A tame rabbit will certainly feed four.  A wild rabbit will feed between two or three, depending on the size.

I wanted to mention the last article I posted over at Eat Me Daily,  Five Chefs Who Embrace The Nasty Bits.  I’m particularly proud of it, and I’m thankful that so many fantastic chefs here in America are working to change the mindsets and palates of the people walking in their front doors.

Also, my inbox just received an e-mail confirming my registration for the 1st Annual Foodbuzz Blogger Festival which is taking place November 6-8th, in San Francisco, CA!  If you too plan to be at the festival, keep an eye out for a tall fellow wearing an “I love offal” t-shirt.

I’ll be in the Silicon Valley area for the whole week beforehand, and I’m determined to make my way to Sacramento to meet up with one Hank Shaw.  Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll be able to visit Incanto again, I’ve been dreaming about the meal I had there last time.  Anywho, let’s get on to the post, shall we?

Before I started making the recipe, I need to dry out a few stems of fennel.  Mr. Henderson mentions in the ingredient list that good food shops should carry dried fennel.  Here in the states, we’re seriously lacking in good shops as none of the supermarkets or smaller shops had it in stock.  That meant I needed to make the dried fennel myself.

I removed the stems from the bulbs and arranged them carefully on a rack that I placed in my oven.  I set the convection setting to the lowest possible temperature and left the stems in there for 2 straight hours.

While it’s no dehydrator the convection oven did a fine job drying out the fennel’s stems and feathery leaves.  With my one missing ingredient finished, the actually cooking could commence.

I realize that it’s tough to tell in this picture, but the rabbit that I had purchased at the farmer’s market ended up being MASSIVE.  Weighing in at about ten pounds, this bunny could easily feed eight to ten people.  If you ever need to serve rabbit to a small army, Sebastian and Esther Bonneau of Countryside Farm at the downtown Austin Farmer’s Market are the people to visit, and I can vouch for the quality of their produce.

A quick slathering of olive and seasoning with salt and pepper, the rabbit was ready to be dressed.  Mr. Henderson instructions say to surround it with the fennel so that things start to look like a scene from The Wicker Man.  I placed the dried fennel all around the body, wrapping it around the front and rear legs and even including some in the cavity.

Next, I used slices of bacon to secure the fennel to the body.  The bacon–in addition to being tasty–also acted as a shield to the rabbit, keeping it safe from overcooking and drying out.  Rabbit is a very lean meat, so extra fat to keep it moist is always welcome.  In the roasting pan I added a few cups of chicken stock and a half bottle of white wine, along with some whole heads of garlic with the skin still in place.  The rabbit was placed in a medium hot oven for a little over an hour and a half.  In retrospect I probably could have left it in there a little longer, but my wife and I were hungry and unwilling to put up with the wonderful smell any more.

At first glance you can see how crispy the bacon got after it’s time in the oven.  We slowly, carefully began removing it from the rabbit, trying to not burn ourselves in the process.  While the bacon was still edible, the fennel needed to be removed.  Many of the fennel fronds had broken apart which made for a frustrating game of Operation.

The completed recipe.  I removed the front two legs for us to eat that evening, and served them with some of the bacon, a few softened cloves of garlic and a splash of the cooking liquid.  The thing we both first noticed was that the fennel had imparted a strange floral note to the bacon.  While I’ll be the first to admit that bad bacon is usually better than most things, this bacon proved to be an exception to the rule.  Edible for sure, just not tasty.  The legs on the other hand were perfectly cooked with a very nice anise property thanks to the dried fennel in addition to the usual gamy-chicken flavor rabbit is known for.  Some of the other parts of the rabbit hadn’t cooked enough and were rather tough.  I’m chalking that up to the fact this bunny was larger than your average NFL linebacker.

This was an interesting recipe, and while I might be persuaded to make it again if asked, I just don’t foresee myself drying fennel again any time soon.

One down, sixty five to go.

This is a most rich and steadying pie.

Have you ever made a dish that was so amazing, so wonderful, that you end up associating it mentally with what you made it in?  Right now, my largest cast iron skillet will forever be linked to this recipe, which is–for the time being–my absolute favorite from “The Cookbook”.

Two weeks ago I had a small get-together with a few of the local food bloggers.  There is a very productive fig tree in my backyard, and I had been feeling terrible watching perfectly good figs being sniped left and right by the whole Texas population of birds, so I invited the following folks over to get their fill of figs:

Rachel and Logan from Boots in the Oven

April and Sean from The Hungry Engineer

Jennie from Miso Hungry Now

Addie, Ian and Julian from Relish Austin

The same day I was interviewed by Chef Evan Kleiman for her radio show Good Food.  The interview hasn’t aired yet, but I’ll be posting a link once it hits the web.  I found out the day before the interview that Mrs. Kleiman has been working on a very impressive project: Every summer day, she’s made a pie of some sort.  She’s made various fruit pies, shepherd’s pies, ice cream pies, cream pies, fried pies and everything in-between.  It inspired me to make a pie of my own, the Pheasant and Pig’s Trotter Pie with a suet crust from “The Cookbook”.

The Boots Crew had offered to show up a little early to lend a hand with the preparation, which I eagerly accepted.  Logan has formal culinary training from his time in Italy, so I was excited to have him wielding a knife in my kitchen.

But before people started showed up I needed to get some of the long prep work completed.  The recipe starts off with the pig trotters, which needed to be braised for three hours.  I split four trotters in half, added them to one of my larger pots…

…along with the needed vegetables, herbs and spices…

…and added chicken stock and red wine to everything.  The pot was brought up to a boil, then dropped down to a simmer.

Right after walking in the door, Logan jumped immediately into action.  When I showed him the recipe for the pie crust, he suggested that we render the suet into lard.  Now that I’ve seen the process I know that it’s not terribly complicated, but it was totally new to me at the time.  I stood back and let the Maestro work his magic, watching and making mental notes.

Logan started off chopping the suet into smaller pieces that we could send through the grinder attachment of my Kitchenaid mixer.

Once the suet was ground down, it was placed in one of our cast iron skillets over medium heat with a little water.  It quickly melted, and we strained it into another bowl…

… that was submerged in water and ice.  The liquid rapidly cooled, and before I knew it we had lots of lard for making a crust.  Thanks for the lesson Logan!

We moved on to the next step, cutting some of my homemade bacon into lardons and tying the rind into a baton.  This particular bit of bacon rind still had nipples on it, so we all tittered like school girls as we rolled and tied.

Using the same cast iron pan we had used for the lard making, the bacon chunks and rind were fried with some butter until they had properly browned.  Around this time more of the guests started to show up.  Being the conscientious host that I am, I ended up leaving the cooking in the very capable hands of Logan.  I still darted in every so often to try and help here and there, but the success of this dish truthfully lies at his feet.

As the bacon cooked, Logan started working on the crust.  I didn’t get to witness the whole process, but he used my food processor to combine the flour, lard and ice water to make a very fine dough.

April, The Hungry Engineer, showed up with two huge branches of bay leaves (THANK YOU!) and a freshly baked loaf of walnut bread.  I think the gracious generosity of food bloggers really shines here in Texas, if I do say so myself.

Once the dough was completed, Logan started halving the pheasants.  I managed to find these glorious birds at my local supermarket, much to the shock of everyone.  I’m still not sure how or why they were available, but no more have turned up since these two showed up.  Maybe it was fate?

After moving the browned bacon and the rind into an over proof pan, Logan seasoned the pheasant halves with salt and pepper, then browned them in the rendered bacon fat.

When each pheasant half had finished cooking, they too were moved to the oven proof pan with the bacon.  Three sliced onions took their place to sweat in the last bits of bacon fat.

These are the braised trotters, rescued from the bottom of the stock pot.

The flesh and minuscule amounts of meat were removed from the bone and added to the pheasant and bacon along with the onions, and the liquor the trotters cooked in.  The pan was then covered with aluminum foil and placed into a very hot oven for about fifteen minutes. The heat was then lowered in anticipation of another 30 minutes of cooking.

A short time later the pheasant had cooked completely through.  The meat needed to be removed from the bone for the pie, so the pile of game bird you see above quickly turned into this with the help of my industrious guests:

The meat chunks were kept as large as possible so as to add structural integrity to the finished pie.

It might have been Monday night, but we had enough fun to make it seem like it was Friday.

Finally, it was time to construct the pie!  Logan retrieved the dough and began flattening it out with a makeshift rolling pin.

Since I am without a proper pie pan,  Mr. Boots suggested that we use the same cast iron pan we had been using all night.  It made perfect sense to me, so we started filling it with the pheasant, trotters, bacon lardons, onions and the stock the trotters had cooked in.  Logan laid the pie dough over the pan, and cut a few holes for venting.  A quick egg yolk wash and the pan was ready to go into the oven for forty minutes.

As the smell of fantastically rich pork began filling the kitchen, the timer went off: the pie was finished.  We had a bit of trouble finally digging out a slice, as it looked almost too good to touch.  The modesty was short lived however because the aroma was too intoxicating to resist.

And here we have a generous portion of pie with a few expertly prepared Brussels sprouts in the background.  This pie was almost regal  in its nature.  The crispy, dense crust had a very slight piggy flavor to it from the lard, which played perfectly with the rest of its porcine kin.  The pheasant ended up tasting pretty much like chicken to me, so perhaps this dish was born out of a hunters need to use some of his recent spoils.  I plan on making this again with simple chicken and I expect the results to be almost identical.

Dog ear this page if you’ve got the cookbook and make this as soon as you possibly can.

Again, thanks to April, Sean, Jennie, Addie, Ian and Julian for showing up, taking some figs home and making that day extra special.

Logan and Rachel, you guys are just awesome, and I attribute the fantastic outcome of this dish to Logan’s supreme skill.  It was a real honor watching him work.

One down, seventy one to go.

The quail unfortunately falls into a kind of bird purgatory; it is not a game bird, though some describe it as such, but is now a thoroughly farmed bird, so not glamorous enough to warrant the “hands on” battling that people feel justified to exert on grouse and partridge, and is denied from joining the chicken’s gang, as it is seen to be too fiddly to eat.  Then finally, to kick the quail while it’s down, people say it has no flavor.

Put all this behind you and let me put forward the case for the joys of a bowl of thoroughly roasted quails.

I’m considering having an “Austin Offal Eaters” lunch at the Asia Cafe in the Asia Market located on Spicewood Spring road in Austin.  If enough people are interested, I’ll set a date in May.  Post a comment if you’d like to come!

This is the last recipe of the comic trio.  I’ve got to remember to bug Laura for a copy of that comic.  I’m determined to have it hanging in my kitchen.

Now, the recipe called for just ten quail, but since I was having quite a few people over I decided to triple the recipe.  Thankfully this recipe is so simple–it has four total ingredients–that tripling it was trivial.  The simplicity means that this update will be rather short.  I’m sorry about that, the next update will have a bit more meat to it, if you’ll pardon the pun.

I found these quail at my usual shopping location, MT Supermarket.  Here’s a homework assignment for you:  find your closest Asian market, and go for a visit.  You’ll find all sorts of deals and produce that might very well put your regular supermarket to shame.

I seasoned the quail heavily with salt and pepper, and then browned them in a hot pan with just a splash of olive oil in it.  I probably shouldn’t have crowded the pan so much, as that can lead to steaming, which isn’t really what I wanted.

With the quail properly browned, they were ready for the oven.  Mr. Henderson mentions in the recipe that quail are rather hardy, and are more than capable of taking a high heat.  As a matter of fact, he insists on cooking them until the legs can easily be pulled from the ribcage.  So into a nice hot oven the quail went for 20 minutes.

After the time had elapsed, I had a big pile of well done and salty quail ready to eat.  Mr. Henderson also suggested serving them with a bowl of lentils–which I forgot to take a picture of.

Sadly, it seems like I fall into that group of people that say that quail have little flavor.  Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re great to eat, and it’s fun dealing with all the little bones and such, but when it comes down to it they just don’t have a unique flavor.  I’d  say they remind me of chicken, with a slightly gamey taste.  They were sure easy to make and the presentation is hard to beat.  Who wouldn’t like to find themselves faced with a huge platter of roasted quail?  I certainly wouldn’t object, I’ll tell you that much.

One down, eighty six to go.

This dish lends itself to the gentler flesh of tame rabbit, rather than wild.  You could substitute chicken.

It’s good to be back and updating!  Before I get into the recipe, I wanted to congratulate Carol of French Laundry at home fame on her announcement of Alinea at Home!  I recently got my copy of the cookbook in the mail, and I just can’t wait to see how she pulls off some of the dishes.  If anyone can, Carol can.

Also, Hank over at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook has an amazing post up about salmis, a classic French preparation. Check it out!

Now, on to the recipe.

This is the last dish in the book that uses fava beans, so I wanted to go ahead and finish off the extra fava beans I had left over from the last update.  This time the recipe called for me to remove the gray jackets, so only the bright green kernels remained.

I started things off by lightly browning a whole chopped up rabbit that had been seasoned with salt and pepper. Once the pieces were done …

… I added some leeks, onions, and a potato to the pot for sweating.  Mr. Henderson instructed me to make sure that nothing colored too much, and eventually return the rabbit to the pot.

Chicken stock, garlic, and a bundle of parsley and thyme were also added. I brought the heat up until a gentle boil was reached.  From there, I dropped the heat and let things simmer for almost an hour.

When the time was up for the rabbit, I removed all of the pieces and set them aside in a warm place. Their absence was filled with the peeled fava beans and some peas.  This time I made sure to cook the beans until they were the right consistency.

Now, to pass on a bit of info:  If you try and make hot purées in a blender that uses rubber connections to spin the blades, the heat of the food will cause those connections to get soft, and break off.  I’m now in the market for a new blender.  I’m currently looking at this one that Mr. Ruhlman recommends.

A quick plating, and the dish was complete.  Mr. Henderson mentions that the rabbit and purée should be served with hot beets and a minty vinaigrette. “The combination of colors looks very fine and it tastes fantastic.”  I can attest to the truth of that statement, because between me, my wife, and a friend we polished off the whole rabbit!

One down, ninety seven to go.

The dumplings are made with a recipe of Stephanie Alexander’s and are so splendid that I cannot improve on them in any way.  I hope she does not mind my using it, as they are ideal companions to the salted duck legs.

This marks the end of the duck legs recipes from the cookbook (not including duck leg confit, but that’s not really a recipe, per se).  They’re going out in grand fashion though, as the dumplings really are as splendid as Mr. Henderson claims.  Then again, I’m having trouble trying to figure out how they’d ever be bad considering they have bacon and duck fat in them.

Here’s the obligatory meat item in the brine bucket picture.  After removing the duck legs, I dropped a picnic ham in for next weeks update and put the bucket back in the fridge.

And here’s the obligatory meat item being boiled with various things like onions, leeks, carrots and such.  This was the exact same method for cooking the Poached Salted Duck Legs that I made back in January this year.

Now, onto the new part: The dumplings.  As I mentioned before, the dumplings include some minced smoked bacon …

… and some rendered duck fat.  Two of the worlds most delicious items, combined?  This is “you got chocolate in my peanut butter, you got peanut butter in my chocolate” area, folks.  Both were put in a bowl with some eggs, yellow cornmeal, finely diced whole bread, and one more thing…

… grated horseradish.  The horseradish added no real heat to the dumplings, but there was this was amazingly unique flavor it brought to the party.  If I were to make a set of dumplings with the horseradish, and another set with without it, I can guarantee that the horseradish dumplings would be gone first.  They are just that good.

My wife and I formed the dumpling mixture into three quarter inch balls…

… and then they were placed into a boiling pan of the duck cooking liquor for about 10 minutes.

The rest of the cooking liquor was strained, and then used to cook the haricots verts.

Small disclosure:  I had no idea that “haricot vert” meant “green bean” in French.  My wife kindly informed me of that fact.  I should probably learn French.

Here’s the final dish, completed.  The salted duck legs were delicious, just like last time, but the real star of this meal was the dumplings.  I suppose I could reiterate all of their wonderful qualities again, but I’d just be wasting your time.  This recipe is like an exotic alternative to chicken and dumplings, and I’m very happy to have it added to my cooking repertoire.

Hrm, maybe my French isn’t as bad as I feared.

One down, ninety nine to go.