For your enjoyment…

Are you like me on weekends or special holidays or when you have guests? On those occasions I like to cook something very special, not the usual fare. Then I’m either spoilt for choice or nothing occurs to me. If even the most intensive search on the internet comes to nothing, or leafing through piles of cookbooks fails to offer a solution, try out our Recipe of the Month! 

From chefs of the Schick restaurants in Vienna, every month there will be a new, seasonal recipe from Austrian-Spanish or Viennese cuisine for you to cook and enjoy at home!

In February 2013 – recipe by Johannes Reiser – Chef at the decorated Restaurant “Das Schick”:

Deboned rabbit legs in cider with roasted pine nuts,
accompanied by olive polenta and lovage cream

Ingredients for 4 servings:
4 rabbit legs
1 l cider (apple cider or apple sparkling wine)
2 carrots, diced
1 small celery bulb, diced
2 cloves of garlic
3 tbsp. tomato purée
5 shallots
rosemary, thyme, peppercorns, bay leaf
salt, pepper
olive oil
50 g pine nuts, roasted

Olive polenta:
150 g polenta
50 g butter
50 g green olives, pitted
50 g black olives, pitted
salt, nutmeg
some water for cooking

Lovage cream:
1 bunch of lovage, washed and plucked
1/4 l créme fraîche
salt, pepper

Preparation:
Season deboned, cleaned rabbit legs, sprinkle with rosemary and thyme and lay each leg onto a sheet of aluminum foil brushed with olive oil, rolling evenly several times.
Insert into a suitable frying pan and braise with half of the cider for approx. 40 min. in the oven.

Grill meat and remains of bones until brown, add the diced vegetables and garlic and briefly grill together with the meat. Add the tomato paste, briefly grill it together with the meat. Then pour the remaining cider onto the mixture and simmer slightly for approx. 1 hour. Afterwards, strain, season to taste, and garnish with the shallots and roast pine nuts.

Olive polenta: Cook creamy polenta and season to taste. Slice olives finely and wash them in a sieve. Drain olives, then stir them beneath the polenta.

Lovage cream: Briefly blanch washed and plucked lovage, refresh in ice water, then drain lovage. Purée lovage with crème fraîche and season to taste.

Serve rabbit legs with the cider, polenta and lovage cream as desired – such as in our photo, for example – and enjoy…

We wish you much success!