Rabbit stew, hunter's style (coniglio alla cacciatore)

I posted a recipe for some rather dry lentils the other day, and was happy to receive a comment from a reader about the right proportions of liquid. I've since corrected my lentil post (lentils with chorizo and dried wild mushrooms) and updated the photo, but in the meantime I also took a wander over to my reader's site, which is dedicated exclusively to the art of the pressure pot and goes by the name of hip pressure cooking. This recipe is inspired by a version I found there, and I think the combination of a bit of non-pressure cooking (sauteeing, browning etc.) and then pressure stewing is perfect. Incidentally, I was a bit scared of tipping in the brine from my tin of olives, but I did, and the result was great. (For this reason, no salt is listed in the recipe.)


Ingredients
1 rabbit, cut into joints

marinade
150 g white wine vinegar
150 g white wine
150 g water
6 bay leaves

stew
plain flour
olive oil
3 sticks of celery
1/2 onion
2 carrots
3 cloves of garlic
350 g tin of black olives
1 tin of tomatoes
250 ml of red wine
1 teaspoon of dried rosemary (or a large sprig of fresh)

Method

1. Put the jointed rabbit in a large bowl with the bay leaves, cover with the vinegar, wine and water, and leave to marinade in the fridge overnight.
2. Remove the rabbit pieces from the marinade, and discard the liquid. Peel and finely chop the onion, slice the celery, peel and slice the carrots, peel and roughly crush the garlic.
3. Heat plenty of olive oil in your pressure cooker (with the lid off, obviously!), dust the rabbit pieces in plenty of flour, and brown them on both sides in the hot oil. You will probably need to do them in three batches. Remove the browned pieces to a plate.
4. Gently fry the onion, celery, carrot and garlic in the oil. After a few minutes, remove to a bowl, together with any oil.
5. Deglaze the pan with a good splash of wine, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon, then add the rest of the wine, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes to boil off the alcohol.
6. Return the browned rabbit pieces and fried vegetables to the pot, add the tomato, olives (including the brine) and rosemary, and put the lid on. Bring up to pressure, reduce hit to minimum and cook for 20 minutes.

Banana bread

Nine months ago I started making a batch of focaccia in my kitchen, and today I finished! Okay, it didn't take me nine months to make the bread, but that is how long it took us to get the oven fixed. (It's a long story, and there were mitigating circumstances.) Anyway, I felt the oven needed to be shown who was boss, so I made a point of taking up where it had so rudely interrupted me back in January, and produced a tray of focaccia.

Next up for the great oven celebration was some banana bread. I got a recipe from the BBC Food Website, and tweaked it a little. Apart from being really easy, and quite delicious, it's a great way of using up those guilt-inducing overripe bananas which everyone seems to have in their fruit bowls.


Ingredients
140 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
60 g butter
110 g caster sugar
1 egg
2 ripe bananas, mashed
35 ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC, and line a loaf tin (20 cm x 10 cm)
2. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt and cinnamon.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
4. Add the bananas, milk, eggs and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix well.
5. Fold the flour into the resulting batter, mix well and add the lemon juice.
6. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes until golden.
7. Allow the bread to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.

Salt cod mayonnaise

I made this with the leftover pil-pil sauce and cooking oil the last time I made bacalao al pil pil (which is salt cod in a warm mayonnaise). The original recipe has 500 ml of olive oil, of which only half is used in the pil pil sauce. So you already have 250 ml of cod-flavoured olive oil going spare. On top of that, there will probably be some leftover pil pil sauce. When I saw that I had getting on for 350 ml of top quality olive oil about to go to waste, I suggested to Gemma that I make it into mayonnaise. She looked at me as if I was a bit mad, but I made it anyway.


Ingredients
leftover olive oil and pil pil sauce from bacalao al pil pil

Method
Put the olive oil and leftover sauce in a bowl, and whisk gently until it liaises to form a light mayonnaise.

This made a really good mayonnaise, which was quite light and had a delicate flavour of cod. I knew that nobody else in my family would knowingly eat it, but I tricked them by using it to dress some spaghetti with salt cod, chick peas and green peppers, which they all ate happily. (I had an extra serving of mayonnaise on top of mine.) They will only realise they ate the mayonnaise too if they read this blog entry!

Googlewhack!
As I was writing this entry, I thought I would have a quick search to see if anyone else makes salt cod mayonnaise. I came across a reference to a restaurant in Dublin called Pichet which sometimes has it on their menu, but no actual recipes, so I think this counts as a culinary googlewhack.