Cheese course I'm building around Buffalo Rabbit Wings- made from the front legs and shoulder. Forearm is frenched, shoulder is not. One easy, one hard. Planning on four different blue cheeses, celery and carrot. Prototyped w/ just carrot and fourme d' ambert. 4 'wings'/rabbit means 2/person. I think that's enough for a cheese course. Sauce is classic - Frank's RedHot emulsified with butter. Added some powdered fennel seed as an experiment... tastes incredible.
Presentation needs some work.
pics from the amuse bouche didn't turn out- I'm a terrible food photographer.
Anyway, used half a rabbit kidney, roasted, and a hemisphere of green apple from a large melonballer, mated together to form a sphere on a bamboo skewer. Dipped it in a powdered chili mixture like the Cambodian girls at work do with slices of green apple and green mango. I need to figure out what they call that snack.
Also made a clean rabbit stew. I cut the vegetables very carefully in a Japanese style, dredged diced rabbit loin in rice flour, cayenne pepper, and coriander seed and browned it off, added potato, carrot, shiitake, onion, shallot, bay leaf, long pepper and kombu; deglazed with rabbit stock and simmered for an hour and a half. This was excellent, but not terrible spicy, so I'm not sure if it makes the cut.
The other half of the rabbit loin went into a Thai red curry. I'm very good at Thai red curries at this point so this was pretty effortless. I may change this over to a Panang curry and add pineapple and brined green peppercorns. Probably to be served with a ball of sticky rice rolled in a chiffonade of thai basil.
All the meat from the saddle went into the soup and curry, so no classic roasted saddle of rabbit. C'est la vie.
Jerked the thigh of the rabbit very traditionally with my coarse jerk paste. Allspice, black pepper, sea salt, suagr, cane vineager, scallion greens. Marinate meat overnight and braise with rabbit stock. Served with pear chutney. Key chutney spices are kolanji, black cardomum, long pepper, fenugreek, garlic, tumeric root, red bird chili, cider vineager, palm sugar. Garnish with scallion. Probably I will use a less coarse grind on my jerk spice next time, and debone the thigh, and reduce the braising time to be less traditional (i.e. less well-done). Possibly roll the thigh into a gallantine?
Rabbit liver is left-over. I need ideas. It's kind of a hard sell in anything larger than amuse bouche size. Maybe rabbit scrapple? a pate? Maybe part of the gallantine?
Dessert I'm thinking carrot spice cake with fennel ice cream. I need an ice cream maker first, cause shaking it by hand sucks. Also, fresh bulb or just fennel seeds or both?
