Spending all my childhood cuddling one rodent or another, it has never occurred to me to eat bunny rabbit. With parents over for Easter, I was stuck for ideas, not wanting to cook a traditional Swedish Easter meal, not wanting to roast lamb, but still wanting to stick to the theme somehow. Egg and Easter bunny! Rabbit and Keller’s 7 yolk pasta?
Two wild rabbits were purchased from Borough Market. I am not squeamish at all but gutting bunny was too much for me so I stayed at a safe distance while boyfriend prepared the rabbits for braising. My idea was to brown the rabbit pieces and slow cook them for a few hours in white wine, fat, herbs and spices, shred and make rabbit rillette.
After browning the bunny, I put the pieces in my biggest pot together with thyme, bay leaves, garlic, cloves and star anise. I rendered as much fat as I could be bothered to from a big chunk of pork fat I keep in the fridge, and used a can of Iberico lard and a few glasses of white wine as well to cover the rabbit. I put the rabbit in the oven with the lid on for about 4 hours on low, low heat (120 degrees C or so) until it was falling off the bones and could easily be shredded.
After shredding all the rabbit meat, I sieved the braising liquid and put it in the fridge to cool. The fat, which solidified on top, was scooped off until all was left was the rabbit/wine/herb liquid. This amazing-tasting liquid I mixed in with the shredded rabbit. The difference before – after braising liquid was mind blowing! I tasted the rabbit on its own, just shredded without its braising juices, and thought it incredible dull, a massive fail, but then I added the juices and all of a sudden the rabbit CAME ALIVE, gamey and interesting and unlike any other meat.
With the bones left over after braising + a few scrap bits of rabbit I cooked a simple stock which was left to reduce to a few tablespoons of concentrated, thick glaze.
href=”https://nordinaryuk.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/011.jpg”>
After preparing the rabbit, I started the pasta dough. I have wanted to make Thomas Keller’s 7 yolk pasta dough for a while, and very suitably received my father’s very old and very beautiful pasta machine as a Christmas present. Making Keller’s dough, I made a flour “nest” and added 6 yolks and 1 whole egg along with some milk and olive oil. I incorporated the flour into the eggs little by little and when a loose dough formed, I kneaded and kneaded and kneaded for about half an hour, scared of not kneading enough. When I was finished, the dough was a perfect-looking, elastic ball which when poked at snapped back at me. I then wrapped it in plastic film and let it rest for an hour.
Then the “fun” started. Using my pasta machine, I rolled it through a few times until it was on the thinnest setting. In hindsight, here I became over enthusiastic because it was so smooth and elastic and rolled it out too thin. I shouldn’t have rolled it out this thin but kept it a tiny bit thicker.
On my long, thin pasta sheets I carefully arranged blobs of rabbit rillette topped with a tiny piece of buffalo mozzarella and some thyme leaves. I brushed the edges with egg, folded the sheets in half, and cut out the pasta with a cookie cutter (I didn’t have a ravioli cutter lying around). The ravioli were beautiful, but hard to handle. While the ultra thin pasta sheets made for pretty, see-through pasta, the relatively heavy (and wet) filling made boiling impossible. In the end, I ended up steaming the ravioli in my bamboo dumpling steamer, breaking enough of them to end up with a modest two ravioli per person, and serving the remaining bunny rillette with cornichons and bread on the side. Still, the pasta was wicked! I kept it very simple, using a few drops of the reduced rabbit stock cooked with a bit of cream as sauce and serving it was steamed asparagus tops and thyme.
I will soon make pasta again using what I believe to be the perfect pasta dough recipe. A few lessons I learned:
- Be CAREFUL with the eggs in your flour nest. Try to mix it together too quickly and the flour walls will collapse and once the eggs start flowing out your kitchen will be a royal mess. Wasting 7 eggs is painful and cleaning gluey flour/egg mix is not fun – just go slow.
- Knead and knead and knead. Put some pumpin’ music on, your gym clothes, whatever. You can’t knead too much.
- Don’t roll out the dough on the thinnest setting on the pasta machine. It is tempting because this dough is so elastic and fun but makes it almost impossible to fill and boil the pasta without breaking it.
- While I’m sure a slightly thicker dough must make this less of a problem, if you’re opting for delicate, transparent ravioli, make sure your filling isn’t WET (mozzarella – too wet; good fresh ricotta – too wet; moist rabbit rillette – too wet)
- Don’t boil your precious pasta; lower it into simmering water to prevent bursting.
7 Yolk Pasta Dough (adapted from French Laundry Cookbook)
6 large egg yolks
1 large egg
8 ounces (414 ml) flour (I used Italian 00 flour, but the recipe doesn’t specify)
1 1/2 tsp olive oil
1 tbs milk
Mound flour on a board or other surface and create a well in the center, pushing the flour to all sides to make a ring with sides about 1-inch wide. Make sure that the well is wide enough to hold all the eggs without spilling.
Pour the egg yolks, egg, oil and milk into the well. Use your fingers to break the eggs up. Still using your fingers, begin turning the eggs in a circular motion, keeping them within the well and not allowing them to spill over the sides. This circular motion allows the eggs to gradually pull in flour from the sides of the well; it is important that the flour not be incorporated too rapidly, or dough will be lumpy. Keep moving the eggs while slowly incorporating the flour. Using a pastry scraper, occasionally push the flour toward the eggs; the flour should be moved only enough to maintain the gradual incorporation of the flour, and the eggs should continue to be contained within the well. The mixture will thicken and eventually get too tight to keep turning with your fingers.
When the dough begins thickening and starts lifting itself from the board, begin incorporating the remaining flour with the pastry scraper by lifting the flour up and over the dough that’s beginning to form and cutting it into the dough. When the remaining flour from the sides of the well has been cut into the dough, the dough will still look shaggy. Bring the dough together with the palms of your hands and form it into a ball. It will look flaky but will hold together.
Knead the dough by pressing it, bit by bit, in a forward motion with the heels of your hands rather than folding it over on itself as you would with a bread dough. Re-form the dough into a ball and repeat the process several times. The dough should feel moist but not sticky. Let the dough rest for a few minutes while you clean the work surface.
Dust the clean work surface with a little flour. Knead the dough by pushing against it in a forward motion with the heels of your hands. Form the dough into a ball again and knead it again. Keep kneading in this forward motion until the dough becomes silky smooth. The dough is ready when you can pull your finger through it and the dough wants to snap back into place. The kneading process can take from 10 to 15 minutes.
Even if you think you are finished kneading, knead it for an extra 10 minutes; you cannot overknead this dough. It is important to work the dough long enough to pass the pull test; otherwise, when it rests, it will collapse.
Double-wrap the dough in plastic wrap to ensure that it does not dry out. Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour before rolling it through a pasta machine. The dough can be made a day ahead, wrapped and refrigerated; bring to room temperature before proceeding.
nordinaryuk.wordpress.com 
