Wild Rabbit Stew - A change for the better

Today I made Wild Rabbit Stew - it is one of my favourite meals from way back in my childhood and I still feel it is such a wholesome meal. What is more, it is simple to make and rabbit is fairly easy to come by, especially this time of the year.

Wild rabbit is lean and being wild caught, not full of medicated feeds or even weird GMO grains. I can taste and feel the difference whenever I eat something wild caught (or organic) as opposed to the heavily treated type of meat or fish.

And there is a huge difference in flavour, texture and perhaps anything else you might be expecting in meats. I ate a lot of wild rabbit when I was growing up - along with other game such as sea ducks, and moose.

Including wild game into your diet, certainly when it is in season is a healthy idea...there are no unhappy bunnies in the wild. They are free to live as they should and this means an important source of superior food for us.

To cook wild rabbit it is best to marinade it overnight first. I use something simple such as balsamic vinegar, honey mustard, bay leaves, olive oil, salt and pepper - with a little water. I also use a slow cooker to cook the rabbit first before I put the vegetables in to make a stew.

Rabbit is full of tiny little bones and I have small children - so the meat is cooked first, then taken off the bones, lightly floured and added to a ready stew of seasoned (sage, thyme, rosemary, lovage) vegetables.  I check the liquid from the rabbit carefully before I add it to the stew as well.

Once all is assembled, let it cook for another hour or so and then stand in the slow cooker to cool down. This makes a most delicious meal for the whole family which is both nourishing and low in fat. We all enjoy our rabbit stew in the winter months.

April

Wild Rabbit Stew - lots of herbs and veggies!

Refining Our Tastes...

Yesterday was the second day off the Master Cleanse for us, so we are still getting back to eating regular meals and filling up on good food. When I came into the kitchen to get lunch ready there was a already a plan in place as the children were asking for sushi. 

This is one of our favorite  meals or snacks that takes little time to prepare and is very versatile, it also travels fairly well for small kids. Of course, we don't make this with raw fish - but nearly anything else goes when it comes to sushi in our house.

Usually we make sushi rolls with guacamole, tuna, cucumber and grated carrot. However, yesterday everyone was in the mood for other flavours, so I rooted around to see what we had on hand. I found local crab meat and locally hot smoked tuna -- when mixed together this was a very nice combination.

For the meal I made a vegetable stir-fry and then realized that -- with virtually no processed foods remaining in the house, we did not have a mayonnaise or sauce for dipping. This brought me back to the drawing board and cooking/creating something from scratch.

I have tried my hand at making mayonnaise several times, with some success. However, for small children, I did not necessarily want to use raw duck eggs as part of a recipe. Thus, the sauce needed to be cooked so this was moving into new territory for me.

In the end, I separated the egg yolk and cooked it together with some water, spelt flour and butter. Then added in mustard and spices, vinegar and kept stirring until it was thickening up. After taking it off the stove I pureed it and slowly added some oil. 

To be honest, I thought that it was lovely and smelled nice, but it looked more like hollandaise sauce then mayo, at least not the white stuff you will find in the shops. The one thing I was certain of was that the children would not eat it - but they were the ones who surprised me. Everyone loved it and I don't think there was much left over!

Now, I just want to play around with the recipe a bit more to get it where I really like it and then find a way to preserve it for a couple weeks at a time or perhaps even longer. I mean, we can buy something off of a shelf and it has a date indicating that it can last for quite awhile - how do they do that with such highly perishable food items?

The only method is to use chemical additives, stabilizers or preservatives and so forth. When not using these, perhaps the best way to enjoy mayonnaise sauce is freshly made. The wonderful thing here is it was very quick to put together with just making it up as I went from a vague idea of what should be found in a white sauce that I wanted to become a mayonnaise. 

Perhaps, this is the simplicity of all cooking and preparing meals - they can be tasty, wholesome and easy to assemble and we have somehow been stupified into thinking otherwise. Clever marketing, yes?

Have a great day,

April

Sushi roller, sheet of nori seaweed and lunch!