Char-cute-erie

I can't tell you how old I was when I first encountered rillettes. I'd be ashamed.
Maybe it's not my fault; I don't eat every meal in a quality French bistro. Besides, I think rillettes have only recently become popular in America, non?
Anyway, rillettes are just cute little pots of cooked meat that has been massaged off the bones and swathed with melted animal fat. Dead easy to make at home.
And so, the braised rabbit we cooked earlier this month yielded its final incarnation in little jars. The braising liquid we had used was so delicious, all we added was a very little salt and pepper and then gently re-cooked the meat on the stovetop for about an hour. Then we separated the meat from the braising goop*, removed it from the bones, and shredded it finely. The melted animal fat was of the duck type — bunnies and duckies are cute little critters; I figured their essences would mingle happily. The pots rested in the fridge overnight to allow things to mingle and set up. One jar went in a freezer bag and into cold storage.
For eating, we heated the rillettes just a bit; you can eat them cold or hot.
Smoodged over lightly toasted bread, it was simultaneously rustic and urbane, in-the-know, and in my backyard. What a picnic.
*The goop was fantastic, heated and served over boiled new potatoes the next day. We got something like four or five meals out of the rabbit.

House of Orange

Please forgive me if I've bored you with my orange love. Man, I didn't know I had it.
See, we moved to a new home with an orange tree in the backyard. Big deal.
Just before he left, the previous owner (who had grown up here) told me these were the tastiest oranges he'd ever eaten. Big deal.
I didn't get it.
Until winter, when the huge, lustrous orbs surged into ripeness.
They really were the tastiest oranges, and they needed using.
I went nuts for orange zest. It went into everything.
We used orange juice mainly for mixing with soda water for drinks.
I admit quite a few oranges were eaten out of hand.
But some sort of preserving was needed.
Soon I will be making candied orange peel, "creamsicle" ice cream, and a bit of marmalade.
For now, I've put up a jar of confit of orange slices, based on an idea Sam filched from the LA Times. The original recipe uses Meyer lemons. Aha, sayeth we rich in oranges. We can mimic that. It's nothing more than thin slices simmered in olive oil very slowly over low heat, for about an hour.
And it's lovely. If you look at Sam's sandwich it seems to be topped with a poached egg (but it's a slice of cheese). Inspired, undaunted, I topped some lightly buttered toast with confit of orange slices and a poached egg. Underneath the egg I judiciously sprinkled salt and some dried habanero flakes, just a bit, and boy was that tasty.
I have leftover orange slices in a jar that won't last forever. No problem, I don't intend to wait that long.

Mmm. Rabbit Liver Chocolate Ice Cream

The 3.25-lb. rabbit we bought yielded a 100-gram liver. A nice, big, shiny thing, free of odd odors or textures. The best liver I ever saw.
I made a bit of a mess of it trying to remove some internal membranes, but basically that just resulted in having a bunch of smaller pieces to saute in butter.
It was so easy.
One recipe I liked (from Australia) said to use half as much butter as liver (which is why I weighed it in grams; so easy to divide). I used a little bit less, but the full amount would have been fine.
The recipe also used orange zest (as well as lemon zest), so we were hunky dory goin' in!
Method: Gently saute liver (pieces) in a little butter until cooked but not browned; 10 minutes? Remove liver from pan and allow to cool for 20 minutes.
Melt the rest of the butter with ground pepper, orange zest, salt and crunched bay leaves. (This is where you may do as you like, seasoning-wise.)
When the liver is cool, force it through a sieve with a wooden spoon, or through a tamis with a scraper. Push, push, scrape, scrape. Into a bowl, duh. Now, immediately pour in the seasoned warm butter and stir well (did you remove the bay leaves first? Good.).
Pack the resulting pâté (yes, you now have pâté) into something cute, drizzle any extra butter on top, cover it, and refrigerate overnight. Even in the fridge, the flavors will all redistribute themselves.
Next day, allow to come to a warmer temperature if you like, and smear the pâté on baguette slices. Or toasted baguette slices.
Mm. The best liver I ever ate.

The World in My Onion Patch

clicky on the picky for big view
There's a little break in the rain, so we're running around trying to think of things to do. Buy food. Eat food. Stuff like that.
I'm dying to work in the garden but we're due for a slicing slash of H2O tomorrow and the next day, and that will leave the earth wet.
The onions don't mind the weather, fortunately.
You can see the whole world in an onion.

The Meme is Dead, Long Live the Meme

Remember, two or three years ago, when you'd get tagged for a meme at least once a week?
Sometimes it was distracting. You'd be all involved with some subject that totally consumes you as you consume it, say orange zest. Heh. And then a blog pal would barge in and say, "Tag, you're it!"
You'd drop everything and take pictures of the inside of your refrigerator. Or you'd name a handful of meaningful cookbooks. Maybe tell who most influenced your cooking. Like that.
Everyone was doing it, and we all got to look inside each other's refrigerators.
Well, it kind of died off. I suspect we got tired of looking up URLs in order to tag new people. Or hated bothering them with these reindeer games. I know back then, some people I tagged never responded.
But, wow, I was tagged the other day. It's no longer called a meme, and for that reason I will participate. I'm messing with the rules, though. Five facts about yourself? Whattabore. How about Five Sordid Facts?

KristiB from The Global Kitchen tagged me.

The rules are:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.
Thus:

five sordid facts

1. I don't shower every day. I do keep my hands clean, though.

2. We don't have a 20-second rule at our house. If something's been in the trash for 10 minutes and I think of a use for it, out it comes. No apologies.

3. I love chick flicks. Not dumb ones. Good ones. Funny ones. (Oh, and I adore Will Ferrell. That's sordid.)

4. I haven't been in an airplane since before 9/11. Haven't had a need to, simply (though it might be nice to go to Fiji if someone would look after Bean Sprout).

5. One of these days I will modernize my wardrobe. Maybe not.

That was fun. Well, perhaps not for you.
Now I must bother the following people. You don't have to tell us five sordid facts; just the facts, ma'am. And if you don't want to play, don't even bother.

Peter at Cookblog hasn't been in business long enough to have grown weary or wary of memes. Tag, Peter.
Ditto for Zoomie at Zoomie Station. I know her, and she'll have a lot to share. You're it, Zooms.
I'm crazy about Claudia at cook eat FRET (although I'm not sure if you're supposed to know her name, so pretend I'm Will Smith in Men in Black and I just flashed you with the flashy thing). Tag, um, whatsyourname.
El at Fast Grow the Weeds is a goddess to me. She grows almost everything she and her family eats. She may be too busy knocking snow off the hoophouses to let light in for the seedlings just now. But. She's it. She's really it.
I'd tag the salty Heather at Gild the Voodoolily, but my tagger already tagged 'er. So I'll leave my list of taggees at four.
Have fun, kids.

Rabbit Redux

The judging is finished and the verdict is in.
Fresh rabbit is delicious. Just kwa-a-azy delicious.
For all of you much more sophisticated than me, I just can't shut up because this was my first home-cooked bunny.
The meat is (mostly) white and grained like chicken meat, but the flavor is definitely mammal. I was detecting caramel notes, which I doubt could have happened from the brief browning in oil before the braising began.
However, I did throw in a lot of carrots (because rabbits like carrots). That, plus the little bit of fennel bulb, orange zest, bay leaves and the obscene glug of champagne, probably ratcheted up the sugar quotient.
The two of us ate half the bunny. The rest is going into rillettes. We even saved our fantastic braising liquid.
And there's still that honkin' rabbit liver in the fridge. Just one, but giganto. I might make a mini pâté. Cute!

No Lucky Rabbit's Feet, But We Are Lucky

I can't believe how good the house smells. I can't wait for supper.
This is a local rabbit. Way local. The "giblets" were still biologically attached in the visceral cavity, so I got the honors of doing a little butchering. Oh, and then I had to break down the bunny into "wings" and legs and back (saddle) and breast (feh, nothing there to eat). Fortunately I've hacked up enough chickens that it was easy. And necessary; the intact rabbit (3.25 lbs.) wouldn't fit into my braising pot.
I took the picture of the whole carcass on purpose, though. For one thing, as these bunny parts stew in the oven, the meat is shrinking away from the bone, and it's not pretty. For another thing, there's a movement of scaredy-cats who "cry" (go to comments) when they see a photo like this, and I believe they are due for some reality conditioning.
Let me just tell you how delicious the braising sauce is. I made it with a lot of carrots, because Bugs likes his carrots. It is also rich with chicken stock and loads of champagne. (OK, and fennel bulb, orange zest, celery, leeks, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, salt, olive oil. You can get the technique by Googling "braised rabbit.")
It's not time to eat yet, because the accompanying polenta has a ways to go. But I've tasted the fall-off-the-bone bunny, and it's really, really nice. Not chicken-y. Not gamey. Kind of in between.
You'd like it. Yeah, you, ya scaredy-cat.
Me, I am starving.

Happy Valentine's Day, Weep, Weep

I was disappointed with my caviar today.
Dammit! I had finally come to accept that I would never eat Russian or Iranian caviar again, due to the near-extinction of the Caspian sturgeons that must be slaughtered to yield their treasure.
I had tried one or two domestic caviars, and though I didn't expect fireworks, at least I got sparklers now and then. Whee.
However. Cranky popped $125 on two ounces of California-raised Tsar Nicoulai Osetra, and it was mushy. Collapsed. Insipid.
The flavor was not off; I'd have returned the jar to the store if it had been. But the eggs were lacking a certain character. Mush. No pop. They even seemed to be weeping black goo.
Dammit.
This is one personal, one-time experience. I understand Tsar Nicoulai gets glowing reviews on Yelp. Anybody else got an opinion?
But, poo. What a lousy Valentine's Day treat. I won't buy it again.
The champagne was good, though.

Was It Paella?

It looked like paella. It tasted like paella. As far as I'm concerned, that makes it paella.
But Cranky concocted it without a recipe, because he can. He took liberties. There were no shrimp or chicken in this dish, only Merguez sausage for protein.
He forgot the garlic and the bay leaves.
But he jazzed it up plenty with lemon and orange zest. Onion, chopped poblano pepper and some dandy olives that rehydrated into a luscious state. Also chicken broth, and fake Mexican "saffron."
If you were expecting Spanishness reminiscent of your college romp through Europe, you might be disappointed. If you were all narrow minded and unexplorey.
If, on the other hand, what you wanted was a zesty, macho lunch that whispered serenades while you chewed, you were in luck.
Why not? When paella was "invented," it came with frog legs and snails. Things have changed.
I was in luck.

Yard Flavors

When all you've got for flavoring from your garden is bay leaves, you go a little bay leaves crazy.
Then the oranges come in, and you had never realized what a killer flavoring the orange rinds could be. With bay leaves.
But wait. That little lemon tree. Oh, yeah.
Well, today's meal didn't have any bay leaves in it, for the first time in, oh, a year. (I might be exaggerating.)
We decided to let the two citruses mingle, duke it out, do a turf war. They both won.
What you are looking at is Dungeness crab chunks with hunks of fresh tofu, seasoned with both lemon and orange.
First, heat up some butter and oil in a baking pan, then swizzle chopped garlic, ginger and (ripe) serranos in it until smoky. Then throw in the proteins, and cover them with grated zest of lemon and orange, followed by a big, big squeeze of juice from both.
Roast, hot, for about five minutes. Ten, maybe.
Sprinkle with chopped cilantro.
It was really good to eat, but all I've got to say is this:
Would somebody please concoct a men's cologne of ginger, garlic and cilantro? I chopped those three aromatics (or "aromats," as our silly friend Ruhlman is hell bent on calling them) consecutively today, and my fingers smelled divine.
M. Hermes? M. Mugler? Because I'd be nuzzlin' some guy's neck all day if he came into contact with that eau de.

Winter's Work

Not all the leaves got raked up and tossed on the compost pile.
The ones that got left behind were pummeled by winter rains, until their guts blew out as fertilizer for the soil.
Their beautiful skeletons are all that remains.
Planting begins soon.

Taking a Break from Oranges

The orange tree in the backyard is behaving itself, mercifully. I can pick oranges when I want to, and the rest will wait politely on the tree... for a little while longer.
Now I'm turning my attention to the dinky little Meyer lemon tree. I think it grew exactly a dozen lemons this year, and we've only used a couple so far.
It occurred to me to re-create a winter version of a pasta dish I had last summer. With Cranky's help, we went a little bit overboard, but hey, walnuts are good for you!
The summer version was spaghetti zinged with lemon juice and zest, plus olive oil, chile peppers and arugula stirred through the strands. It was good, but it wasn't hot enough. More peppers next time.
The winter version is spaghetti zinged with lemon juice and zest, plus olive oil, chile peppers and cooked winter greens stirred through the strands. And walnuts. It was good, but it wasn't hot enough! I'm doing something wrong, but at least I'm consistent.
Or maybe I'm scared of my chiles.
UPDATE: I forgot to include garlic as an ingredient, sheesh. Obviously there's grated cheese; I just didn't mention it. And last summer's version also had a bit of anchovy (I used paste) in it; we skipped it this time. The source of this great recipe is Susan at Food Blogga (and she kindly credits Jamie Oliver as her inspiration).

I'm Votin'...

Be right back.

Game? There's a Game?

Cranky says we should TiVo the Superbowl, and then spend our time in the kitchen fooling around.
When we're ready to look at our recording, we'll just zoom past all the football bits, and watch the commercials.

Orange You Glad?

While the rest of the blogosphere shivers with Meyer lemon madness, I'm still going outrageously orange.
I have about half a tree's worth of oranges left, and a few recipients in mind for gift sacks. Right now I'm personally consumed by the deliciousness of oranges: juice, flesh and rind. I want to try to preserve some of this flavor for use throughout the year, first by experimenting with freezing the rind, and second by borrowing an idea from you lemon looneys: orange confit.
In the meantime, some essence or other of orange is making its way into most of my food.
The latest experiment was homemade yogurt scented with bay leaves and orange rind.
I say experiment, because something went a little wrong, and I need to tease it out and try again.
The problem was the texture of the yogurt. It was loose, a little unstable.
I've been putting bay leaves in my yogurt for almost a year now, and it comes out firm and smooth, so that's not the problem.
A new variable is that this time I used Straus organic whole milk, which seems to be unhomogenized. Sort of. I'll be going back to Clover organic whole, to see if the yogurt tightens up better next time. (Also, was the milk too old? Was the culture I used too old?)
I'm dithering, because I really hate to put the blame on orange rind. But I am a grown-up. I will explore the possibility.
Maybe the oils in the rind prevented a perfectly firm outcome. Perhaps I'll have to try using cooked, candied rind instead.
It will be sad if my results come out the same next time, because this stuff is so delicious.
Nah. Even if my results do come out the same next time, I'll be glad. Because this stuff is so delicious.