Saturday, February 12, 2011

Bunny Rabbit Ragout

Jen has been dreading this day for a while now. It was the day where we would be forced to utilize the leftovers from our braised rabbit earlier in the week. Jen hates leftovers. It's my job to be clever, and sometimes cheat and lie, in order to get her past the fact that she is eating leftovers.



I started my offering to make this ricotta spread for the semolina baguette we picked up this afternoon at Tarry Market. I intended to make it with lemon and honey but we had no lemon. Jen suggested using grapefruit which I thought was a crazy idea but I did it anyway and it was fantastic. All we used was ricotta, honey, grapefruit juice, salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary (another of Jen's ideas). The result was far better than I would have imagined. In fact I look forward to trying this again soon.



We've been watching a lot of Oz & James's Big Wine Adventure the past few nights and this has caused me to crave wine more than normal. Since we'd enjoyed a Côtes du Rhône from M. Chapoutier (featured in an episode of Oz & James) for the first iteration of our rabbit, I opted to serve up this bastardized Côtes du Rhône -- Goats Do Roam -- for the bastardized rabbit dish we were preparing to make this evening.



I had planned on turning the leftover braised rabbit into a pasta ragout much to Jen's dismay. While at the market Jen suggested using fresh pasta but instead of buying some I decided it would be more fun (and more of a mess) to make it ourselves. Jen helped me roll out these great sheets of pasta and I cut it into pappardelle, then added it to the remaining deboned rabbit stew and adding a little olive oil, butter, and Parmigiano-Reggiano.



The good thing about ragout is that it is always far better than Jen is expecting because normally she dreads it for days beforehand.



For dessert I took some of Jen's chocolate chip cookies and turned them into little ice cream sandwich cookies with some vanilla ice cream.

It's hard to beat ice cream cookie sandwiches on a cold night with Oz & James's Big Wine Adventure playing in the background. Our only sadness in life is knowing that there is a very finite number of episodes before it is over.

Don't complain to us about your trials. We have real problems.

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