Road Rabbits

I comment a lot about how I never post regularly, and I usually take on an unnecessarily apologetic tone when I do it. Well, nuts to that. I feel entirely justified about not posting since July because I do loads of shit all summer long. But finally, FINALLY something I did just so happened to intersect with something that I've wanted to post for a while: my go-to rabbit recipe. 

Summer was capped off with a road trip towards northwest BC. The people I met up there were so goddamned cool and welcoming, nobody more so than our hosts. Fortunately/unfortunately for them, I showed my gratitude by bringing a couple of dead rabbits with me.

In an effort to avoid coming off as a weird, morbid asshole, I cooked them, too.

Rabbit Braised in Wine Schloob

- 1 rabbit (this guy clocked in at about 5 lbs)

- 2 carrots

- 2 onions

- 2 stalks celery

- 1 head of garlic

- 12 pitted prunes

- 3 inch sprig rosemary

- 2 sprigs sage (roughly 10 leaves)

- 3 whole star anise

- 1 cup chicken stock

- 1 bottle of dry red wine (no need to get fancy)

- 1-2 tbsp flour

- salt+pepper
- fat/oil/whatever

Step one: acquire a rabbit.

Step two: butcher said rabbit into manageable pieces. A little Google-fu will clear up any questions you have about how to do it.

Chop up the veg, bundle the herbs together, and cut the prunes in half. I don't bother with mincing up the garlic (smash and peel suffices for the long cooking time), but hey — you do you. Set it all aside and get down to business.

Liberally season the rabbit on both sides with salt and pepper. Set a pan with a couple tablespoons of fat over high heat and brown each piece on both sides. Stick the meat somewhere to hang out and grab your chopped veg. 

Turn the heat down a bit and toss the veg into the pan. Stir and cook until the onions start going translucent.

Tasty brown bits are probably already coming off the bottom at this point, but further deglaze the pan with the wine. Feel free to then throw in the prunes, herb bundle, anise, and chicken stock. I also usually add in about a teaspoon of salt and roughly a dozen whole peppercorns at this point — you can add in however much or little as you like.

Cover the pan and transfer to the oven for about 2 hours (or until your rabbit is tender). 

This next step is entirely optional — I like a thicker sauce, but if you like runnier stuff then just dig in as is.

Remove the anise bits and herb bundle from the pan. Mix 2 tbsp of flour in about 1/3 cup of water and gradually add into the hot pan while stirring until the desired thickness is reached. I usually end up using about 3/4 of the slurry, but it all depends on how much liquid remains in your pan after roasting. Place the meat back into the sauce, and you're good to go.

Eat with your sauce vehicle of choice, and remember: the cuter it is, the better it tastes.

Awfully good offal

Over the last year and a half my partner in crime and I have run a little backyard cuniculture operation; we breed, raise, and butcher the rabbits ourselves. The high dressing ratio of our rabbits ensures that we benefit from a goodly amount of quality meat as well as pelts (which we have since learned how to tan ourselves, athankyouverymuch).

The ears, hearts, lungs, and kidneys are treated as dog edibles, however it has always seemed a shame to feed the pooch such a choice liver. Let me explain to you my complicated stance on organ meats...

Although I'm quite fond of braised tendon and pig ears (thanks, Asian mom) I've never really been a huge fan of most offal. This bugs me just on principle. I consider myself to be a pretty avid carnivore, and when I butcher an animal I like to use as much as I possibly can. That having been said, it seems so stupidly antithetical for me to be averse to the rich, woobly jewels which said animal's body is engineered to protect. Blasphemy! It's time for me to change my ways and learn how to appreciate the liver. 

...*cough* by seasoning and pureeing it into a pâté fit to trick my gustatory perception.

Rabbit Liver Pâté

- 7 rabbit livers (or about 1 3/4 cup chicken livers)

- 1/4 cup heavy cream

- 1/4 tsp ground cloves

- 3 cloves garlic

- 3 shallots

- 3/4 tsp salt + more for seasoning

- pepper

- 2 tbsp butter, + more for topping

- 1 tbsp fresh thyme

- 1 tbsp fresh sage

- 1/4 cup bourbon or whiskey

Slice up the shallots, roughly chop the garlic, and aggravate yourself by separating the thyme leaves from their twigs. Set aside, and get into the guts.

Rabbit livers have such a mild taste that I don't bother with this step, but if you're using chicken livers I would suggest letting them soak in milk for a couple of hours before using them. It helps soften the taste and draw out residual blood. Regardless of where your livers come from, be sure to remove any sinewy bits before use.

Pat the livers dry, then season liberally with salt and pepper.

 Put a pan over high heat, drop in 1 tbsp butter, and sear the livers for about 30 seconds (definitely no more than a minute!) on each side. They should remain a bit wiggly with pink centers. Livers will continue to cook after you remove them from the hot pan and overcooked livers are gross, so get them out in good time!

Set the livers aside, turn the heat down to medium-high, and throw in another tablespoon of butter along with the shallots, garlic, sage, and thyme. Saute until the shallots begin to tender, then deglaze the pan with the whiskey or bourbon (I've used both with good results). I realize that cognac is a more traditional choice, but I seldom have any lying around because I don't enjoy drinking old man bathwater. So bourbon it is.

Combine all of the cooked stuff with the cloves, 3/4 tsp of salt, and blitz the absolute shit out of it. (my weapon of choice is the food processor). If you enjoy a really smooth pâté, you'd best push it through a fine sieve after puréeing it. If you're lazy like me, you'll shrug your shoulders and decide that you have more enjoyable things to do with your time.

Spoon the pâté into a bowl or jar, and slam it down on the counter top a couple of times to distribute it evenly. Melt another couple of tablespoons of butter and spoon on top of the pâté to seal it. Stick in the fridge to firm overnight, and be prepared to go gangbusters on some crackers and toast the next day.

I realize that liver (especially delicate rabbit liver) can hardly be considered a weird gastronomic compromise, JUST APPRECIATE MY TENDER FORAY INTO EATING THE (not so) GARBAGE PARTS OF THE ANIMAL, OK??

WHAT YEAR IS IT

I'm channeling some serious Robin Williams à la Jumanji because GODDAMN, it's been 6 months of lackadaisical gastrosluticity. Not posting for so long makes me a really bad slut...which, contrarily, makes me sound like a good slut. In any case, I'm posting now so stop waggling your fingers at my good/bad/slutty face.

This post is about curry because the rich Southeast Asian flavours reminiscent of my childhood are evocative of heartwarming personal nostalgia  that shit is tasty.

This was originally  a curry made by my Burmese mother, but then I subtracted and added a couple of things quite atypical of the cuisine. Now it's just sort of generally Southeast Asian, verging on ethnically confused (not unlike myself).

Southeastsomething Seafood Curry

- 1 lb white fish
   (we use halibut or basa)

- 1.5 lbs prawns
   (a little shell left on is better than not!)
- handful of cilantro
- 2 tbsp olive oil

- 4 yellow onions, diced

- 1.5 heads of garlic, minced
- 3 inch chunk of ginger, minced

- 1 cup lemongrass pulp
   (see this post for dealing with lemongrass)

- handful of lime leaves
   (15-20...ish)

- 3 tsp paprika
- 3 tsp turmeric

- 1 tsp chili flakes
   (or to taste)
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper

- 2 tbsp lime juice
- 2 tbsp nuoc mam
- 1 tbsp palm sugar
   (raw cane sugar is ok, too)
- 2 400ml cans  coconut milk

Start by patting the seafood dry, cutting the fish into large chunks, and mincing up the cilantro. My ma says that turmeric takes away any possible fishiness - a tidbit of wisdom which was delivered with exquisite stink eye as I questioned her methods. Add about a teaspoon of turmeric into your (separate) piles of fish and prawns, along with the minced cilantro which I can only assume you have since deduced to halve.

Set the sea-things aside, place a large pan with the oil over medium heat, and add both the onion and garlic. You want the pan's contents to sweat but not brown, so stir often. Once your onions have gone sort of translucent, you can incorporate the lemongrass pulp, ginger, chili, salt, pepper, lime leaves, paprika, and remaining teaspoon of turmeric.

...Paprika might seem like a weird thing to add in, I know; it's pretty much just for colour in this recipe.

Mix it all up for a minute or two until the lemongrass and lime leaves get fragrant. At this point you can add the coconut milk, palm sugar, nuoc mam, and lime juice to the pan. Allow the whole shebang to continue simmering uncovered for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

I enjoy a thicker curry, so I tend to let it reduce by about a third.

When it has reduced to your liking, place the fish chunks in first and cover them with sauce. Let it all continue to cook for just about 5 minutes. Shake the pan if you must, but do try to avoid shoveling the goods around as much as possible; the fish is delicate and will break apart easily. After about 5 minutes you can dump in your prawns and allow the curry to simmer for another couple of minutes until the crustaceans are cooked through. I'm a fan of letting most other curries mellow overnight, however this is best served right away to avoid overcooking the seafood.

Garnish with fresh cilantro and fried chili flakes - avoid scratching your butt after handling said chili flakes.

Lemongrass Pork for Less Than Perfect Weather

Well little pals, it's been a hot minute since I've last posted. I've been back home for well over 6 months now so I suppose I should get my act together and finish one of the dozen or so incomplete food blurbs I have hanging out on my account.

It's supposedly summer already, although you wouldn't have known it by looking out the window last week in Vancouver. Let's keep on fooling ourselves into thinking it's the right goddamned season with some de-licky grillables, shall we?

....I know this post is going to come across as pretty uninspired, but trust: the meat compensates.

Grilled Lemongrass Pork

-about 3 lbs of pork butt roast

-1/2 cup lemongrass pulp
-1 shallot
-6 cloves garlic
-1/4 cup kecap manis
  (sweet soy sauce)
-1/2 cup nuoc mam
  (fish sauce)
-2 tbsp vinegar
  (anything not balsamic)
-2 tbsp raw sugar
-2 tbsp garam masala
-1/2 tsp salt

First off: lemongrass. This can be a bit of a ball ache because chucking in some roughly smashed stalks will not suffice for the marinade. Some Vietnamese markets keep frozen lemongrass pulp on hand, which is fan-fucking-tastic.

But if all you have are fresh stalks please do yourself a favor and know that in this particular circumstance the blender/food processor is not your friend. You're best off slicing the whites into thin rounds and then mashing with a mortar and pestle. I wasn't about to put in the effort given my convenient prepackaged solution, so make do with my shit diagrams:

 Processing it all with an automated blade will result in horrible, pointy shards of cellulose and despair. It took two batches of regrettably prickly chicken to defeat my formidable lazy streak, but I have since learned my lesson about the use of lemongrass.

Finely mince the garlic and shallot, then add them to your lemongrass along with the remaining marinade ingredients.

Turn your meat from this:

into this:

Then the layer meat slices and lemongrass slurry in your vessel of choice and leave it to mingle overnight in the fridge.

The thinly sliced meat should cook pretty quickly, so keep your eye on the bbq to avoid drying out the goods. Grill over medium high heat until you have fatty, salty, slightly charred pigfection.
Good with most anything, but makes for killer banh mi filling!

Cheesy Sea-Things

Every month I cycle through highly predictable waves of stocking my fridge with treats, and then struggling to empty it of said treats. I am pretty ingredient ADHD, so this has become a regular thing; the next recipe is a product of this nonsense. Withering citrus fruit, salvageable cheese, and near-freezer burnt seafood were combined in a desperate attempt to spare things from my garbage can. I know the thought of creamy, tangy sea-bugs may not appeal to everybody, but this seriously takes about 5 minutes to make. You should try it even if you aren't as silly about resource acquisition and expenditure as I am.

Blue Cheese and Citrus Shrimp

- 300-ish grams shrimp
-1 bunch black kale (about 2 cups chopped)
-1/2 lemon: juice and zest
-1/2 orange: juice and zest
-1 tbsp butter
-1+ tbsp blue cheese
-pepper to taste

You'll notice that I don't use any salt in this. That's because blue cheese is insanely salty and does the job of seasoning just fine. Also, I list 1+ tbsp of blue cheese because it was probably closer to two...I didn't really measure (me lazy) but I included a photo below for comparison with my finger and a rough tablespoon of butter.

Zest + juice the citrus. You'll need about 4 tbsp of juice - equal parts lemon and orange. Mince up the zest so it's nice and small.

Remove stiff stems from kale and slice into ribbons.

Now that you've got your stuff together, warm up a pan on high heat and melt the butter. Add the shrimp and grind on some pepper. Cook for about a minute, until pink on one side. Seriously, it shouldn't take more than a minute. There are few things worse than overcooked shrimp, so flip those things over quickly. Once you turn the shrimp over, toss the kale and citrus zest on top.

After another minute, give it all a stir and deglaze the pan with the citrus juice. Crumble the cheese over the whole thing and take the pan off the heat to allow the cheese to melt for another minute.

Toss to coat everything in creamy goodness and you're done. This is best eaten right away - not just because your fridge could use the space, but leftover and reheated "creamy, tangy sea-bugs" sound fucking terrible.

  

Malcoholics rejoice!

Fear not, fellow and future ex-expat boozehounds: I have perfected my delicious, boozy, and very replicable formula for honey makgeolli! Below is a shot of brown sugar makgeolli and wildflower honey makgeolli.

For those who have never sampled/heard of/gotten trashed in Korea on makgeolli, it's a tasty tasty rice wine which is not at all like sake (which most people immediately ask me to compare it to). It's milky in colour, slightly sweet, a little bit carbonated, and super habit forming. It's unlikely that you'll find a palatable bottle in many North American liquor stores as the good stuff has a very short shelf life due to its probiotic nature. You may be able to find it at some Korean restaurants and specialty bars - or you could just make your own. As far as brewing goes, it's easy and cheap.

My primary brewing resource was mistermakgeolli.com, although....me lazy, so I took a few liberties with ingredients and shortcuts and all seems to have turned out just fine. There is a lot of discussion with regards to method and ingredients on various brew forums, I read as much as I could and ended up doing what I figured was the bare minimum for a decent batch of mak. For your benefit, I'll first distill a little bit of my newly gathered knowledge on some of the makgeolli essentials. If you're new to home brewing, you should probably give it a read. If you just want the recipe, skip this next chunk and just scroll on down to the ingredients list.

1. Nu-ruk 
누룩

If you're brewing outside of the ROK, this is definitely going to be one of your limiting factors. I've read some threads on brew forums where people tried subsitutes using amylase and other types of brewer's yeasts, but I steered clear of this option after reading a little about the analysis of nuruk's microflora, which happens to include a total of 64 bacterial species, 39 fugal species, and 15 yeast species. Inclusion of all these species is not universal to all nuruk sources (durr), the primary common microbial agents appear to be Bacillus amyloliquefaciens, B. subtilis, Lichtheimia corymbifera, Pichia jadinii and some kind of saccharifying fungi. I suppose you could play around with commercially available brewing cultures to try and best determine which will impart the best mak-esque flavor by brewing batch after batch of questionable rice wine, but c'mon now.

So I went on a quest for nu-ruk in Vancouver. H-mart didn't have it, nor did 3 other Korean grocers I tried. Unsuccessful attempts were made to order online through g-market, and I couldn't find another English source for the stuff. If you've got somebody handy who is great with hangul perhaps you could find another Korean supplier online, but my Korean is embarrassingly poor. Finally, FINALLY I found a supplier through the warehouse that imports for Hyundai Oriental Market (3488 Kingsway). So there, that's where you can find this stuff in Vancouver.
If you happen to live in America, suck my balls because you can skip all of that fuss and just order it online --> here <--

You'll also need some more conventional yeast to help it along, but that's pretty piss-easy to find. I've heard of others having success with regular ol' baker's yeast, however I used some brewer's yeast I had left over from cider making.  

2. Equipment

Makgeolli is a fucking cakewalk if you've ever brewed anything before. You'll need

• a large jar with a wide mouth (10 litres is a good size, glass cleans better than plastic) 

• bottles which can withstand pressure. The makgeolli will carbonate itself in secondary fermentation, so be sure to use something like plastic soda bottles or beer bottles which can withstand the pressure.

• cheesecloth and rubber band - just to secure over your large jar to keep nasties out.

• muslin bag (jelly straining bag) - you CAN strain your makgeolli with a cheesecloth or fine sieve, but I find it so much easier with the bag.

• funnel, ladle, etc - for bottling.

• stirring thing - for stirring.

2. Sanitization
Zedomax boiled all of his equipment, mistermakgeolli disinfected tools and washed his hands in soju, and I totally did none of this. Keeping things clean is always good, but you're not scrubbing up for surgery. In my experience with makgeolli, wine, and cider I have found that the microbial culture is pretty goddamned aggressive, particularly in the state of primary fermentation. You're not exactly leaving a petri dish of agar out for competing microbes to take over. Years ago grain fermentation was helped along by farmers chewing mouthfuls of rice which would then be spat into the mash (blech), and analysis has shown that nu-ruk often contains small amounts of food borne pathogens such as B. cereus or Cronobacter sakazakii anyways. Despite all of this, the yeast, fungi, and lactic bacteria will take over to produce the makgeolli we know and love. If anything, I save the thorough cleaning work for bottles - you want to disinfect things to keep the good cultures in your brew which are now settling down from the turbulent stage of primary fermentation. So here are my lowest-common-denominator rules for sanitation:

• Wash your hands, bowls, spoons, etc well with hot water and soap.

• Keep bugs out. Fruit flies carry acetobacter, which will spoil your whole batch by turning your tasty wine into vinegar. Avoid this by always keeping cheesecloth secured over the mouth of your primary fermentation vessel.

• Sanitize bottles for secondary fermentation. ... once again, me lazy, so I just run the bottles through my dishwasher with sani-brew instead of dish soap. Works great! Alternately you could boil them, or put them in a large tub of sani brew (or some other food safe disinfectant). 

That being said, there's nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution and disinfecting everything. It's too much of a ball ache for me, but it'll better ensure that your brew won't get contaminated.

3. Brew time
This is highly subject to both the mash as well as temperature. I've read anything from 4 days to 2 weeks with makgeolli, but I've personally never needed more than a week for primary fermentation. You'll see your brew go from a bubbling porridgey slurry to a stratified jar of boozy liquid and sediment. I got really lazy with my last batch and ended up leaving it be for nearly 2 weeks in primary fermentation without any noticeable difference or problems with the final product. It's pretty forgiving. Secondary fermentation (after bottling) takes just a day or two in a warm room. Be sure to have ample space in your fridge to store the finished product as cold temperatures are needed to drastically slow down fermentation once you have a product you want to drink. 

막걸리!!!
5 cups uncooked short grain rice

2 litres of water for primary fermentation, additional 1.5 litres for bottling
1 cup nuruk

1 tbsp brewer's yeast
2 cups honey

Wash your rice well, and cook it as you normally would. Then set aside to cool. I've read that you need to wash the rice 30 times - nuts to that, I wash it out 5 times maximum, the runoff water seems clear enough to me. I've also read that you shouldn't cook the rice all the way through, it has to be a particular kind of al dente - nuts to that, it's always turned out just fine after regularly cooking in my rice cooker.

So there's my lazy opinion and experience getting around rice pickiness

While the rice is cooling, soak 1 cup of nuruk in 1 cup of warm (not hot!!) water. I do this to soften the chunks which i eventually squish apart with my fingers. Alternately, you can grind it up dry with a mortar and pestle, coffee bean grinder, whatever.

Add the cooled rice, nuruk, brewer's yeast, and 2 litres of water to your large jar for primary fermentation. 

Mush it around well with your clean hands so it's all well mixed and your rice takes a bit of a beating.

Cover the jar with clean cheesecloth and secure in place with a rubber band. 

Leave it to ferment in a dark, warm place. I just ferment it under my table in the living room, so I always wrap a thick towel around the jar to keep the stuff insulated from drafts and light. 

After the first day your mash should look like a nasty, bubbling porridge.

Stir the concoction well once every day with a clean spoon to aerate the mash. 

After about 5 days your makgeolli should have topped out at around 16% abv, and the smell should have gone from yeasty to good and boozy by this point. The amount of time may vary by a few days depending on the temperature of your brewing environment, but it should look like the photo above.

Strain the liquid through a mesh bag (cheesecloth, jelly strainer, whatever), and discard the mash. Do it SLOWLY as the rice pulp will quickly clot your strainer. While trying to massage the mesh bag to express more liquid, my roomie remarked that it's best to pinch and roll away the sediment on the inside of the bag. Apparently, "it's just like scratching my balls, which probably why I'm so good at it." Les mots justes, Peter. 

Add 1.5 litres of water and the honey to the strained makgeolli. Just before adding the honey I like to warm it up a little bit on the stove or in the microwave to thin it out and make it easier to blend. Be aware of the type of honey you use, as the rice wine will carry it's flavor. My favorites to use are wildflower and lemon blossom.

The wine will be quite sweet at this point, however it will ferment a little more once bottled. This allows the beverage to get slightly carbonated and a little boozier as the remaining microbial culture metabolizes some of the honey into even more alcohol.

Funnel the makgeolli into your bottles, but leave a generous gap at the top to allow for fermentation. You can see how I filled mine below.

Keep your bottles at room temperature for another day or two.  When it is left at room temperature I would highly suggest gently bleeding the gas from the bottles once a day (or leaving caps on loose) lest you do what I did with my first batch and send a solid stream of highly carbonated liquid straight up and all over your ceiling. After a couple of days you can move them into the fridge to slow fermentation - it's now ready to drink. Putting the makgeolli in a cold place will SLOW fermentation, but not stop it. It's best to drink this stuff within a week of making it (although it apparently keeps for about 2 weeks). If you find it too boozy or perhaps sour when you go to enjoy it, just dillute with more honey and water to suit your tastes. Unlike other wines, makgeolli doesn't benefit from being left to age - in my opinion it tastes best as soon as it's ready to be consumed. Be sure to gently agitate the bottle prior to serving; you want to mix in the sediment for a better taste and that nice, milky look.

I suggest you experiment with sweeteners and flavoring. In Korea most commercial makgeolli uses artificial sweetener, and is sometimes flavored by adding blended fruit just prior to serving. I tried different types of honeys, sugars, and spiced syrups which yielded some of the best mak I and my fellow ex-pat mak-enthusiast Steve have sampled (his frank assessment, not just mine!). Flavoring is definitely best done after primary fermentation, as compounds in flavoring agents may interfere with the initial boozy process.

Alright, that's all. You can go and get wasted now.