Weird Crap I Cook: Coniglio al Cioccolato

I’m once again writing from a plane over the central US.  In the “According to Jim”-quality sitcom of my life, the episode where I traveled to Las Vegas for a jewelry trade show would likely end up as an audience favorite.  I know earrings go in ears because the word “ear” is right in the product name, but other than that I am pretty clueless.  I’ll let you know how this all goes.

A couple of days before Memorial Day weekend, Kristi discovered a block of dark baking chocolate in our cabinet.  It was leftover from a monster box of expensive baking items that our downstairs neighbors Hollye and Steve left us when they moved out late last year.  H&S were great neighbors and always had ingredients that recipes called for and I didn’t own, and now those spices and ingredients are all in our cabinets.  Anyhoo, For some reason when I saw the chocolate my first thought was a Sicilian dish called coniglio al cioccolato that I’d heard of, never seen on a menu, and wanted to try.  So that is how on a beautiful Memorial Day, a holiday synonymous with grilling, I ended up cooking a rabbit in dark chocolate on my stove top.

I think I first saw this dish on a food show, likely a Bizarre Foods Italy episode.  As I’ve become more of a fan of Mexican mole and other savory chocolate sauces, my interest in cooking this one myself grew.  It sounded awesome with the bitterness of chocolate and vinegar balanced with the sweetness of raisins and wine.  Plus I had a rabbit in the freezer.

Had no idea what I would use this for when I bought it but I was so happy to see it in the grocery store that I wanted to encourage them to order more.  I am aware I am just a meat hoarder at this point

I hadn’t cooked rabbit since a camping trip in 2009 when I roasted one whole over a Hermit Island campfire.  That one was decent, but more recently I’ve enjoyed a few chicken fried variations in restaurants and an awesome braised rabbit pasta last week.  I knew I would have to break down this rabbit before cooking so I removed it from the package and gave it a good rinse in the sink.

I think I referenced how much the pheasants I cooked a couple months ago looked like rabbit and I still feel that way looking at this.  I also recognize how disturbing cooking a small animal can look at this stage

The inside had been cleaned of the lungs and all parts of the digestive tract but still had the heart, liver, and kidneys attached along with some loose fat in the belly.  Very easy to remove, and although I hadn’t planned on it, I knew I would end up having to at least sample them.

To clarify, I’m never bummed out when I find stuff like this since I like trying new things, but I wish I had known so I could get some crusty bread or something.  Straight organ eating can be a little aggressive

Back to the rabbit.  I watched a couple youtube videos on how to break down a rabbit before getting started.  The top result was filmed from about a football field away and was the least helpful thing I’ve ever seen, but the second was a helpful hipster type with good tips.

The front legs come off easily since they are seemingly only connect by muscle.  The rear legs were also easy to remove but required a little more work starting with cutting back toward the legs along the ribs.  Then folding the rear legs towards the front, snapping the back bone and separating with an easy cut.

The cleaver was for getting through the back bone and separating into two rear legs.  I am absolutely terrified of taking swings with the cleaver, I mostly gently apply it to the meat and put all my weight on it (which means I am becoming better with a cleaver with every year of weight gain)

After getting the legs off, the final step was separating the ribs from the loin and belly meat (apparently called a backstrap), then cutting each section into two portions.  I struggled a bit with what to do with the loin; remove and cook on it’s own or braise it with everything else?  No animal loin braises well from my experience, it always ends up a little dry, and some would say that rabbit loin is the best part (though I prefer the rear leg).  Anyway, I decided to leave it all intact since I didn’t have ideas on how to cook the loin if it wasn’t going to braise with everything else.

The cracking of animal bones is one of those activities that only happens when Kristi isn’t home or is napping.  I’ve learned that if she overhears that, the odds of her actually eating the finished product decreases exponentially

The recipes I referenced all recommend soaking the rabbit for a few hours in white wine, olive oil, and bay leaves.  Since I was trying to do this one authentic, I was going by the book with recipes which made me feel like stupid jerkface Brother Tim.  Look!  I’m cooking what I am reading everybody!!!  And now you are reading about me reading and cooking!!!

Three buck chuck and dried McCormick bay leaves, just like they’ve done it in Sicily for a thousand years

The rabbit headed into the fridge for a few hours and I moved on to cooking my lunch of rabbit offal.  Got started with a tablespoon of butter in a hot sautee pan before adding the seasoned heart, kidneys, and liver.

I haven’t enjoyed a kidney since Morocco, but I had faith in these little dudes just because rabbit is so mild in flavor to begin with.  We’ve hit the part of my flight where the passenger next to me starts sneaking looks at my word document and wondering what the hell I’ve been doing for the past hour.  Won’t be opening my iPhoto again for awhile

After a few minutes, I gave the offal a flip and added a pour of white wine to deglaze the pan and cook down for a couple minutes.  The heart and kidneys I ate straight out of the pan pretty much.  The heart was a little chewy and minerally, not my favorite, but the kidneys were soft and had a nice mild liver-y flavor.  Pretty dece.  The livers went onto toasted pieces of the only bread I had in the house: Thomas’ English Muffins.

The now obligatory shot by the window.  Used the contents of the pan as a sauce.  This marks the second time I’ve carefully prepared liver and then served it over toasted English muffins after the triggerfish livers last summer

The livers were mild and livery like most other small animal livers.  Pretty delicious with the white wine and brown butter sauce over the top.  Pretty good lunch.

After a couple hours in the marinade, I heated up a little olive oil in a large pan to brown the rabbit pieces.  After removing the bag from the fridge, I shook the excess liquid off of the rabbit pieces, loaded into the hot pan and reserved the leftover marinade.  Once all pieces had some good color, I threw chopped onion, carrots, and celery into the pan and cooked until transluscent, then added the rabbit pieces back to the pan.

That looks like way too much mirepoix, for the amount of rabbit but I was following directions.  Not sure if I mentioned this but my sister in law was in the process of throwing this pan away when we obtained it and I easily get more use out of it than any other pan we own.  If I have mentioned that before my apologies since it was barely worth mentioning the first time

Once the rabbit was well nestled back in, I added the leftover marinade, bay leaves, a half cup of white wine vinegar, salt, crushed red pepper, and more cloves than I’ve used in any other dish.  The lid went on and the pan was left to simmer over low heat for an hour.

Did I mention Maroon 5 is playing a concert just for the tradeshow attendees?  And it’s a beach themed party?  There’s a good chance this will be the most awkward event I’ve ever attended in my life.  I think the uniform for the evening is Hawaiian shirt, sockless black loafers, salt and pepper chest hair, and different shaded gold chains.  I’ve heard Jewelers know how to party

When the hour was almost up, I chopped down a few squares of the dark chocolate to make it easier to melt.

The recipe called for more chocolate than this but I had to draw the line.  I also recognized that the recipe I saw called for regular dark chocolate and this stuff was 99% cocoa.  Insanely bitter stuff

The chocolate went into the pan with a half cup of currants (replacing raisins) and a half cup of pine nuts.  I also added a few pinches of sugar to combat the lack of it in the chocolate.  I was surprised that it immediately melted but I struggled to get it well stirred in without the meat falling apart since it had already braised tender.

Not a finished product but I was able to get it stirred in without making too ridiculous of a mess.  Cooking with chocolate is no good for a borderline OCD cook.  It took all of my will not to wildly spray Fantastic everywhere and taint the entire batch of food

Once all ingredients were well combined, the pan was left to simmer for another 30-40 minutes and reduce the sauce a bit.  Regardless of how much it reduced, I recognized pretty quickly that this was a lot of sauce for a wittle wabbit.

The other thing I recognized was that I was not being super considerate to my wife by serving her an animal she wasn’t comfortable with in a sauce she wasn’t comfortable with.  So, I got going on a mushroom risotto that started with a lot of truffle butter, onions and garlic.

The flavors don’t make a ton of sense together, but that doesn’t really matter if the risotto is tasty enough. Again, this was a warm memorial day and I was making stick to your ribs Sicilian/Italian comfort food. I might stick to steaks for July 4th and Labor Day

The rabbit was looking and smelling pretty good despite the odd combo of aromas in the kitchen.  It was like I was making truffle chicken brownies or something.  I wish the sauce had reduced a little bit more, but it looked ready to plate and the rabbit was very tender.

No mistaking that as a big pan of melted chocolate.  I was very tempted to add cayenne to make it more mole-like at this point, but I was trying to stick to the script and not make some sort of Sicilian Mexican thing.  A couple sample tastes were encouraging though

I gave Kristi and I each a rear leg since that was the meatiest piece with the least bones and I took a piece of the backstrap/loin as well.  I topped both pieces with a big spoonful of the rich and chunky sauce then piled up some risotto on both plates.  Was pretty cool seeing the extremely white pieces of meat once we cut into the dark sauce.

Saturday flights to Vegas are pretty bro heavy.  I should see if any of them are going to the jewelry show too. “Did you guys see that Effy has a new line of cat-themed emerald jewelry?!?! I know right?!?!”

For me, a pretty delicious dinner.  The truffle flavor on the risotto wasn’t very strong but you got some nice waves of it here and there.  The rabbit was tender and juicy but the normal knock on rabbit is how lean it is and not filling, which the sauce braising liquid more than made up for.  The chocolate sauce was very rich and had a lot of flavor from the wine, currants, cloves, and mirepoix plus the combined bitterness of the chocolate and vinegar.  The carrots and celery still had a bit of crunch texture that was a good contrast to the soft meat.

Kristi struggled a bit and couldn’t quite get into the flavor of meat and chocolate.  I was under the impression she liked Mexican mole but I probably should have asked before I started cooking.  She powered through though and ate the whole leg while the rest went to work with me for easily the oddest lunch I’ve ever consumed at my desk.

Next week will involve the grill I’m thinking.

The Cabot Challenge: Chocolate and Cheese

Last week I noticed that one of the commenters on the Scotch Eggs post worked at Cabot in Vermont, which was exciting since Kristi and I are big fans of their products.  The Cabot horseradish cheddar is my fav thing and, with Kristi’s family in Middlebury, we can usually count on receiving a gigantic block of the Seriously Sharp Hunters Cheddar with our Christmas gifts.

Stole this from Google images. The giant block is the one I was talking about. It was like a cheese briefcase, but what's sad is how quickly we went through it

Anyhoo, I reached out to Jacquelyn at Cabot and ended up exchanging emails with her and her colleague Wendy last week.  While we were were emailing, the idea for “The Cabot Challenge” was hatched.  The idea is that Wendy talks with some of the folks that develop Cabot recipes and together they come up with a challenge to see if I can use their product in a specific way.  The first challenge from Wendy and co: make a dish that combines chocolate and cheese.

When I saw the challenge I was a little scared; chocolate and desserts aren’t exactly in my normal wheelhouse.  Although brother Tim bought me the Ween album Chocolate and Cheese when I was in college, it wasn’t going to be any help to me here (nor can I show the album cover, this is a family site for cripes sake).  But one of the goals of the Cabot Challenge idea was to force me to attempt new things.

After receiving the free item coupons that Wendy was nice enough to send to me, I headed to the grocery store and returned with this lineup:

Yep, went with the generic nutella. I figured if I didn't call myself out for that I could expect a fair amount of, "everything OK financially Pete? Let me know if you need a loan or something"

At this point I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but there are still two ingredients in this shot I didn’t end up using because I decided how to execute it on the fly.

Before the weekend I had planned on dipping cheddar slices in dark chocolate and making a sauce to drizzle over it, but it felt kind of boring.  One idea that kept coming up when I talked to people about the challenge was a chocolate grilled cheese.  This morning I finally came around to the idea; some sort of cross between a grilled cheese and a stuffed french toast that could be served as a desert.  I envisioned the filling being a mixture of sharp cheddar, dark chocolate, macerated raspberries, and a little nutella.

First step was rinsing and chopping a handful of raspberries and mixing them with a couple teaspoons of sugar.

When I say stuff like "macerated" it makes me feel like I know what I'm talking about, but you all can see through that and know I am just mixing fruit and sugar and letting it sit for a while

While those sat in the sugar, I broke the dark chocolate pieces up using a mallet so that they would be easier to melt when cooking.

The plastic bag is key, keeps chocolate shrapnel from flying all over the place

After the broken up pieces of chocolate went into the mixing bowl, I attempted a brunoise cut on the cheddar.  Again, trying to sound fancy and not just say, “I cut the cheddar into tiny cubes”.

Kristi was happy that I didn't need to use the whole block for the challenge

That headed into the mixing bowl as well.

My goal was to have about 1.5x as much cheddar as chocolate. Looks about right

At this point I checked on the raspberries and it looked like the sugar had done the work I hoped it would.

Now dats some maceratin'

Which headed into the bowl along with a spoonful of the (faux) nutella.

I considered the raspberries the key ingredient in making this work. Their tartness goes well in pairings with chocolate or cheese and would help cut the richness of the dish

Once I stirred this together and tasted it, it was missing some sweetness and was a little thick.  So, I decided to make it a bit more Vermont pride-y and added a little Vermont maple syrup.

I wanted to make sure I didn't hide the cheddar, that would be cheating the challenge, and as you can see in this shot it's definitely still a main ingredient

While that rested together for a few minutes, I cut the loaf of bread and made the batter that the mini sandwiches would be dipped in before cooking.

I was hoping for a loaf of Italian bread, but couldn't find any that looked good. This mini baguette's size was much more fitting for the final dish

One egg, whole milk (in this case 2% and a little half and half), vanilla extract, and a lot of cinnamon beaten together. Pretty much my go-to French toast batter. This one was a lot milkier than normal since I didn't want it too eggy

After cooking a quick test batch, I decided it needed a little more tartness to balance out the flavors, so I chopped a few more raspberries and added them to the mixture.  Once that settled, we were ready to go.

While melting a little butter in a nonstick pan I cut each piece of baguette most of the way through so they could be filled.

Each piece of bread held about one spoonful of filling

After pressing the sandwiches closed, I placed them in the batter for about 30 seconds on each side.

I love when I see the cinnamon cooked into the finish product

These went into the pan for 4-5 minutes on each side.  Much like a grilled cheese, I needed to keep the pan covered while cooking to make sure the cheese and chocolate melted completely.

They look more like mini grilled cheeses than french toast, right?

After a quick rest on a paper towel to remove any excess butter, you had this delicious looking tiny sandwich:

I was happy the filling didn't ooze out too much. Seeing a little bit of the cheese, chocolate and raspberries is a nice touch, though

I had one of them as-is, just ate it like a sandwich…

It might not look like it in this picture, but the inside was a completely melted delicious mess

…But, eating them with a scoop of vanilla iced cream and a few fresh raspberries really pushed it to another level of deliciousness.

I don't make pretty food, but this comes close. Can't wait to get back to Boston and be in a kitchen that doesn't look like it's lit with a 30 year old Eveready flashlight

The combination of flavors was pretty crazy.  The dark chocolate was bitter, but when mixed with the (faux) nutella there was a nice nutty chocolate flavor.  The raspberries contributed a tart fruity flavor, while the the cheddar added a creamy sharpness.  It was almost a slightly sour flavor, but in a good way.  Overall, I was very happy with how it came out and that both of the key ingredients of the challenge were primary flavors in the final product.  Kristi enjoyed it as well.

If Kristi had her way, every food item on earth would be served in a bowl

Thanks to Wendy and the Cabot team for the cheese and the creativity provoking challenge.  I’m hoping we can make this a somewhat regular feature on the blog and keep mixing things up a bit.

And Bendle (ADB blog villain #2), please keep your comments on two weeks in a row of posts about foods with gooey insides to yourself.