Rabbit: Another White Meat

Rabbit is well known in the culinary world, but it cannot come close to being called so in the home kitchen. Personally, I enjoy cooking with rabbit. It is as lean as can be and I enjoy the flavor of the meat. No, I don’t think it tastes like chicken. It has a nice gamey flavor when you get quality rabbit, and there is almost no animal out there more healthy to eat. That being said, I have very little experience cooking it. For the average home cook, it is not the easiest to find. For me, I come in contact with it everyday. So why don’t I cook with it regularly? I can’t afford it.

I find this unfortunate, because I would love to consistently have it in my kitchen. It is not the easiest to cook most parts of the rabbit, as they tend to dry out. I find this aspect fun. I welcome a challenge in the kitchen. Not too long ago, I made a rabbit stew. This was one way to help keep the rabbit moist. I cooked it in a red wine and tomato based braise with onions, carrots, and celery. I added herbs during the cooking process and had a comforting stew after a couple hours.

Right now, I am watching the end of an Iron Chef episode. The secret ingredient? Rabbit. With my little experience cooking rabbit and the way I saw it dealt with on the show, it is clear that rabbit is a vehicle for a tremendous variety of flavors. The challenger utilized many different flavors from all over Asia. He cooked the rabbit with Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and Indian flavors. Each one complimented the rabbit in a different way, from Indian curry and tumeric flavors to the different miso flavors of Korean cooking.

The Iron Chef focused on his specialty, Mediterranean cooking, but made a point of using the whole animal. From the kidneys, to the hearts, to the loin, the entire rabbit was being utilized. This is something that I appreciate when working with any animal, and it is something that the meat department where I work also focuses on.

A couple weeks ago at work, we made a rabbit terrine. I learned how to break down a rabbit, removing the limbs, the tenderloins, and then removing the meat from the bones. We made a mousseline out all of the meat excluding the tenderloins, hearts, kidneys, and livers. The mousseline consisted of the ground rabbit and heavy cream. The tenderloins were seared whole, and the hearts, kidneys, and livers were sauteed with garlic and thyme. They were then roughly chopped and mixed in with the mousseline. We lined a loaf pan with bacon, put in half of the ground rabbit mixture, placed the seared tenderloins in the middle, then added the rest of the mixture on top. After cooking the whole thing at a low temperature in the oven and allowing it to cool and set overnight in the walk-in, the terrine was unmolded.

It looked like a nice paté with some slightly crispy bacon on the outside and two little surpises dotting the center. These pearly white circles were the tenderloins. In this form, It was difficult to tell you were eating rabbit. With the added fat of the cream, the flavor of the herbs, and the distracting layer of bacon surrounding the whole thing, the rabbit flavor was somewhat lost. Don’t get me wrong. It was a tasty paté.

So why isn’t rabbit cooked more often? Well, it isn’t as available. Farmers who raise rabbits do so at a higher cost, and the consumer is forced to pay the higher price per pound. And quite frankly, it may just not be worth it. The flavor is not quite unique enough and there are other healthy alternatives that come without the high price tag. It is unfortunate, and one might hope to see the price of rabbit go down while its availability increased, but that trend has yet to reach the horizon. I may cook with it again, and I hope that I do. It might have to wait for a somewhat special occasion, or a night when a visitor makes a request to try something new.

11/12/12009

How Easily a Day Off Turns Into a Lot of Work

Wednesdays are the only day of the week that I can truly consider a day off.  On every other day, I have either class or work. It becomes a long day when I have both.  Wednesdays are completely free, and what do I do with this free time? I cook a five-course meal for my family and two friends.

It started this morning with an idea to cook a little something new. Then I got going. I went to the store and came back with onions, shallot, herbs, carrots, chicken livers, two pork tenderloins, and some heavy cream. I have had a couple of different chicken liver mousse lately, and I wanted to put my own little spin on the dish. Not that I did anything too crazy, but I also thought that the mousse might be made a little more healthy than most. I generally like to try and eat a healthy diet, excluding occasions when I am around food that is new to me or something special. So in this puree, I wanted to try and include no cream, butter, or egg yolks. I also had to decide how I would cook the mousse. I could either puree the raw livers with other ingredients and cook them in the oven in a hot water bath, or I could cook everything and puree at that point.

I started by sauteeing shallots and garlic in olive oil, adding some thyme and the chicken liver, then deglazing with a good swirl of white wine when the livers were still a bit pink in the middle. Next I took and apple, the type is not too important, but I wanted one with a good bit of sweetness that was not too tart, and I sauteed half of it sliced in in a little olive oil. I added some garam masala, ground cardamom, a touch of ground clove, and some fresh nutmeg that I ground with a microplane. I let the apples get a little soft, then added a good bit of some port wine. I let this reduce some and let the alcohol cook off. I had two different mixtures, and they both were heading for the food processor. I pureed the mixture, adjusted for seasoning, and that was it. I was pretty surprised. The bit of sweetness from the apples, the flavor and acidity provided by the white wine and port, and the spices all complimented each other well. What was also important to me though, was that they complimented the flavor of the liver. They certainly did while also letting the flavor of the liver remain very much at the forefront. This was my first chicken liver mousse, and I know I will be making it again. My friends were a little skeptical, but both had more than one serving. My mom and step-dad were already fans of liver mousse and pate, and they were both pleasantly surprised. It was a good way to start the meal.

Next was a very simple yet flavorful carrot ginger soup. I wasn’t sure I was going to make this, but the carrots at the store looked great, and I knew I had some ginger at home. I started with some chopped onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil with grated ginger. I chopped and added the carrots and cooked then with the aromatics until a bit soft, then I added some chicken stock from the fridge. I let it all cook together for a while until the carrots had softened sufficiently, then pureed the whole thing with an immersion blender, and looked for some coconut milk. To my surprise, we had one can left. Even more surprising was the fact that when I opened the can, there was not milk but some kind of solid that I had to immediately throw away. So I added some whole milk and a couple squeezes of lime, and adjusted for seasoning. I have made the soup before, and it is fairly simple, but I knew that it would go well with the meal, and it went over very well at dinner.

In addition to this, we also had a simple salad of greens and some herbs. I put together a vinaigrette that went along with the other flavors of the meal. I minced some shallots and garlic, turned the garlic into a paste with some salt, and poured in some apple cider vinegar. I then streamed in some olive oil while whisking. I tasted, added salt and pepper, and tasted again. It was an okay dressing, but it needed something. So I walked to the pantry, looked around, came back with some honey, and the vinaigrette was much more complete. One of my friends ask for it for her birthday.

For the main course, I grilled some marinated pork tenderloin. The two pork tenderloins were marinated for a couple hours in shallots, garlic, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and mint. The next step was very simple. I turned on the grill, waited for it to heat up, and then put the tenderloins on the hottest part of the grill. I grilled them on all four sides until it was finished, a nice rosy pink in the center. I served this with an apple compote of some sort. I diced up a couple apples and threw them in with sauteed onions and garlic and put in a pinch of garam masala. I added a bit of honey and apple cider vinegar then let the apples cook down a bit. When it reached the consistency I wanted, some of the sugars had come out to bring it together, but I did not let the apples turn to mush. Overall, the pork with apple compote was what I was looking for, and it may have been even better when we added some of the vinaigrette to the equation.

For the last course, I made a vanilla custard that I had done before, but I added something that I knew at least one of my friends would love. For the custard, I whisked half a cup of sugar with six egg yolks until it became a light yellow and brought a quart of heavy cream to a boil with the seeds of a vanilla pod, also throwing the pod in to be removed a bit later. I added some sugar to the heavy cream, and when it came to a boil, I removed it from the heat. After it cooled for a few minutes, I slowly introduced the cream to the egg yolks and sugar as to not scramble the eggs. I then poured the mixture into a pan sitting in a hot water bath, and cooked it at 325 for 45 minutes. This was all done in the early afternoon, as I had to put this into the fridge to set for a couple hours. During these couple of hours, I took a can of sweetened condensed milk and boiled it in a pasta pot. After two and a half to three hours… dulce de leche. My friend’s Argentine grandmother would take cream and sugar and boil it down for a couple of hours, and he had great memories of eating it many different ways, so I wanted to do it for him in my own way. Boiling the can like I did is pretty much the equivalent of what my friend’s grandmother had done minus the cooking down of the liquid. In the can, it is already “condensed” and the sugar is added for you. So maybe some would consider it cheating, but I like to consider it a different means to achieve the same end. I had never done it before, but boiling a can in water was easy enough to do. When all of the other food was finished, I left the table for a minutes and opened the can. Inside was a dark, caramel colored syrup. I tasted it. It was sweet with a great caramel flavor, and I knew it would be perfect over the now completely set vanilla custard. I spooned out the dulce de leche and spread it on top of the custard. It was a big hit at the table, and I guess a new dessert that I will have to make in the future.

Overall, it was a long day, but a very successful and rewarding evening. When the end of the day came, I was tired, but I enjoyed the time spent with my friends. As always, it felt great making food for others. It’s fun to play around with new and old recipes, and seeing the fruits of your labor makes it all that much better.

Grand Isle Slaughterhouse Shut Down

Yikes. Definitely of interest to anyone who eats animals: The Grand Isle Slaughterhouse, a big meat supplier for the Vermont area, has been shut down and a criminal investigation will begin shortly. The reason? Cruelty to calves.

Here’s the kicker:

A society member, working undercover as an employee of Bushway Packing, Inc., recorded footage of other workers shocking, kicking, slapping and inadequately stunning veal calves before slaughter, said the society’s chief operating officer, Michael Markarian.

Full article here, from The Burlington Free Press.

Check back with us soon for more on this story.

Kefi in New York City, NY

I read about this place, looked at the menu, and was staying on the upper west side, so this was an obvious choice for dinner one night. I was about twenty minutes from going to eat when I saw the chef’s name. I recognized the name, and I thought it was funny when I realized that he had been on Iron Chef. But the food?

The food was great. I got a relatively light meal with a friend. We got the meatballs for an appetizer, then I ate the pork souvlaki sandwich. The meatballs were excellent, an extremely moist mixture of beef and pork. The tomato sauce it came in was very flavorful and the tomato flavor was great. The one thing that I thought when eating that I wasn’t the biggest fan of was the number of olives. I think that with all of the olives, the dish was a little bit salty if you had too much sauce with a bite of meatball. If the meatballs are eaten with just a touch of the tomato sauce, it was up there with the best meatballs I have had. The pork souvlaki was great. The pita it is served in is soft and chewy in a great way. It is served with a light serving of veggies, including tomato and lettuce. The pork was not what I expected considering the cuts of pork that are rolled up in pitas in most city establishments. There are large chunks of pork tenderloin, not dry at all, with a nice slightly pink center. I will definitely return to try more of what Kefi has to offer. I had wanted to try the sweetbreads. I really wanted to try them, but my friend, who was providing me with a place to stay, did not feel like thymus gland. He did say that he may eat them another time if I get them and don’t tell him what it is. I will get them next time I eat here, hopefully within a couple of weeks. Obviously I enjoyed the meal, and I would recommend both things I ate, and my friend said the chicken souvlaki was fantastic as well.

09/30/2009

Sadie Katz Deli in Burlington, VT

A great deli. Seems as though it could have been pulled right out of New York and placed in the middle of downtown Burlington. This is the only place where I get my deli meat by the pound now. I consistently have some of their corned beef and pastrami in my fridge at home. I also recently started getting half or whole loafs of their rye bread. Last week, I went down to the Culinary Institute of America and came back with a loaf of their rye bread. Everything down there was fantastic, but I find that the bread at Sadie Katz had a little bit better flavor, and a much better texture. It has a nice crust with a wonderfully soft interior. They get it par-baked from a place in Jersey. They finish it off in house, and I think that this is the best way to do your bread if you can’t bake it everyday yourself. They do the same thing with their bagels from H&H in New York. Getting the bagels frozen would not be the same. Also, H&H make the best bagels I have had, so I love that they get them from there. The service at Sadie Katz is great. The guys behind the counter love what they do, and it shows. They have a great time with it, and it makes for a great experience whenever you are down there. They are consistently busy which is always a good sign. The star of the show when you are there is always the meat. They have fantastic pastrami and corned beef, and their tongue is good too. The meat usually is sliced still steaming. The flavor is great. The salt a spices shine through, and the meat is extremely tender. I love getting lunch here, and if you are a fan of a good deli sandwich, I would recommend going here as soon as you can.

08/21/2009

Another trip for Kabobs…

Yeah, I think the guy at Ahli Baba’s gained back a lot in my eyes today. I went with my brother, and we got a steak kabob pita and a falafel. We split them.  I also got three sandwiches to take back for the rest of my family, and on a 90-degree day this guy was working hard, very nice, and extremely concerned with getting me the food quickly and making sure any request I had was fulfilled. Also, the steak pita was pretty good. London broil cut into cubes, grilled right there, served in one of their quality pitas with a barbecue sauce, herb mayo, lettuce, and tomato. As usual, the veggies were fresh. My brother liked it the best, and I remain faithful to the falafel. Ahli Baba’s earns most of their credit for the falafel. If you want to consider the full menu, it is okay, but the falafel has been consistently solid. A good cheap eats sandwich place in Burlington.

08/13/2009

Ahli Baba’s in Burlington, VT: Another Visit

I hate to say it about a place where you can get some good food at a good price, but I tried their lamb souvlaki yesterday. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t terrible, but it did not compare to the souvlaki pita I had in New York at Kefi. Granted, I payed a little over twice as much for that one, but the pork served at Ahli Baba’s was a bit chewy and the pita had become a little soggy in a very short time. I also split a falafel with my dad, and that was a nice way to end the meal. I think, and hope actually, that after I go back (which I will) and try some more of their menu items like the steak kabob pita and the curry chicken, I can update this once again. The service was great this time. The guy working was very nice, served us quickly, and gave my dad a couple things of extra tsatziki sauce without batting an eye.

08/10/2009

Green Peppers in Middlebury, VT

For such a small town, Middlebury actually has a couple of places to get good food at reasonable prices. This may be a little more expensive than the restaurants I would rather go to in Middlebury, but the few extra dollars is worth it. The decor leaves much to be desired, but I almost gave this place an extra star because of the nice people. The ingredients (veggies and meat) I had in a sub were not great, and a lot of their food is a little greasy for my taste. Fried foods can be good, but the extra oil that gives it a little shine is unnecessary. And with the  pizza with a greasy crust and veggies lacking a certain brightness,  there is a little something left to be desired. Something I don’t really understand is the place in their website where they mention their wood burning oven and the fact that pizzas in this oven take 25-35 minutes. Something about that just didn’t seem right to me, as I only have a pizza stone, and rarely ever have a pizza crust that cooks for more than 10 minutes.

07/22/2009

Cabrito in New York, NY

Hmm… I went here after reading a good review of some of the food. Because of this, I was very surprised to find quite a few negative reviews. I guess after rereading the review, I think it was from some well-known newspaper’s website, the reviewer was saying that the food was great… if you ordered the right items. This was a place at which I had an incredible experience. A recent review I read complains about being shoved into a two top right next to the kitchen window, and my friend and I had actually requested to sit there. So I guess the atmosphere isn’t for everyone. I went a little before ten on a saturday night, and the place was fairly crowded with groups of fairly young people who were mostly enjoying drinks at this point. My friend and I got a lot food, and chose to drink water to keep the bill down. We ended up spending a little over 25 dollars including tax and tip, and this got us an appetizer, as well as an entree and 3 tacos. We decided to split everything in order to try the many dishes.

We started out with a special, the queso de puerca. This pig’s head terrine was good, although not quite as flavorful as the one my butcher at the local coop in Burlington, VT had given me that was full of spring garlic. The terrine at Cabrito had a nice pork flavor, and a hint of a roasted, pretty mild chili pepper (maybe poblano?). They served this with house-made, whole grain mustard, and some homemade pickled veggies (radish, carrot, and jalapeno). Overall, the appetizer was an excellent beginning to the meal, although they brought everything out to us at the same time, so our small table was pretty crowded.

After this, we dug into the huitlacoche. When we mentioned this in ordering, our server got a little excited, so needless to say, we had some expectations. It did not disappoint. I wouldn’t say that they were necessarily truffle-esque, but they were incredible. They are marble sized and close to black. They are a fungus that grows on corn at some early stage in the development of the corn. Actually, they are infected, enlarged cells. But they are fantastically delicious corn infections. They had a great earthy flavor reminiscent of a mushroom, but had a much sweeter background than any mushroom or fungus I have tasted before. They are certainly less pungent than a truffle, but I could see it being described as a poor man’s truffle. This little known edible is something I had never heard of or seen before, but may be becoming a delicacy in Mexico, and is something that must be tried. It is served over huaraches and a thin layer of beans, and topped with lettuce and a nice creamy sauce on top. The tortilla-like bottom (a little thicker than tortilla) was not soggy at all and the beans spread over were an excellent complement to the dish.

After this, we had a sampling of the tacos. Simply served and probably about 3-4 bites each, I very much enjoyed these. We got one from the specials menu, the goat belly (I figured the place was named after goat, so I wanted to try it without getting the 26 dollar goat entree), the al pastor (chicken with a pineapple habanero salso), and the al carbon (marinated steak). The goat belly was probably the least outstanding part of our meal. It was fairly fatty, and not nearly as flavor as pork belly. The Al pastor was excellent, and I found that the sweet and spicy notes provided by the salsa was the star of this dish. The al carbon was both my and my friend’s favorite of the three. The meat had tremendous flavor, and it was served rather simply with a creamy sauce under it. I thought that it was perfect to serve this so simply. The meat shined in the dish, and each bite was full of tender steak and full of flavor. Overall, the meal was fantastic. My friend and I thought both the food and the atmosphere were outstanding. Our waiter was outrageously nice and friendly, while also being very helpful. I also appreciate the philoshphy behind using as much of the animals as possible in their preparations. They started getting whole animals from their supplier, and this is both economical as well as part of a movement that I appreciate. I will definitely be returning to New York and Cabrito as soon as I can. Maybe there are certain dishes to stay away from (something I only imagine because of some of the reviews I have read), although I didn’t find them. The huitlacoche may be the best deal on the menu, as it was a very large portion, certainly more than the three tacos combined, and it was only 14 dollars. I would recommend getting here as soon as you can…

07/16/2009

Healthy Living Market in South Burlington, VT

Considering the fact that this is a grocery store, I believe it is as good as it gets. Or at least as good as I have seen it. Maybe an open air market somewhere with many vendors could one up it.

eI go here a lot. Yes, the aisles can be a little confusing. But that usually means I end up somewhere unexpected, and even after shopping here since it opened, I still find new things. The produce (very fresh), cheese, meat, cafe, and bulk sections are all great. The butcher there is a trained chef, and he provides many things that you cannot get at a place like City Market. For example, I was there today (as I am pretty much every day), and I walked out with fresh, wild caught sardines, a live blue crab that ended up in a sandwich I made for lunch, and a complimentary serving of some excellent head cheese made with spring garlic. I had it at dinner, along with a little in the afternoon, and it was great.

There are more cheeses here than I have time to look through, a great wine section, and in the prepared food section, I can always find something I want to eat. The only problem I have with the store is that I can’t spend as much $ as I would like there. There is always something I have to leave without because I am a struggling student. Poor me…?

07/07/2009