Day eleven: Come cook with me
Posted on | December 14, 2009
If you’ve been following my blog, you know this is rabbit week at culinary school. Yesterday, I fabricated a rabbit (there are instructions on how to do this in the last rabbit post, go take a look if you like). And today we braised the legs and made stuffing we will use to stuff the saddle.
The braise for the legs was a typical braise: Mirepoix and wine and herbs and stock. So I won’t drive you nuts going over that. But the stuffing. Ah, that wonderful stuffing. The stuffing is so good, I want to share the recipe with you.
It takes 12 honeybees to produce 1 tablespoon of honey
This is a simple chestnut and bacon stuffing. But it is so good, I bet you could adapt it to make all sorts of dishes (holiday dinner, anyone?!). Let me take you through it, step by step. Oh, and if you are adapting it, increase your ingredients, proportionally. Remember, I’m just stuffing a rabbit. So I really don’t need anywhere as much as I would if I were stuffing, oh, say a big, fat turkey. And you might want to increase your cut sizes, too, for that matter. I had to keep ‘em tiny for the rabbit. For a turkey, you could make them huge.
Okay. So here’s the recipe.
First, I cut up some mirepoix: Half a cup of finely diced onions then a quarter of a cup each finely diced carrots and celery. To this, I added a tablespoon each of minced fresh thyme and sage. Finally, I minced the rabbit offals (heart, liver, kidneys). Of course, if you don’t have rabbit offals, use whatever offals (such as turkey offals) you’ve got.
Next, I roughly chopped half a cup of cooked chestnuts and 2 tablespoons of parsley and did a small dice (cubes) of white bread (enough to give you about a pint).
Finally, I diced a cup of bacon and poured out a quarter of a cup of brandy. And, of course, I have my handy salt and pepper containers nearby.
Okay. Now that we have our mise en place, we are ready to cook.
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The bacon went into a hot pan. I started the pan on high heat to get it good and hot, then lowered it to a low to medium heat before I added the bacon. I lowered the heat because I wanted to render the bacon (generate bacon fat which I wanted to use to cook my mirepoix) which meant I wanted to cook my bacon slowly.
When the bacon was just starting to crisp, I added my mirepoix, offals, and thyme and sage. I sweat my ingredients, meaning I was aiming to soften my vegetables, not caramelize them.
Once the vegetables were soft, I took the pan off the heat and added the brandy. Why off the heat? For safety reasons. See, if that brandy caught fire while I was pouring it, the flames could travel up the liquid to, well, my arm. Very nasty. Of course, once the brandy was in the pan, the pan went back onto the flame and, with my hand well away from the liquid, I tipped the pan to ignite the brandy.
Very pretty. And if you think this smelled good before, you can imagine how wonderful it smells now!
Once the flame is out (and this is a decent amount of brandy, so don’t be surprised if it takes a minute or two to burn out), I removed the pan from the heat. Then I mixed in the chestnuts, parsley, and bread. I stirred until the ingredients were cooled enough to handle. Now, if you are adapting this recipe for, say, a turkey, you can stop here. But if you are using this recipe to make stuffing for a rabbit, then you need to squish your ingredients through your fingers. Your goal is to break down the bread. Remember, it is a very little rabbit.
Taste and, of course, add salt and pepper, as needed.
Best stuffing ever!
When I use this to stuff my rabbit (it’s coming up) I’ll tell you all about it. If you plan to use this recipe, do tell me. I’d especially love to hear if you plan to adapt it for your turkey. Or, I’d love to hear your stuffing recipe.
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2 Responses to “Day eleven: Come cook with me”
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December 14th, 2009 @ 2:40 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cooking Student, Cooking Student. Cooking Student said: New post: Culinary school stuffing, surprisingly easy and incredibly delicious and perfect for the holidays: http://bit.ly/6L75kd [...]
December 27th, 2009 @ 10:06 am
This sounds great! In my country we rarely stuff things, but I would really try to do this once.
One important security measure for regular household kitchens though: If you have a fan over your stove, turn it off when you ignite the brandy. if not, the fire can be sucked into the fan and start a fire inside the fan in the grease that inevitably resides there.