Rabbit cacciatore

My son has the best nose in the family.  I was starting a cacciatore, rich with oil, garlic, and minced carrots and celery, when I added a wedge of Taza stone ground chocolate; Henry called from the family room, "I smell chocolate."  A dark piece to deepen the stew-sauce, red wine next, all bubbling thick and fragrancy, sweet, too.  That old rabbit confit next, pieces still emerging from fat all tender and moist, breaking into chunks just right for a drizzle-grey spring dinner, candelit and tableclothed, clothes still carrying sawdust and paint from afternoon projects.
My daughter stirred the sauce, breaking each tomato in the hot pan, keeping it thick.  For seasoning we added just a bit of fennel to the wine and chocolate, a last minute decision as my daughter smelled and rejected other herbs and spices.  A quick sauce ladled over spaghetti, a beautiful balance of tastes.
The last time I opened an Ioppa 2001 Ghemme I wasn't impressed; tonight's was different, and the nebbiolo-dominated wine opened with cherries and violets, soft with leather-like tannins, graceful and still fresh.  Cacciatore is known as hunter's stew, and the rabbit confit tasted better than most other meats would in the chocolate-and-wine-laced sauce, edible proof that raising rabbits in town is worth the effort.

Confit of rabbit leg

I was going to roast a pork shoulder for dinner tonight but my wife and daughters went to see Mamma Mia, making a roast impractical, so I decided to break through the fat protecting my recently made rabbit confit and taste the early results.  After a day outside in the early spring sunshine, not turning on the oven was fine with me. 
Every batch of confit is different, and the changes I made while using rabbit for the first time worked well.  Encasing the legs in a sheath of pig skin, and keeping the oven under 200F for the long, slow cooking really preserved the flavor and lightness of the meat.
Unlike duck or goose legs, rabbits don't have any protective skin that wants crisping, so after I extracted the first two legs that broke free from fat, a brief sizzle in the pan was all that was needed.  Good mashed potatoes, and firm brussels sprouts rounded out the plate. 
I had a glass of a Kante 2005 Malvasia from Italy's Carso DOC, a beautiful dry, minerally white wine. The rabbit legs were given a rub of thyme and juniper berry before they were confited, and the lack of fruitiness in the wine let those seasonings continue, in their now-muted role, to linger.

Rabbit: confit, sausage, meatballs, stock

This week I cut up two rabbits and made numerous things with them.  I was surprised at the 8 oz. hind legs, and as soon as I appreciated their size I thought of confit.  I hadn't made rabbit confit before, but the legs had the same feel as the numerous duck legs I've slipped into pots of fat. Some of my rabbit stews this winter haven't gone over well with the family, so I decided to treat the rabbits the same way I do ducks - differently.  I always cut up ducks and use the various parts separately; roasting a whole duck seems like a perfectly good way to ruin half a duck, so I keep away from that time-honored method.  

When I make pancetta I'm usually left with a big piece of pig skin which I throw in the freezer; I first thought of wrapping the long, lean loins in the pig skin and roasting them, but decided to use  the pig skin as a blanket, insulator, and moisturizer for the poaching-in-fat, slow-cooking rabbit leg confit.  After marinating the rabbit meat with a rub that contained juniper berries, thyme, garlic, salt and bay leaves, I unfolded a long piece of pig skin and put it on the bottom of the dutch oven.  The rabbit pieces went on top of that, after which I covered any exposed rabbit with another big piece of pig skin.  I melted a pan of duck fat and covered the whole thing, and put it into a slow, 200F oven. 

I made sausage with the loins and miscellaneous bits of meat, adding a little pork and back fat to the mixture.  The sausage meat also marinated overnight, and the three pounds of links will probably be grilled.  My meat grinder has a space in the front that, when I'm done grinding or stuffing, still holds nearly a pound of meat.  I made meatballs with that loose meat, adding breadcrumbs, eggs, shallots and a little more seasoning before forming small meatballs that I poached in a reduced rabbit stock, made from the stripped-bare carcasses and enhanced with onions, celery, etc...

My kids and I enjoyed a simple plate of pasta, peas and rabbit meatballs this evening, and we all look forward to our upcoming meals with this versatile animal. 

Pork shoulder confit with old fava beans

The fava beans were old and tough and the half-life of the nutrients had probably depleted to a point where it didn't matter if I ate them or not. But today was cold enough to eat shoe leather stew, and I still had a lot of pork shoulder confit to use. We also had a bottle of bad wine in the kitchen and a few other odds and ends that needed to be eaten.
I started by simmering the fava beans in water for an hour or two, trying to soften the skins. The kitchen started to smell good when I sautéed a big onion and a few cloves of garlic in an olive oil/duck fat mixture; a few bay leaves were added when the onions softened and I peeled and cut up a few carrots, too. I turned the flame high and poured almost a cup of inky-dark wine into the pan, and it bubbled and cooked away. For the next half hour I kept adding wine by the pour - a few glug-glugs or so, wanting to keep the reducing liquid at a boil. I softened a handful of dried porcini mushrooms in a bowl of hot water, and added the liquid before the chopped mushrooms.
Next came the drained fava beans with their tough skins; some people like to peel them, and it's easy to do after they've cooked, but I wanted the chewiness of the skins, and their dark color, too. A can of plum tomatoes came next and then a sprinkle of sugar. I covered this and let it cook awhile, adding a pour of water when it appeared to be drying out. I cooked it about an hour, scraping down the sides and giving it a stir when needed. I sliced the pork confit and spread it on the bottom of a dutch oven. I poured the bean mixture over it and was about to put it in the oven, but the dish looked incomplete. I liked the look of the carrots and tomatoes, so I peeled and diced a big sweet potato and a yukon gold, hoping their color and shapes would improve the texture. Finally, I added more pork to the top and poured a little water over the whole thing. I baked it with the lid on for forty-five minutes and removed the lid for the last twenty minutes - it browned up nicely on top.
Results were mixed: my youngest daughter and I liked it a lot, but my cassoulet-loving son was not impressed. My wife thinks most of these stew-type dishes are a homogeneous blend of things that turn purple; it was the attempt to prevent this that prompted me to add the potatoes.
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's dinner - more of the same, I hope.

Confit of goose gizzard and duck

In January I made a big batch of confit, and right now it tastes so good I don't care if summer ever comes. I took a duck leg and two goose gizzards out of my 5-quart pot where they've been aging since January. A few tablespoons of fat into the saucier, and I cooked a few cloves of garlic and an onion, and then emptied a plastic tub of leftover ziti into the pan. (Last night we hosted a potluck for students interested in Peace Corps and invited all the returned volunteers in town as well. The students talked with all of us in an informal setting and heard different perspectives on Peace Corps service. We knew there'd be little kids, too, so my wife made a pan of "Italian macaroni" - at least that's what we called it when we were kids - hence the leftover ziti.) I coated the ziti in that nice duck fat; I sliced the gizzards after browning them, and the insides revealed the tight flesh, still slightly pink after all that cooking and aging. I browned the leg, too, and pulled it apart with my fingers, clumps of meat falling from the bone. I steamed a few spears of asparagus, cutting them in half and adding the bottom halves two or three minutes before the tips. I rinsed the asparagus in cold water to arrest the cooking and preserve the color, and dropped it into the mix.

Aged confit has a richness to it that softens everything. The small amount of cinnamon I added to the meat when it was fresh came whispering through the finish. The falling apart shreds of leg rewarded my patience with a nuttiness that I don't taste in other meats.

I'm surprised that many contemporary confit recipes treat the aging of confit as optional. They suggest lowering the amount of salt because un-aged confit would be too salty if it contained the traditional amounts of salt. But the preserving of meat by giving it a salt cure and slow cooking it in its own fat is the foundation that allows the meat to age so beautifully. The aging is what makes confit so remarkable. Whether I eat a piece of duck confit on a bed of wilted greens or make an enormous cassoulet, it's often the contrast between the aged meat and its counterpoint that satisfies my palate so thoroughly.

Confit preparations: Rendering fat

As I cut up the geese I rendered a lot of fat, too. A friend gave me these geese and I didn't want to butcher and pluck a half dozen geese. Without a mechanical plucker it's like being stuck in a Grimm's fairy tale. So, I went to the only butcher in the area that processes ducks and geese. Most meat processing plants don't like them because the feathers are hard to remove. In the picture of rendering fat, you can see little remains of pin feathers in a few pieces of skin.

Confit preparations

A long weekend of preparing various parts of ducks, geese, and chickens for a big batch of confit and several pâtés en terrine. I ended up with 14 pounds of mostly goose meat, and prepared it with a rub of salt, pepper, bay leaf, thyme, and garlic.

In addition to the breasts, legs, and wings, I also had a fair number of gizzards and hearts. I cooked about half of them in the confit, and kept the other half for a few rustic pâtés.