Rabbit Tutorial

Today we held a lunch for Tasmanian Slow Food group in which rabbit was the main course. I thought I would attempt a bit of an impromptu rabbit cooking tutorial forgive me for my shaky pics! I use the NZ Whites from Farmgro Rabbits here in Petcheys Bay. Some people have misgivings about farmed rabbit having little or no flavour, I have to disagree as these really are tasty.

Firstly & season the rabbits & give them a bit of heat treatment in a hot oven, around 180C.

Then I add some chopped carrot, onion, celery, garlic & bay leaves & a liberal splash of good olive oil(Ooh my old trade teachers would be impressed, I've finally mastered 'the Macedoine')

I then return them to the oven to caramelize the vege, before adding some stock or in this case white wine to the trays before sealing very tightly with foil & cook in the oven for a further 1 1/2 to 2 hours at 150C.

Once cooled sufficiently & this takes at least one to two hours, I remove the foil & & let it rest completely.

For the gnocchi I used a good floury spud like a Kennebec which are around at the moment. I boil until well cooked the drain until the potato is very dry before passing through a ricer or moule. This 'cuts' the potato's starches which helps stop it from becoming gluey when we add the flour. I add about 1/3 of flour & some salt to the volume of potato & mix it quickly as to keep the starch from becoming to active.

Working in an Italian restaurant as an apprentice the chef demonstrated this very fast way of making gnocchi, I think from memory it was called 'Parisienne' which consisted of potato mixed with an amount of choux pastry & was piped directly into boiling salted water. To this day it is my preffered way of making it as it is so fast!

Finally the rabbit is cool enough to handle & patience is rewarded because if you try to get the meat off the frames when it is still hot, the chances are it will lose its unctuousness & become dry & stringy. Because I was using whole rabbits I decided to place the meat in a thin veloute based sauce. This method enables any drier pieces of meat like the backstrap to be coated in a smooth layer of sauce which makes it more palatable. This sauce was from the pan juices & vegetables with more white wine, heaps of tarragon & some grain mustard that I had made earlier. Despite the mustard & tarragon being big flavours, it still tasted primarily if rabbit, which is of course what I wanted.

Finally the rabbit veloute is ready to be mixed with the gnocchi

Firstly though I sneak out a nibble of free range Pork Brawn & pork & duck neck sausage with turnip remoulade

Now the main course, platters of Braised rabbit with tarragon & mustard, gnocchi, asparagus & peas

The disappearing apple orchards of The Huon Valley

Where have all the apple orchards gone?

I have been observing here in the Huon especially over the last year that increasing numbers of established apple orchards are being ripped up.
What was for over a hundred years, the leitmotif of the Huon, the apple, is fast becoming yet another casualty it seems from effects of a globalized economy & in particular apples from China.

Combine this with the increasingly stringent quality assurance measures that the big supermarkets require producers to jump through at their own cost & you can see the odds are heavily stacked against local production. Some like my neighbour, a third generation orchardist say there just not the dollar in apples anymore. I agree but would also add that apples have been commoditised to the point where we as consumers just expect them to be cheap because the perception is that they've always been so plentiful & we're used to them being so.

Well that might all change.

Tasmania earned its nick name 'the Apple Isle’ when for a few decades one in every three apples eaten in the UK was from here & the Huon Valley supplied the lions share of them. Entwined with the history & social fabric of many town within this region, flourished a dynamic apple industry. I remind myself of this as I pass several once thriving orchards that are now reduced to fields of dusty topsoil, some still with huge unlit pyres of dead trees.

Is it just co-incidence that the apple monitoring station at Grove auctioned its old memorabilia recently or that whispers that the apple processing factory in Cygnet might have to shut down due to lack of supply? Perhaps it’s just a random series of events? I hope though, we are not witnessing the death rattle of the apple industry here in The Huon.

We seem to be losing lush fertile orchards like the one above

And many more neglected, unpruned & unloved ones are becoming a more common a site


Until finally they get bulldozed into a pile & usually burned

And the land returned to a dusty paddock, its apple history a memory

Think Tank

Like three mice on a treadmill!

Moved from one part of Cygnet to another where it will be broken down into tow halves for woodpiles-great effort guys, think of it as awarm up for soccer tonight! Cheers To Rod, Mark, Andre & Ben

Worlds first fully sustainable footwear!

Move over uber cool shoe manufacturer Camper, 'Cumper' has arrived, behold the Sourdough Clogg TM

Another glorious aspect of life in Cygnet

I climbed aboard the boat & felt like a new apprentice entering a scary kitchen for the first time in my ill fitting & starchy whites, finished off by a suitably ridiculous fluffy & teetering toque as favoured by the Brokoff Salada chef logo-in a word, I felt out of my comfort zone.

Was I really going sailing in a chefs uniform? Er no, just wanted to share that I felt like the odd man out, the newbie an unseasoned sailorboy.

Like all male bonding sessions, omnipresent is an unspoken hierarchy not unlike that found in a band of silverback gorillas. Of course there is no doubt who is the alpha male amongst us as we make our way into the bay by the dying light of the day & its undisputedly Noel our skipper.

To be clear, Noel employs no Ramsay-esque attributes, sure his word is final but his inclusiveness & encouragement is infectious. I’m convinced that had he been in charge in a kitchen or two, the retention rate of those kitchens would have been off the dial such is his mastery of the craft of managing novices, like me.

Out of our crew of five, I was clearly the fifth rung in the ladder but I’m totally comfortable with this arrangement as I know this ship is not overseen by the fabled captain Pugwash, Master Bates & Seaman Staynes which ensures that my role will certainly not be Roger, the Cabin Boy. Clearly relieved, I set about taking instructions from my learned captain & crew. The words ‘never get your fingers in the way of the sheet when we’re tacking’ had an ominous resonance & by their very repetition I knew it was advice borne from experience the hard way & a certain caution for the newbie.

Under way we flew through the mild chop & it was a wonder to behold the bay from the vantage point of a slippery deck in bare feet with the cold water numbing your toes. It’s curious, you drive around this expanse of water daily & though always beautiful, from the water its magnificence becomes acutely evident. Every free moment from your job as a crew member, you steal glances at the theatre unfolding around you, each aural or visual memory being burnt onto your memory card as a moment experienced, to cherish & to recant to the suffering staff when you are in the soup line on Saturdays at the nursing home.

Being on such a historically esteemed boat (110 years old!) one is acutely aware of showing some good form & I wrongly came aboard empty handed but for the currency of my labour & the opportunity to man the decks. This oversight was duly observed by my crewmates, as the ration of stubbies was handed out & one was mock-begrudgingly made available to me, the interloper. I made a mental note to self-next time don’t come empty handed as it might well be a one way trip!

What a way to end a Tuesday evening after work.

Preserving

Preserved cherries, peaches, plums & apricots-Summer in a bottle. Thats all.

Pork at Twenty paces

Had a great meet up today at the café with fellow bloggers & friends Rita, Stephen & Mary, Victor & Steven & Guy & Eliza from Mount Gnomon Farm.
Guy & Eliza generously gave me a piece of Wessex saddleback pork shoulder to try & as I had a full shoulder of Berkshire pork from Gerard Cochon’s Nicholls Rivulet Organic Food Farm I thought I might cook’ em both up to note the difference.

Now in a clear ‘taste off’ of sorts you probably wouldn’t be inclined to marinate at all, as you’d probably want the unique flavour to reveal itself but as I intended to put the Berky shoulder for Sunday lunch tomorrow I already had in mind the way I was going to serve it so it made sense to treat the Wessex the same way-are you still following me?

The verdict: The Wessex had a resoundingly stronger flavour even through the marinade which had reduced to a syrupy salty caramel (excellent for the gravy I intend to serve it with) The Berkshire’s flavour was sweeter & quite mild in comparison. Both flavours were more pronounced than the regular commercial pork I’ve tasted, in fact they actually ‘tasted’ of pork, go figure!

Gerard popped in earlier this evening to deliver some of his organic snags & I gave him a taste of both bits of pig- I think he liked both actually!

Anyway it was great to catch up with everyone & meet Eliza & Guy who are obviously very committed to producing a quality product & they deserve to do well & be supported.

Ingredients below, just like a cooking show innit?

As per usual I leave out a key step, I'll never get that gig at The Womans Weekly test Kitchen!

I poured the paste over the meat to marinate. This also acts a lubricant when you are 'wet roasting' which stops the meat from drying out-a typical pork experience for many of us.

You really must wrap it very tightly to trap any vapours & ensure they are kept within the confines of the tray because this acts as a sort of 'pressure cooker' ensuring the meat cooks all the way to the bone

It really was mouth watering & smelled divine! The juices & fat can be made into a tradional gravy which add another layer of flavour to the meat.

The meat just falls away, unctuous & silky

Smiles all round & everyone's happy!

How to relax-Steve style

Sometimes when I get a bit frazzled around the edges & need to de-clutter my mind I crave some quiet time to reflect & absorb. One way I’ve found to achieve this Zen like transcendental state is to go for a drive. Driving for me is never a chore, in fact sometimes I think in another life I was a taxi driver or perhaps even a tour guide. There’s something comforting about being in motion, perhaps my love of it occurred during my infancy with the many strolls my mother used to take as I lay in the perambulator? Either way from cars to motor bikes & even on a sailboat, my restless spirit seems to be calmed by motion

So I climb into the familiar chaos of my Ute, replete with loose tools clinking, the detritus of icy pole wrappings left over from the kids & my mild embarrassment of the Rosella sauce bottle in the glovebox & drive around a bit. I like to drive a few circuits of the town & see if any of the cars are familiar before heading toward the three or four different routes I’ll take that eventually lead me home & these all involve water views. I drive with my elbow on the window sill & the radio tuned to Huon FM which seems to have that twangy country music of which I am partial on high rotation.

Cygnet sits at the end of a bay that spills into the widening mouth of the Huon River which flows out into the D’Entrecasteaux Channel toward the Southern part of Bruny Island. Pretty much in every direction you traverse, water is omnipresent, little sheltered bays, creek openings, dams, streams, expanses of sandy beach, tree lined points & estuaries with oysters & mussels clutching. That briny seaweed smell is never far away as are the sounds of roving seagulls or the tinkle of sail ropes against the aluminium masts of bobbing yachts.

Jetty Road is a favourite of mine & you follow the shore along the esplanade of Port Cygnet toward the sailing club before hanging a right up the steep incline that becomes Jetty Rd. After passing some spectacularly sited houses the road morphs into red dirt & at pace you can feel the wheels, unweighted by the Utes empty tray, swerve lazily until they find traction, sending up plumes of reddish dust & spinning the wheels momentarily with just a hint of hoon. Over the last seven years I have been amazed at the development of these verdant paddocks into house lots & each time I drive up here I question myself “should we be buying one of these blocks?”

The road winds up the hill before returning on itself to reveal the most incredible view of the Port imaginable. Often I’ll stop here, wind down the window just gaze & drink it all in. The wind is much more present at this height & some of the trees bear witness to their power, their boughs straining against it over the years leaving them permanently leaning. It’s a magic view & I feel already more relaxed.

From here I barrel down hill into the valley toward Lymington letting the Ute slide a bit on the gravel & testing my imagined rally skills before veering right & climbing up the hill to the junction at Wattle Grove where the roads, Golden Valley, Sunday Hill & Missing Link meet. Missing link is one of my favourite Cygnet lanes. It traverses thick bush, farmland & offers pockets of arguably the best views of the Huon right across to the jutting pier at Port Huon & Geeveston beyond. There is one outstandingly located house that makes me envious every time I pass it that must give its owner a smile every time they wake up to that spectacle. From here I make my way to the Silver Hill Rd turnoff which also connects to the Balf’s Hill rd.
From here it’s just a downhill amble to my place & as I see the familiar old cottage appear through the clearing of bush, the horse, geese & cows like miniature toys in the browning expanse of paddocks I’ve usually attained my heightened state of relaxation.

I can highly recommend this relaxation method to everyone-but it’s not carbon friendly.