Ischia-style rabbit recipe

Ischia-style rabbit recipe

After eating massive amounts of turkey and cranberry over the Christmas season, I still want to eat meat. But I was looking for something different.  I saw wild rabbit for sale at my local farmers market a while ago. Wild Rabbit meat is leaner and tastier than the farmed variety. It is available throughout the year and it’s very versatile.

Regional dishes reflect the fact that rabbit works well with those flavours often used in chicken dishes, such as mustard and cream in France, tomato and herbs in Italy, and chilli in South America. I ordered some wild rabbit online from Graig Farm in Wales and tried one of the great recipes I found at the Great Italian Chefs, the Italian spin-off of Great British Chefs.

I used this video from GBChefs as a guide to butcher the rabbits. Regarding cooking times, I left the rabbit to cook for about 15 minutes more than the recipe guide. The result was a juicy and full of flavour dish.

I used the rabbit liver and heart to make a little side dish  to soak up the rabbit juices, using herbs, fried onions, garlic and cassava coarse flour- if you can’t find cassava you can use panko bread crumbs. Mix all in a pan, toast it all over hight heat – test for salt and pepper.

Ischia-style rabbit recipe

Ischia-style rabbit recipe

Ingredients
Rabbit
    2 rabbits
    1 bulb of garlic, cut in half
    300g of shallots, sliced
    1 chilli, cut in half lengthways
    500ml of white wine
    500ml of vegetable stock
    200g of tomato, peeled
    2 bay leaves
    1 bunch of parsley, roughly chopped
    1 bunch of basil, roughly chopped
    salt
    pepper

Garnish
    basil leaves
    2 sprigs of rosemary

 Method
1)Joint the rabbits into pieces: the shoulders, ribs, loins and hind legs. Season all of the pieces with salt and pepper and lightly dust with a little flour
2)Sauté the rabbit pieces all over in a frying pan over a high heat with a little olive oil. When golden-brown, set the rabbit to one side and discard the fat from the pan
3)Pour in some more extra virgin olive oil and add the garlic, shallots and chilli. Cook for a few minutes until the shallots are golden
4)Place the pieces of rabbit in the pan again and deglaze with the white wine. After about 5 minutes, add the tomatoes and the vegetable stock
5)Leave to cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes
6)Add the herbs and continue to cook over high heat until you obtain a thick sauce, for about another 30-45 minutes
7)Garnish with sprigs of rosemary and parsley and serve right away.

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Ischia-style rabbit recipe