Recipe: Rabbit in Mustard Sauce: Conejo al Mostaza: Lapin à la Moutarde

Bunny for lunch yesterday.



Rabbits are farm-bred for consumption, similar to the way chickens are raised. So there ought not be any trepidation in eating them.

This is a traditional, simple, French recipe for a tasty braised rabbit. Yes, you could use pork or chicken or any more or less white meat (try snake, lizard or alligator maybe). It's a one-pan dish.

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I first learned this recipe during the cuisine course at Le Cordon Bleu. The same thing can be found, more or less, in Le Cordon Bleu: At Home.

Rabbit in Mustard Sauce

Serves: 2 (or 5 in the nouvel cuisine style)

Ingredients

• 600 gr Rabbit thighs (boneless, rolled & tied with string)
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil
• 1 T Dijon mustard (or grainy mustard)
  
• ¼ onion (or 4 shallots) very fine brunoise [dice]
  
• ½ C white wine (dry)
• ¾ C cream (heavy, whipping)
  

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 200C [392F]
   
2. Season meat with salt & pepper
   
3. Oil into an oven proof frying pan (no plastic handles)
   
4. Pan fry for color (10 minutes or so. Get it good and brown)
   
5. Paint the meat with mustard
   
6. Into the oven for 20 minutes
7. Turn the meat and add the onion (there will be meat juices in the bottom of the pan)
   
• 10 minutes more
8. Turn meat and add wine
• 10 minutes more
  
9. Degrease the juices in the pan
   
10. Add cream and stir around a bit
• You might as well turn off the oven
  
11. 5 minutes more
    
12. Taste for seasoning (adding salt and pepper if needed)
13. If there's any grease or oil left floating in the sauce you ought to degrease it again
    

Notes

1. The technique in this recipe is called braising which is about cooking with moist heat. Often done in a covered pot - but this one's not.
2. Roasting is done with dry heat. So actually this recipe has three techniques: frying (for color), roasting (to cook the meat through) and braising (for flavour)
   
3. Double the amount of meat if you like. Or use whole rabbit cut up into pieces. Or a whole, deboned, rabbit would be good
4. Good with any white meat (muskrat, alligator or pork maybe)
5. Rabbit should be cooked all the way through - no pink. This is true for most white meats - except probably pork.
6. If you don't have an oven-proof frying pan transfer the meat and juices to any old oven-proof dish after browning it. Then deglaze the frying pan with a little bit of white wine and put that juice in with the meat too
   
7. To degrease use the edge of a large spoon to skim off any fats
   
8. Do not cover when cooking; many dishes lose color when covered
9. Use a cloth when grabbing the handle of the frying pan. And if you do, make sure that it's a dry cloth. I forgot, and used a damp towel. The heat from the 200 degree handle of the pan soaked through that thing in about a quarter of a second but by then it was too late.
   Then, I made the same mistake again the second time I turned the meat. Grrr.