Classic French preparation of rabbit braised in white wine with shallots and prunes.
Ever made that ’80s Silver Palate classic, Chicken Marbella?
It’s chicken cooked with prunes and olives. It’s amazing how the sweet plums just melt into the chicken fat.
Used in cooking, plums can add a deeply sweet, rich touch to anything, especially meat.
Rabbit cooked with plums is a classic French dish known locally as “lapin aux pruneaux”. With this variant, we first fry the rabbit pieces in a little olive oil and butter and then stew them in white wine with shallots, garlic, thyme and plums.
Have you ever cooked rabbit?
It is very similar to chicken, both in cooking and in eating. In fact, almost any recipe that can be made with chicken can also be made with rabbit, and vice versa. The flavor is just more subtle and not “chicken”.
An optional step in this recipe that I highly recommend is to puree the rabbit liver, which should be packed with the rabbit, with a little vinegar and toss it in the sauce at the end.
Believe it or not, the liver doesn’t add liver flavor to the dish, it just makes it richer and the sauce thicker with a deeper flavor.
This recipe is great for leftovers, much like a stew gets better over the course of a day or two. The plums fall apart in the sauce and the flavors just blend, making every bite deliciously savory and sweet.
Braised rabbit with plums
Rabbit is available from many specialty markets, if not fresh then frozen, or can usually be ordered from your local butcher.
Whole rabbits are harder to cut up than chicken, so ask your butcher to cut it up for you (you may have to call ahead so they can thaw one if they only have frozen rabbits). Or you can check out Hank’s steps for disassembling a rabbit.
This is a fairly simple rabbit with plum concoction. You can easily dress it up with some braised tomatoes and/or olives. Some recipes call for the olives to be soaked in cognac and added at the very end, which would be good too.
ingredients
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1 (3 to 3 1/2 pounds) HareCut into 6 to 8 portions
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Salt
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Extra virgin olive oil
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1 tablespoon butter
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3 to 4 tall shallotssliced, approx 1 Cup
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1 clove garlicchopped
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1 Cup dry white wine (or chicken broth with a tablespoon of vinegar)
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Fresh ground black pepper
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7 ounces (200G) pitted plums (dried plums)
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Several branches fresh thyme
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1 Bay leaf
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1 rabbit liver (optional, should be sold with the rabbit)
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1 tablespoon Vinegar
method
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Fry the rabbit pieces in butter:
Heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed Dutch oven (I used a 5-quart oven) over medium-high heat. Add a tablespoon of butter. Dab the pieces of rabbit dry, salt all over and fry in batches on all sides in the pan.
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Sauté the shallots and garlic, deglaze with white wine:
Remove the rabbit pieces from the pan. Add the sliced shallots, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 2 minutes. Add the chopped garlic clove and cook for another 30 seconds.
Add the white wine and increase the heat to high. Use a wooden spoon to scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Let the wine cook until it is reduced by at least half.
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Add the rabbit, plums, thyme, bay leaf to the shallots in the pan, cover and cook:
Reduce the heat to low (you may want to place the pot on the smallest burner on your stove). Arrange the rabbit pieces, plums, thyme and bay leaf in the pan. Sprinkle with black pepper to taste.
Cover tightly and cook for 45 minutes. (The cooking time assumes you are starting with a rabbit that has been brought to near room temperature before cooking. Using rabbit straight from the fridge may take a few minutes longer to cook through. Even if you keep lifting the lid to check on the rabbit, it increases the cooking time needed.)
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Optional step with rabbit liver:
After the rabbit is cooked through, you can add rabbit liver to the sauce if you like. The liver should go with the rabbit from the butcher, just like whole chickens go with the offal. (Don’t worry, the liver won’t make your dish taste like liver. You can even taste a small amount to be sure. The liver acts as a “liaison,” thickening the sauce and making it richer.)
Puree the rabbit liver with 1 tablespoon vinegar (I used wine vinegar, but apple cider or white vinegar will do). Remove the rabbit parts, plums, sprigs of thyme and bay leaf from the pot (discard the thyme and bay leaves) and place on a serving platter.
Whisk the pureed liver vinegar mixture into the sauce in the saucepan and cook for another 10 minutes. (If the sauce is still too runny, you can thicken it further with cornstarch or flour.) Then drizzle the sauce over and around the rabbit and plums.
Great served over egg noodles.
Links:
Rabbit in Mustard Sauce here on Simply Recipes
Rabbit stew with mushrooms here on Simply Recipes
Chicken Marbella Chicken cooked with plums and olives
| nutritional information (per serving) | |
|---|---|
| 956 | calories |
| 35g | Fat |
| 41g | carbohydrates |
| 106g | protein |
