Rabbit Braised in Cider

Woohoo! It's Thursday, which means it's downhill from here to the weekend. It can't come quickly enough for me - does anyone else feel like it's got colder and darker recently? Boo to winter. Anyway, it's hard staying on the healthy wagon when all you like doing is burying yourself head-first into a mountain of mashed potatoes, but I've been doing my best.

We spotted rabbit on sale in The Ginger Pig over the weekend, which was good for several reasons:

1.) It's yummy. Not a lot of people seem to know this. Is the cuteness of Peter Rabbit to blame? (And obviously Peppa Pig is not proving to be a similar deterrent to bacon.)

2.) It's inexpensive. It was waaay less spendy than any of the beef or lamb cuts also on sale that day. 

3.) It's the kind of meat that tastes its best when whacked into a casserole and forgotten about - in other words, my kind of meat.

Rabbit Braised In Cider With Bacon & Onions (serves 4)

You need:

1 rabbit, jointed and chopped into pieces (ask the butcher to do this for you)

2 large onions, chopped

6 cloves garlic, chopped

100g smoked bacon, chopped, or bacon lardons

330ml cider, as dry as you can find (we used Aspalls, because I like to support my Suffolk homeland)

Olive oil

2 tbsps plain flour

Salt and pepper

2 bay leaves

You do:

On the hob, heat 2 tbsps olive oil in an ovenproof casserole dish.  Dust a large plate with the plain flour, and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.  Roll each rabbit piece in the flour until coated, then lower into the casserole dish.  Let the pieces colour until golden brown, and then turn each piece over with a pair of tongs.  Let them colour on the other side too, then remove from the oil and lay on a clean plate.  Now add in the chopped onions and garlic, and let them soften in the remaining oil.  Once they are translucent and smelling yummy, add in the bacon.  Next, pop the rabbit pieces back into the dish and pour in the cider.  It should smell absolutely divine by now.  Add the bay leaves, more salt and pepper, and turn up the heat under the dish.  Warm until the cider is bubbling, then turn off the heat, put the lid on the dish, and put the whole thing in the oven at 180 degrees. 

Go away for an hour and fifteen minutes, and do something interesting that will distract you from the deliciousness wafting from your kitchen.  After this amount of time, your casserole should look something like this:

The green you see is half a bag of spinach, which we added on top of the casserole and let wilt for about five minutes.

We also made some baked potatoes to have alongside, which were lovely, although if you are less lazy than us I bet mash would be awesome too. 

As you can see, the cider cooks down to a thick, not-too-rich sauce that tastes absolutely amazing with the smoky bacon and mild gamey rabbit.  OM. 

You know what's even better?  This dish would serve four, but B and I are only two.  You know what that means?  Leftovers, oh yeah.