Wild Rabbit Stew With IPA

There's an old joke along the lines of a man goes into a restaurant and asks, "Is the rabbit wild?" "Of course it's wild," says the waiter, "it's absolutely livid."  That's got nothing to do with anything, but just to say use wild rabbit for this recipe. It's got a far better flavour than farmed rabbit, it keeps poachers in work, and most farmed rabbits live terrible lives.

I had wild rabbit on a recent trip to Georgia (the country not the state) and I'd almost forgotten how good it is. There it was cooked in white wine and served in a clay dish surrounded by mashed potato. It tasted good, but the meat was still very firm and could have done with being cooked at least an hour longer.

It can be quite a fiddly meat so you want it falling off the bone - and that takes two hours or so of slow cooking. This recipe will do the trick. It is good cooked in red or white wine, but I find it's much better when braised in a (forgive me) hoppy beer like Indian pale ale.

One wild rabbit, jointed
Five tablespoons of sunflower oil
Four tablespoons of flour
Three medium onions, sliced
Three sticks of celery, peeled and diced
Three medium carrots, peeled and diced
Eight garlic cloves, crushed
Two bay leaves
Ten peppercorns
Four green cardamom pods
One pint of IPA 
One pint of water, more if needed
One teaspoon tomato puree
Eight medium potatoes, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Rabbit is generally cut into eight pieces and it is very easy to do. Take the legs off, and cut the body into four pieces. Make sure you put in the kidneys etc. as well, as they improve the flavour of the liquor. The secret is not to hack away at it with a knife, otherwise you'll end up with sharp bone shards in the stew. Instead hit the back of your knife with a rolling pin and this will give a clean cut through the joints. Easier still, get the butcher to do it.

Sprinkle the pieces with salt then dredge in flour so they are evenly coated. Heat the oil in a pot until it is quite hot, then add the rabbit. Cook on each side for three minutes or so until well browned. Add the onion, celery and carrot and stir well. Fry for another two minutes, then add the bay leaves, tomato puree, cardamom, garlic and peppercorns.

Add the beer, making sure you scrape off all the fried flour bits that may have stuck to the bottom of the pan. Then add enough water to just cover the rabbit. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a low heat. Cover the pan and simmer on the stove for two hours. Stir occasionally and cook at times with the lid off if the liquid needs reducing. Add more water if it is getting too dry. Add the potatoes 30 minutes before the end. It's ready when the meat can be pulled off the bone and the potatoes are still holding their shape, but cooked through. Season to taste.

Spaghetti Sofia

This was inspired by a pasta dish I had during a visit to Bulgaria's capital Sofia. It's a wonderfully laid-back place if you haven't been there, and I thoroughly recommend a visit. It's also worth noting the beer is ridiculously cheap too. One of the increasingly decreasing countries in Europe that is still affordable after the pound was floored by Brexit.

Spaghetti, enough for two people
2 shallots or one small onion
2 garlic cloves
Good knob of butter
Salt, pepper
30g fresh basil, chopped
20 baby plum tomatoes
Good handful of grated cheese
Splash or two of fish sauce

Cook the spaghetti in salted water then drain.
Melt the butter in a pan. Add the chopped onion and garlic. Add the tomatoes. Fry for two minutes until the onion is soft and the tomatoes begin to split.
Add the pasta, basil and cheese. Fry for a minute. Stir in the fish sauce then serve.

Salted Cod And Cashew Nut Curry

This recipe was partly inspired by Cambodia's national dish, amok - river fish cooked with mild spices and coconut. Amok varies enormously from home to home over there. Most resemble a sort of runny, yellow curry, but the supposedly authentic ones are steamed in banana leaves and, with the addition of beaten egg, come out like souffles. So chaotic is the dish, you could say it runs ... oh, never mind.

Salted fish is also an important ingredient for the Khmers, and works well in this curry. As for the cashew nuts, you can pick them off the trees over there. Remember to only add salt at the end, if necessary, as it is difficult to estimate how salty the fish is and how much soaking it will need. Obviously the saltier you like it, the less soaking it needs.

300g salt cod or pollack, skinless and boneless
2 medium onions, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves
4 green cardamon pods
4 cloves
2 tsps ground coriander
2 tsps ground turmeric
1 tsp cumin seeds
2 tbsps olive oil
6 red chillies, fewer if you don't like heat
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 large yellow or orange pepper, diced
1 bay leaf
120g tinned tomatoes, chopped
400ml coconut milk
20 cashew nuts

Soak the salted fish overnight in a saucepan full of cold water. Change the water a couple of times. Heat the oil in a pressure cooker and add the chopped onion. Stir and cook over a medium heat for 10 minutes until reduced heavily in size. Add the diced pepper, bay leaf and garlic and cook for another few minutes, stirring regularly.

Add the cardamon, cumin, turmeric, coriander, sugar and vinegar. Stir for a minute, adding a splash of water if the spices start to catch. Add the tomatoes and coconut milk.

Cover the pressure cooker, bring up to pressure, and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring half way through. Then add the fish, cut into inch-wide pieces, cashew nuts and whole red chillies. Stir well and cover the pressure cooker again. Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring half way through.

Serve with fresh coriander, salad and boiled rice.

Broccoli Stalk Stew

Broccoli stalks, if you ask me, are the best part of the vegetable, and perhaps any vegetable. They can have a sort of pak choi flavour and texture if you don't cook them too much, and slice them thinly.

This is a take on a soup/stew I had a number of times when I was living in Cambodia. There, they use the stalks to good effect, slicing them to the thickness of a beer bottle top for want of a better, but all the same as appropriate, image - then cooking them in soups, fried rice, noodle dishes, and probably a lot of other dishes I've forgotten since those impecunious, halcyon days.

I've used potato here, which doesn't grow well in Cambodia, but the ingredients are far from consistent there, to be sure using whatever is cheap in the market that week, so I've tweaked accordingly.

It is usually served with a small bowl of chopped red chillies topped with a chunk of lime, maybe a side plate of a few leafy vegetables or herbs like they do so well in neighbouring Vietnam, and of course the ubiquitous, plastic (often red) basket containing fish sauce, soy sauce, sugar, black pepper, toothpicks, and pickled green chillies if you're lucky. As dishes go it's got to be about as cheap as it comes, but it's very good all the same.

Stalks of two large broccoli heads, sliced thinly
2 large potatoes, each cut into eight pieces
1 small onion, chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil
500ml water
Salt, pepper to taste
1 tsp chopped fresh ginger
1 tbsp chopped garlic
Chopped red bird eye chillies

Prep the vegetables then fry the onion in a pot until it has softened and is beginning to colour. Add the potato pieces, garlic, and ginger. Continuing frying for a few more minutes. Add the water, bring to the boil, cover the pot and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the broccoli stalks, recover the pot and cook for another five minutes or so until the stalks are tender and the potato still firm. Add a little more water if necessary. You don't want it swamping, but there needs to be liquor. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then serve with chillies, fish sauce and all the rest. Then imagine you're sitting on a plastic stool in 35C heat.

Lamb Kebabs - The Perfect Midnight Snack

I lived above a kebab shop in Brighton when I was a student. It was a terrible place, but I learned two things. One was to wrap 1p coins in Rizla papers, which worked as 20p pieces in the parking meters in the street, and the other was how to shave white cabbage.

Every night the owner’s cousin used an incredibly-sharp machete to cut cabbage for the kebabs. It took him 30 minutes to get through a large cabbage, just using the weight of the blade to cut wafer-thin shreds. Now when I make kebabs I always think of him for some reason, and try to get the white cabbage as thin as he showed me.

LAMB KEBABS

(Serves 2)

2 lamb rump steaks (about 150g each)

1 onion

1 white cabbage

1 tomato

2 large pitta breads

Chilli sauce

Salt

Heat a frying pan until it begins to smoke and then lay the lamb steaks in there, fat-side down. You don’t need oil as the fat will soon render down (see pic below). 

Cook for about 10 minutes, turning every couple of minutes, and sprinkling with a little salt, until the meat is charred on the outside and still pink and juicy in the middle.

Meanwhile, finely slice enough white cabbage and onion for two kebabs, then slice the tomato. Pop the pitta bread in the toaster or under a grill - but don’t cook too much otherwise it will go crispy and fall apart when you fill it. Split the pittas open.

Cut the lamb steaks into strips about 1cm wide. Half fill the pittas with the salad, pour in some chilli sauce, then put in the lamb strips and top with a little more salad and more chilli sauce. Eat immediately. 

Pilchard Curry And Other Student Stories

Times were hard when I was a student. Not like today. We enjoyed unheard of things like housing benefit and free tuition fees in those pre-Clegg nut times, but they were still hard. And, of course, any money you managed to save on optional extras like food and heating meant the more you could splash out on subsidised booze - in my case strong lager with vodka, lime and soda “greenies”.

One way to do this was to make a communal pot of tinned tuna curry most nights - which was absolutely delicious, if a little repetitive. But not repetitive enough obviously for one of the blokes who shared our house. I shared a flat with him briefly 20 years later, and he still made tuna curry every night when he got home from work. He was a strange chap, but they say the habits you learn at university stay with you the rest of your life.

Anyway, this recipe is based on that tuna curry recipe slightly, but I’ve tinkered with it over the years. I got ideas from an Indian friend whose mother used to make delicious curries and claimed the best ones were made from tinned pilchards.

It’s also got influences from a dish that I got addicted to while living in Cambodia - char trey cor compong (fried tinned fish) - the recipe is here if you want to try it. So this is a hybrid of Brightonian, Indian and Cambodian cooking, and it really is worth trying especially if you’re counting the pennies, or just want something spicy and healthy to see you through these dark, cold nights.

It uses curry leaves, and I find the best thing to do with these is to buy a big bag of fresh ones from an Asian supermarket and then freeze them and use a handful as you will - they defrost in seconds in a hot pan. The dried ones aren’t worth bothering with. Anyway, I hope you like it...

PILCHARD CURRY

(Serves 2)

2 large onions

2 medium potatoes

Knob of butter

6 garlic cloves

12 curry leaves

2 cups of water or more

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp turmeric

2 tsps of extra hot chilli powder

1 tbsp tomato puree

2 x 155g tins of pilchards in tomato sauce

4 level tsps fish sauce

1 level tsp sugar

1 red chilli

Chop the onions fairly finely, then peel the potatoes and cut each one into eight cubes. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the onions and brown slightly for a few minutes, stirring all the time. Then add the potatoes and stir well.

Fry for another five minutes over a low heat, stirring from time to time. Then finely dice the garlic and add to the pan with the curry leaves. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add the cumin seeds, garam masala, turmeric and chilli powder. Fry for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time to stop the mixture sticking to the bottom and burning.

Add a cup of water and the tomato puree and stir well. Allow to simmer gently over a low heat, stirring from time to time, and adding another splash or two of water as the liquid evaporates - remember this is a fairly dry curry, so don’t swamp it.

Continue cooking for another 20 minutes or so, then test one of the potato chunks to see if they’re cooked. If not, add more splashes of water and continue cooking until they’re done. Add fish sauce and sugar and stir well.

Then add the first tin of pilchards, including the juice, and mash slightly with a spoon. Stir well and simmer for a minute, then add the second tin, but this time just break the fish in half and stir gently to ensure they don’t break up. Add a little water to each tin to get the remaining juices out. Simmer gently for another minute until the second tin of pilchards is just warmed through, then serve with sliced fresh chillies and sticky rice.