Rabbit with garlic and sherry
On Thursday’s there is an organic market in Mirepoix where environment conscious farmers peddle their wares to a small group of equally concerned buyers. I usually like the quality of their goods but am not always ready to pay the price. But when you buy direct from the producer, you end up not spending more than in the supermarket while the seller also makes a decent margin. So, when we happened to be in the town on a Thursday, we ran into a man selling poultry and rabbit. We bought a rabbit and a Guinea fowl, heads on.
We were hosting a dinner party one weekend and I took the rabbit out of the freezer to make a Spanish-style recipe. However, the traditional recipe first deep-fries the rabbit parts in a lot of oil. I braised them in a pan, then put them in the oven.
Ingredients
- One cleaned rabbit in parts
- Six cloves of garlic
- Chopped parsley
- Sherry
- Salt and pepper
- Two tablespoons of olive oil
- Some leaves of sage
Steps
- Pre-heat oven to 220 °C
- Pat dry the rabbit, add salt and pepper.
- Crush the garlic
- Heat the oil until it starts to smoke, lower the heat
- Add the rabbit pieces in one layer (or it does not fit in the pan then do this step in batches, the rabbit should not overlap) and brown them on all sides. Put aside. This can take 10 minutes per batch. (I put a leaf of sage in the leg and rib parts, then rolled it up and tied it with wire)
- Add the garlic and brown slightly. Return the rabbit (it can overlap now), turn up the heat and pour half a glass of sherry into the pan. Let it reduce slightly. Turn off the heat.
- Put the rabbit/garlic/sherry content to an oven dish, add some of the parsley and some extra pepper and put in the oven. Cook for another 30-45 minutes until tender.
- If you use a meat thermometer, the inside should be above 45/50°.
- Transfer to a presentation dish and add more parsley.