Lapin au Vin Blanc: Rabbit Stew with White Wine

One of the meats that I like to cook with is rabbit. Before I was a vegetarian, I loved rabbit or hare (although hare is tougher). However, I only had it in Vietnam, prepared according to the Vietnamese local cuisine. Today, I wanted to try a French inspired dish, a stew-like dish made with rabbit and white wine. It is similar to a coq au vin (chicken in wine, usually red wine) but I wanted to use white wine to encourage the gamey flavor of the rabbit rather then hiding it under a bold vin rouge.

 

We bought a frozen rabbit at one of our supermarkets and thawed it over night.

 

  

I proceeded to separate all the meat from the carcass except for the legs the next day and marinated it in white wine (I used Chardonnay), salt, pepper, some herbs like thyme, rosemary and parsley. I used the bones to make a rabbit stock to use later in the the dish, so I didn't waste much.

 

 While the rabbit marinated, I prepared some pearl onions, baby carrots and I sliced up nice chunk of lardon (salted pork belly) into tiny pieces. In a large pot, I cooked the pork, pearl onions, garlic and baby carrots until the pork belly got crisp and the majority of the fat was cooked off. Remove the mixture and after coating the pieces of rabbit with flour, I browned them in the bacon fat until nicely colored.

 

 

 

  

Using the fat in the pot, a small knob of butter, and a couple tablespoons of flour, I made a roux and added in the rabbit stock, wine, pork belly, carrots, garlic and onions, reserving a few onions for garnish. Add in the rabbit and braise for 1 1/2-2 hours on medium high heat. Season according to taste.

I served this dish with egg noodles and French bread for the extra sauce. Oh, and of course, more Chardonnay!

 

I made a kale and sausage stew with mushrooms, carrots and pearl onions for myself. :)

Superb Spiced Pumpkin and Goat Cheese Soup; Inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

 

Man, I have been so busy I haven't had the time to post much on here, my apologies for taking a month off. However, today I made something that was worthy of a post, a soup that is inspired by one of my favorite games, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. In the game, our hero, Link, travels to a freezing territory of snow and befriends a Yeti named Yeto, who is out to gather ingredients to cook a soup for his ill wife, Yeta. The soup features Reekfish (which resembles our reality Sockeye Salmon), root vegetables, Ordon Pumpkin and Ordon Goat Cheese (Ordon being Link's village). The Reekfish has healing properties and the more ingredients that Link contributes, the more health benefits the soup acquires and can be used to heal the player during in-game damage.

I have come across a few recipes for the soup, many featuring some sort of fish, pumpkin and carrots. I have been inspired to make my own rendition of the soup, vegetarianising it, adding a little kick of spices and preparing my garnish vegetables by roasting. And honestly, this is the best pumpkin soup I have ever had; it is absolutely delicious and so easy to make.
I used kabocha squash as my "pumpkin" because I love the sweetness of it and how it is richer than the regular pumpkins. The skin is a bit tough to remove but it is worth it. Just cut the pumpkin in half, remove the seeds, slice into 1/2 inch strips and carefully shave off the skin with a sharp knife. I left the skin on for the garnish because I wanted the slices to hold together.
 My other vegetables included carrots, yam, onions, and garlic. Of course, you could also add/use rutabaga, turnips, parsnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes etc. if you like.

Ingredients
1 kabocha squash or pumpkin (1-2.5 lbs)
3 large yellow yams or sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
4 carrots
1/2 cup wild mushrooms
1/2 white onion, diced
1 elephant garlic clove, minced (or 3 garlic cloves)
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp fresh basil, chopped or dried
4-5 cups of vegetable stock
1/2 cup soft goat cheese (1/4 of the log)
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper

Reserve 1/4 of the pumpkin, skin on, for garnish; 1 yam, for garnish; 2 carrots, for garnish; and mushrooms for garnish.
Peel and dice the remainder of the squash, yams and carrots. In a soup pot, heat 1 tbsp olive oil and sweat out the onions and garlic. Turn heat to medium and add the diced vegetables. Saute for 5 minutes then add bay leaves, cumin, paprika, turmeric, basil and cook for another 3 minutes; season to taste then add vegetable stock. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until the vegetables begin to disintegrate.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees C. Meanwhile, prep the garnish. Cut the reserved pumpkin piece into 1/4 inch-thick slices and cut in have to be roughly 1-inch in size. Cube the yam. Cut carrots in half and diagonally. On a baking sheet, drizzle on olive oil and sprinkle in salt. Add the garnish and season with more olive oil, salt and pepper, tossing it to evenly coat. Make sure you vegetables are not too crowded. Roast for 15-20 minutes, making sure to check and flip to avoid uneven cooking.
In a skillet, saute the mushrooms with olive oil, salt and pepper (you can add spices or other seasonings if you want to any of the garnishes).
When the soup is ready, remove the bay leaves and ladle the hot soup into a blender/food processor with crumbled goat cheese and blend until smooth (if you have to do it in batches, add the goat cheese in batches to ensure consistency). Add more stock or water if necessary. Make sure to blend it hot to ensure that the soup is smooth. Return to pot and place on low heat to adjust seasoning.
Serve hot with the garnishes either place on top or mixed right into the soup.

You can obviously avoid the garnishes and just have a smooth soup but for accuracy sake, I did the garnishes to make it look more like it was in-game. My goal for the near future is to make another reversion of the soup, with fish and all, for the family.
Have fun cooking and happy eating!
P.S. Check out these other recipes from the same inspiration, The Geeky Chef and Gourmet Gaming.

Pistachio-Crusted Rack of Lamb with Roasted Asparagus, Sweet Potato Mash and Sherry Wine Reduction

 

Today is the last day of the Easter long weekend! Everyday had been full of cooking and fine-wine-dining in the comfort of my own home. For Easter Monday, I made rack of lamb, as per my suggestion for possible Easter dinners. Inspired once again by Chef Gordan Ramsay, this time his recipe for herb-crusted rack of lamb, I took a step further and made a pistachio crust made with pistachios, parsley, bread crumbs, salt n' pepper and olive oil. I was very disappointed to find very little pistachios available in the supermarket I went to. I salvaged what I could at the bulk section, just enough to cover my lamb rack and have some extra leftover. The pistachio nuts gave the crust an earthy, nutty and savory flavor and a little bit of parsley was added for subtle flavor and a bust of color. Since the crust is vegan, I may use the left overs to crust some tofu for dinner later on in the week.
I followed the cooking technique of Chef Gordan Ramsay for my dear lamb rack: scoring, seasoning, searing, resting, dijon and all. I served the rack of lamb with roasted asparagus (the best flippin' thing on Earth), sweet potato mash and a Sherry wine reduction. I love the sweet and fruity flavor of Sherry for cooking; not a fan of it with my meal. I'll stick to an organic Cabernet Sauvignon instead.

Pistachio Crust
1 cup shelled pistachio nuts
1 cup Panko/white bread crumbs
1/2 cup parsley leaves
1 tbsp olive oil 
salt and pepper to taste

In a food processor, blend the pistachio nuts until crumbly. Add remaining ingredients and blitz until parsley leaves are well blended and mixture is green. Pour onto a plate and dip lamb rack, coating generously and evenly with the crust mixture.

 

Roasted Asparagus
Asparagus. As much as you want.
Olive oil. To grease your baking sheet and coat the asparagus.
Sea Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste.

Preheat oven to 375 F.
Trim asparagus of its' woody, chewy, non-flavorful ends. Take the end of the asparagus between your thumb and forefinger and bend until it breaks. The asparagus automatically breaks just where the woody part ends and the fresh, juicy asparagus begins. Easy-peasy.
Grease a large enough baking sheet to avoid the asparagus spears from crowding. Toss the spears with olive oil and your salt n' pepper. If you want more flavor, add a zest of one lemon or a few thinly sliced cloves of garlic. Even better, dice some bacon, crisp it up and use the bacon fat in place of the olive oil. Delish!
Roast for 15-20 minutes until the spears limp when you hold it by the end.

 

For myself, I made a Spinach, Mushroom, Goat Cheese and Pine Nut Phyllo tart. Mouthful, I know.
It's something I made a long time ago for a Christmas gathering and I got the inspiration from Chatelaine .
It's pretty simple to put together and it's a change from the puff pastry that I love.

Beef Wellington for Good Friday

 I am a huge fan of Chef Gordon Ramsay. I know many people will disagree with me but that is my opinion and he is a HUGE inspiration for me (even if he sorts of dislikes vegetarians ahaha!).
I love watching him and his shows, from the F-word, Kitchen Nightmares, Kill Your Meat Before You Eat, to his Great Escape adventures, MasterChef and of course, Hell's Kitchen.
I bet many culinary enthusiasts have come across his video on how to make Beef Wellington. I have always wanted to try it but being that beef filets/tenderloins are uber pricey, I never really dared to think about it. A few days ago, my family and I were brainstorming what to have for the Easter long weekend. We were pretty tired of turkey from Christmas, ham from New Year's, pork from Lunar New Year's, duck from  a dinner a couple weeks ago and chicken from a dinner a couple days ago. My lil bro brought up Beef Wellington, I wanted to make rack of lamb and we wanted to try goose. Geese are hard to come by this time of year so we had to choose between Beef Wellington and lamb. Since the weekend is long and we're food lovers, we decided to have Beef Wellington on Good Friday, possibly Filet Mignon (from the left-over cut we got for the Beef Welly) for Saturday and Sunday and Rack of Lamb for Easter Monday. I'm going to have a huge cooking adventure this weekend. :D

I did a lot of research on Beef Wellington and Gordon Ramsay's version was pretty simple. Some varieties excluded the mustard; used both pate and the mushroom duxelles; and even used crepes to avoid getting the pastry soggy.
I decided to incorporate all versions.
I layered the beef parcel with the homemade crepes, liver pate, prosciutto, and mushroom duxelles. The beef filet was brushed with mustard and I wrapped it all up in some store-bought puff pastry (I have no time to make it from scratch. It's just easier to go buy some.)
I was very, very, very nervous when I placed it in the oven. I was afraid it may come out raw. However, it came out just right: medium rare. And it was a hit with the family! I served thick slices of the Beef Wellington with roasted parsnips, potatoes, carrots, yellow sweet potatoes, onions and mushroom gravy.

Huge beef tenderloin from Costco. Seems like a fortune but it's so worth it, and very good $$/serving

It's beautiful!!!

Browning the filet! Get color to get the flavor.

Layering of crepes, liver pate, prosciutto and mushroom duxelles

(Left) Mushroom Gravy, Roasted Vegetables, Beef Wellington, Portobello Wellington

For myself, I made a Portabello Wellington. I sandwiched  two roasted portabello mushrooms with goat cheese, covered it in mushroom duxelles, crepes and puff pastry. It was fantastic!!

Portobello Wellington!

Plum and Cardamom-Custard Flaugnarde Tart

My apologies for the lack of posts! I am still alive (trying real hard) and I am still cooking, although not many dishes that are deemed worthy to have its own blog post...
If you'd like to follow my daily eats, you can follow me on Instagram at thepurpleshadow or follow online at http://instagram.com/thepurpleshadow/.
I've made this tart a while back and I've finally gotten around to posting the beautiful thing.
It started out with me craving a fruit tart but I'm not really a fruit-lover plus the only fruits I had on hand were bruised bananas,wrinkly apples, plums and canned pineapples. Since the fruits would not compliment each other in a fruit tart, I decided to just use one kind, choosing the plums over the others because there was an ungodly amount and I've never cooked/baked with plums before. I was going to make a fresh plum tart but I wanted to have my fruit cooked and so I opted to baking it with some sort of custard to hold it all together. I wanted to make sure if such a dish existed and was even edible and with a bit of research, the word "Flaugnarde" made its way into my culinary vocabulary.
"Flaugnarde" is a French dessert that bakes fruit in a "flan-like" batter, which to me, means custard.It is usually baked in a buttered dish, without a crust but I wanted to turn it into tart. So I did, muahahahaha!
I also wanted to have some kind of warmth and love added to my dessert thus my custard was spiced with ground cardamom and a pinch of cinnamon. It was fantastic!

Tart Shell
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 tbsp butter, softened
1 large egg yolk
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour and maybe a bit more
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp table salt

Lightly butter the bottom and sides of a fluted tart pan with a removable bottom with the softened butter
In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolk and vanilla.
In a food processor, add in the flour, sugar, salt and pulse to combine. Add the butter and short-pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Add the egg yolk mixture and pulse just until it forms a moist, crumbly mass. The dough should hold together when squeezed.
Transfer the dough to the tart pan and press into the bottom and edges of the pan with your hands or the bottom of a dry measure cup. Wrap the pan in plastic and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour and up to 1 day.

You need to blind bake the shell to ensure that it doesn't soak up the juices of your fruit and the custard.
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Prick the bottom and sides of your tart shell several times with a fork. Place a piece of parchment paper on your shell and fill with rice, beans or pie weights, to ensure that your tart shell doesn't bubble but remain flat. Bake for 20 minutes. Carefully remove the parchment and pie weights. Reduce the heat to 350°F and continue baking for another 10 minutes until slightly golden browned on the edges and bottom. Cool on a rack.

Plums and Cardamom Custard
6-8 fresh plums, sliced (I had a mix of the black and red varieties; red is sweeter)
3 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup milk or half and half cream
3 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 tsp cardamom powder
pinch of cinnamon powder

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Cut the plums in half lengthwise, and remove the stones. Slice into 1/3" inch slices.
In a bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the flour and sugar, and then add a bit of milk, whisking until it dissolves and looks like cement. Add the remaining milk, eggs and vanilla, whisking until just combined.
Arrange your plums neatly in the cooled crust, in a single layer if you can. Pour custard gently over your plums.
Bake until the plums are soft, and the custard no longer jiggles in the center and is just beginning to brown, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Remove from the oven and let cool before serving. Can be served warm or chilled, with a little dusting of powdered sugar!