they never have the feet or head left on!) I was in culinary heaven as we put our menu together - a starter of oven roasted bream filllets baked on a thick bed of fresh herbs and served with creamed celeriac, the main course of braised rabbit with sauteed endive, wild asparagus, carrots and eschallot confit and a dessert of a strawberry and raspberry tart, with an almond pastry base and vanilla creme patissiere. We also enjoyed a superb cheese platter between main course and dessert and lots of lovely french wine to wash it all down with. An unforgettable experience.

Here is what I cooked that day:

A starter of herb baked bream, celeriac puree and mache

Braised saddle of rabbit with wild asparagus, confit eschallots and witlof

Fresh fruit tart with almond pastry and creme patissiere

Because it doesn't get dark until 10pm, I decided to jump on a boat after class and cruise the Seine, enjoying the warm weather and that beautiful golden evening sunshine that turns everything buttery yellow. I cruised past the palaces, the tower, the Louvre - along the embankments where people were enjoying a glass of wine or lying on the grass. I felt so lucky to be there and to have had such a wonderful day. When I eventually made it back to Montmartre, I decided that I would have a picnic on my balcony for dinner, (I had eaten a lot during the day so I didn't want a big restaurant dinner) so I simply bought a small bagette (warm from the oven - they bake 4 times a day here!) ,a small piece of succulent cooked duck (in Paris butchers sometimes sell meat they cook on the premises), some raspberries and a little pot of creme freche to dip them in and ate them on my very Parisian wrought iron Juliet balcony overlooking the street as the sun went down. What a great day.

Chef Pino Ficara and I in the Montmartre kitchen

I have fallen completely and utterly in love with Paris - can you blame me??? I am already planning an extended return trip in 2011. In the meantime, I plan to hone my new skills and appreciation for French food in my own kitchen. Bon appetit!

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