easter's over so i went out and got the rabbit and made a stout roast

one of my friends used to have a pet rabbit. we'd torment him about how we were going to eat it. for hours and hours we did this, till one day the rabbit died (of natural causes) the funny thing was, during this time i didn't eat any rabbit at all.


why i didn't take in a rabbit stew into work to make him feel uneasy i will never know (am i getting soft?) but after watching a story on ABC about wild and farmed rabbits i decided it was time to get things going.

so it was off to the market to get a rabbit and some other bits and pieces.

as usual everything in this is substitutable with anything you want.

1 rabbit
1 leek
2 onions
2 shallots
7 cloves of garlic
3 carrots
2 potatos
2 turnips
5 big mushrooms
3 roma tomatos
1 bottle stout (i used abbotsford stout but i think coopers would have been a better choice. it's taste isn't as over powering)
1 tin tomatos
1 tin beans of your choice
bunch of marjoram
butter
flour
salt and pepper


so, the butcher offered to section the rabbit for me. but i had to look tough so i refused and bought it as it is. all you have to do is cut off the leg bits then crack the rib and cut the body into three or four bits. not hard at all.


now season it with salt and pepper then coat with seasoned flour. i use a plastic bag to do this. much easier if you're lazy


before you start cooking anything get the oven on and also get the vegies ready. dice the potatos, turnips and carrots and lay them at the bottom of the oven tray, get the onions, shallots, garlic and leak thinly chopped and thrown into a separate bowl (bowl A) and the tomato and mushrooms roughly cut and put them into bowl B. this tends to make life easy later on.


now it's time to use fire. heat up a frying pan and melt the butter in there. once it looks good throw in a few bits of the rabbit to seal it. do it bit by bit to keep the pan hot and put the sealed rabbit ontop of the bed of root vegies in the baking tray.


once you're done with the rabbit add a little bit more butter in there and cook up bowl A in there. once it's all sweating and a little cooked throw it over the top of everything that's already in the baking tray. now throw Bowl B over the top of all of this stuff.

next make the sauce stuff to throw over the top of everything. throw the marjoram into the frying pan with a dash of butter and get the flavour going. throw in the stout and the tin of tomatos and mix it a little then pour it over the top as well.


now it's time to throw this into the oven that should be nice and hot by now. put some foil over the top of the baking tray with a couple of holes in it to let a little bit of the steam out. cook this for about 3hours at 160-180C


once it's cooked throw in the tin of beans and heat up for a further 30-60mins



i decided to have some couscous with my rabbit. all i did was boil some water with some small bit's of pumpkin and garlic till it was all soft then add the try couscous and warm through till the moisture's all gone.



i really need to work out how to take good photos of food. but this is the end result. the sauce should be reduced by about half by now and should be thick. it might even be a good idea to throw in a cup of stock to the stout mixture at the start to give it more flavour