One consequence of marrying a guy from Europe

Recipe: Mustard-Braised Rabbit

First prepared: Monaco, Summer 2011

When JP and I were first living together in Florida, he mentioned a yen for lapin a la moutarde - I panicked.  I wasn't sure I had ever even seen a rabbit in a market, and I certainly  had never prepared one.  But, my trusty Joy of Cooking (1960 edition, from Kathryn Geib Plympton, mother of my Wellesley friend Peggy) did indeed have a recipe, and King's, the Boca Raton market now long gone that we called "The Pirates", did indeed have a beautiful lapin, and I have been making this dish ever since.

We were in Monaco with JP's parents for a few weeks last summer, and my Joy was sitting on a shelf in our Florida kitchen, so I went to the Internet for a recipe.  The market in Beausoleil has rabbit as a matter of course (no need to hock the watch).  Yes, you can use chicken - probably best with legs and thighs only - but it won't be as distinctive and savory.

1 medium onion, chopped finely

a 3-pound rabbit, cut into eight pieces, patted dry, salted and peppered

2 T vegetable oil

2 T unsalted butter

1 and a quarter cups dry white wine

1 and three-quarter cups chicken broth 

1/4 cup Dijon mustard

1 t cornstarch

1 T water

1 T unsalted butter

2 T chopped fresh parsley leaves

In a deep, large heavy skillet (I use a Le Creuset casserole), heat the oil and butter until hot but not smoking and brown the rabbit on all sides, probably in two batches; transfer it to a large bowl.

In the skillet, cook the onion over moderately low heat, stirring, until softened.  Add the wine, and boil until the liquid is reduced by half.  Return the rabbit pieces to the skillet and add the broth; simmer, covered, for about 40 minutes.

Transfer the rabbit back to the large bowl; raise the heat and boil the sauce until it's reduced to about 2 cups.  

In a small bowl, whisk together a quarter cup of the sauce with the mustard and add back into the sauce; whisk together the cornstarch and water, and whisk that into the sauce.  Simmer the sauce for about 3 minutes until it's thickened, and then whisk in the remaining final tablespoon of butter.  

Return the rabbit to the pan and cook over moderately low heat until heated through, turning to coat.  Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Serves 4-6, but not super generously (It was fine for three Stooges and two over-75 parents). 

I like this with buttered wide noodles, and a green salad.

Yet another cooking blog

This is mostly a way for me to keep an electronic copy of a project I started a couple of months ago.  I started recording recipes that we consider to be our "repertoire" - though it has turned out to include both tried-and-true recipes that I have cooked for years, and a few things that we have tried and immediately decided to include in journal.  These are not original recipes, by any means, and when I know where they came from, and when I first made them, I have been including that information in the notes.  I'm only up to 18 recipe pages so far, partly because many of my go-to dishes are not really practical for preparing on Raconteur, and that's where I am now.  I suppose fittingly, the first two recipes are tropical cocktails, but the next one will be a French classic that I prepared last summer in Monaco.  These will have no particular order; I include things in the book as they occur to me, or as we prepare them.

Recipe: "Super Tyng"

First prepared: Somewhere in the Caribbean (probably Grenada) in early 2012

This is a new favorite of ours, after preparing many, many variations on many, many rum punches.  We like most of them, but this one really stood out because of the grapefruit.  I found it somewhere on the web, but I no longer know where.  By the way, Tyng is a (non-alcoholic) bottled soda that we find in Trinidad and in Grenada and try always to keep on hand.  For a no-labor cocktail, we drink rum and Tyng.  For this drink, all juices are fresh-squeezed; I have often said that the tool that gets the most use on Raconteur is the juicer; the thing I make most often is sugar syrup for our cocktails.

2 ounces dark rum

1/2 ounce lime juice

1/2 ounce lemon juice

1 ounce orange juice

2 ounces grapefruit juice

n.b. the first time I made it I used 4 ounces of a grapefruit/orange combination that was probably about 60% grapefruit; I have since made it with some lime and lemon juice thrown in, but be sure that it's a bit more than half grapefruit.

2 dashes Angostura bitters

2 Dashes Peychaud's bitters

n.b. I used 4 dashes of orange bitters instead.

pinch of nutmeg, freshly grated.
The original recipe says "shake - strain - serve over rocks in a Collins glass" and garnish with a wedge of lime.  I skip the straining part, and serve it on ice, but in our handy-dandy all purpose short glasses (which we now also use for wine, having ditched the stemmed glasses a while back).

Serves: 1 drink

Recipe: 'ti Punch
First prepared: Hmmm...in the Caribbean for sure, but I don't really know where or when.  We had our first one at Pointe Noire in Guadeloupe on our way south, in May or maybe early June of 2011.

On the same page in the journal, I also include the following, a recipe for 'ti punch - short for petit punch, a classic that uses rhum agricole, sugar and lime.  The proportions in this one are courtesy of Ann VanderHoof and her husband Steve Manley on s/v Receta, from (I think) her first book, An Embarrassment of Mangoes.

2 parts rhum agricole
1 part fresh-squeezed lime juice
1 part sugar syrup*
4-5 dashes Angostura bitters
pinch of nutmeg, freshly grated

Combine the rhum, the lime juice and the sugar syrup over ice, then sprinkle with the bitters and the nutmeg; sometimes we skip the sprinkled ingredients all together.

And here is some information about rhum agricole, on Ed Hamilton's Ministry of Rum site:


http://www.ministryofrum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39


*To make sugar syrup, combine a cup of water and a cup of sugar, and bring to a boil.  Once the sugar is dissolved and the liquid is clear, cool and store in the fridge for up to two weeks.