Food Eat Love

I love grapes and the other day I bought a punnet to eat later. They turned out to be not quite as sweet as I expected and I was thinking what I could do with them. As I was thinking about it I came across a recipe for Grape Squash from the talented blogger, The Girl Next Door.

I wanted to make braised rabbit and thought that the grape juice would be interesting to use.

I got the grapes out and realized I didn’t have as many grapes as the recipe calls for and I didn’t have any lemons. I used about 1 cup of grapes and I added a stalk of bruised lemongrass when cooking the grapes instead of adding lemon.

It didn’t need any sugar as the grapes were sweet enough and as I thought the Grape Squash was absolutely delicious! You can find the recipe here.

A while back I made a new product, Grapefruit pickled Chillies to sell at the market. It is hot and sweet and I wanted to use it with the rabbit and the grape squash.

Grape Braised Rabbit with Wild Garlic Pasta

preparation time 15 minutes

cooking time 1 hr 20 minutes

oven 140C or 284F

serves 4

Ingredients

• 1 rabbit
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup grape juice + 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup grape juice to add later
• 3 dl or 3/4 cup vegetable stock
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup Shaoxing rice wine
• 1 leek, cleaned and sliced
• 2 carrots, cut in to small cubes
• 2 celery sticks, cut in to small cubes
• 1 tbsp Heatonomy Grapefruit pickled Chillies
• 1/2 tsp paprika powder
• 1/2 tsp sumac
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• salt to taste
• about 1 tbsp oil

Heat the oil in an oven proof dish with a lid. Salt the rabbit and brown it in the hot oil.

Add the chopped vegetables, 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup of the grape squash, the vegetable stock, Shaoxing rice wine, Soy sauce, spices and the pickled chilies. Use any chilies that you like and have at hand that are pickled.

Bring everything to a boil, add the lid and place in the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check half time and after one hour to make sure it has not cooked dry.

The rabbit is cooked when the meat is falling off the bones. Take the meat out of the pan and boil down until about one third of the liquid remains and then add the second 1/2 dl or 1/4 pint of the grape juice and taste with salt. Thicken the sauce with some corn starch if you find it too thin.

I got up early to pick some wild garlic, one of my favorite seasonal treats. There is so much of it! If you come across it you will probably smell it before you see it as it has a strong smell of garlic.

The taste is delicious and I love to add it to pasta.

I shaped the pasta in to something I can only remember being called Bishops hats, they are shaped like tortellini with a little cap but there is no filling. Perhaps they were poor bishops in disguise.

I served the pasta with some wild garlic oil and parmesan. The grape squash added a sweet freshness to the rabbit and the wild garlic added so much flavor.

I love when I find a new recipe that exceeds my expectations and I will make more grape squash. It would be lovely if The Girl Next Door really did live next door!