My guest today, in this feature celebrating The Restaurant @ The Mill, the tale of six couples whose search for love and happiness is linked as they all frequent diners, is Rosa The Rose. I met Rosa online and began following her blog, which is a wonderful read. She has had a varied life and truly has a writer’s heart! I thoroughly recommend dropping by :
“The latest from rosatherose (@agypsyswife), a gypsyman’s wife with some thoughts of her own” http://agypsieswife.wordpress.com/
Rosa has kindly allowed me to reproduce one of her recipes and to follow I’m sharing my own ‘Lemon & Pear Bread and Butter Pudding’.
Rabbit stew for hungry hunters
“This is a good recipe when the boys have been hunting.
My husband would just roast them on a stick over the fire, often under the hedge – which is nice – but this is a good feed too.
I’ve been serving this dish for more than 25 years, now, and it remains a family favourite.
I used to make it with farm rabbits and it is worth noting that the bunnies in the wild have much tougher back legs. The saddle and the front ones are fine. Young rabbits are tender and old bucks are not.
So skin, gut and joint the rabbit into back legs, front legs and saddle cut in two. That’s six pieces, and I can eat at least three, so if you have hungry hunters to feed, they’d better bring a few home.
Keep the livers and kidneys to add at the end of cooking. You can add the heads to the pot for extra flavour if you’re not squeamish.
Warm some clarified butter in a good heavy fireproof dish or pan and brown the joints all over. It’s worth taking the time to do this thoroughly, because all the caramelised meat juice adds to the colour of the dish. When your rabbit is brown, remove the joints and keep to one side. Add finely diced onion and a couple of crushed cloves of garlic and keep on a gentle heat until translucent. Add a small glass of dry white wine or splash of vermouth and scrape up all the rabbit juice. Add a small amount of chicken stock – probably to the depth of about one to two inches in the bottom of the pot – and season, adding some herbs. Oregano, thyme, tarragon are all candidates to choose from, but not too many, this is not meant to be a very robust dish. Put the rabbit back in. The rabbit pieces will be adding their own juice as they steam in this liquor and the dish benefits from the more intense flavour if it’s not swimming.
I would cook this on a gentle heat for about an hour and a half, checking for a gentle simmer and from time to time give the pot a good shake and swirl to make sure all the joints get in the juice.
At this stage add the smallest button mushrooms you can find. Allow about 6 – 8 per person so you don’t swamp the flavour. Actually, the small cans of whole button mushrooms are good for this dish, because they are really juicy but blander. I’m sure that wild mushrooms would be good, but I can’t buy them and I’m too ignorant on the subject to dare to forage for them. This is when you add the liver and kidneys too – just lay them on the top of the meat and cook on for a half hour or so, until all is tender.
If you find, on tasting that the sauce is bland then turn up the heat a little and cook with the lid off or crossed until the sauce is reduced. Take your rabbit out if is already cooked and add it back when you have the sauce to the right intensity.
I serve this with creamed potato, or it’s fantastic with fresh done, thin cut, homemade chips.
The boys’ll just eat it with their fingers, sopping bread in the sauce if I let them.
Sometimes I do insist on a knife and fork, though.”
A big thank you to Rosa for allowing me to reproduce her fabulous recipe. What I loved about this dish was that it’s all about intensity of flavour and I too would love to take a chunk of bread and dip it in that wonderful sauce!
Lemon & Pear Bread and Butter Pudding with white wine & honey sauce (with variations)
4 firm pears
White wine
1 tablespoon honey
Prepare this the day before you are serving it for the best results.
Place the four, peeled pears in a small, but deep pan. Cover with white wine and add the honey.
Simmer/poach until softer but still firm. Place the pears in a dish to cool, then halve and take out the core and stalk. Cover and refrigerate. Turn up the heat on the liquor remaining in the pan, add some thinly sliced lemon rind (only the outer yellow part, try to avoid the white pithy part as that is bitter). When the liquid has reduced by half, cool and refrigerate.
On the day:
8 slices of white, crust-less bread
A few slithers of thinly sliced rind of the lemon
2 eggs
3 level tablespoons of caster sugar
500ml milk
A little brown sugar
Lay the halved pears in an ovenproof dish. Butter the crust-less bread lightly and cut into 2 inch pieces, layer over the pears. Beat the eggs and milk, add the caster sugar and pour the mixture over the pears and bread. Sprinkle the lemon rind and brown sugar on the top. Cook at 190ºC for 30-45 minutes, until the mixture is firm to the touch, but springy and the top is golden brown.
Serve: hot, or cold. Drizzle over the white wine and honey sauce. Indulge – add a spoonful of clotted cream, or a little drizzle of single or double cream, or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Ring the changes: make a marzipan and apricot version. Instead of pears, add tinned apricots to the dish and small balls of marzipan. Equally as delicious!
The Restaurant @ The Mill is a place where diners go with friends and loves ones to celebrate special occasions or simply to enjoy good food in a wonderful setting. Each of the six stories is very different … just like true life!
or you can download it from Amazon:
This concludes the recipes in the Winter Warmer series! Thank you to guests Emma Calin, Caroline James, Janice Horton and Rosa The Rose for sharing their favourite recipes (see the links below if you want to catch up on any of the earlier articles):
Caroline James’ Red Lentil Dhal
It’s been a blast celebrating the new-look cover for The Restaurant @ The Mill. Published by Sapphire Star, it’s a series of stories in one novel. It’s about relationships – beginnings and endings, young love and ‘old’ love … love that never dies and love that falls by the wayside …
The Winter Warmer recipe booklet will be available to download here on 2 February 2014 – thank you for dropping by!