Time for rabbit pie
Continuing the rabbity theme that has been running here for the past few days – the kills from the other night have been dressed & are now properly hung. Family FM are lucky that we didn’t get any foxes, as an Old China Hand & former Wanchi Warrior, I have eaten more species of animal than are recipes for in a ‘Lofty’ Wiseman handbook. These days I choose not to eat fox; call me a wuss, call me picky, I like to think of it more as a lifestyle choice. However, I will confess to being rather partial to a little bit of rabbit pie.
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I might be a bit of a fogey, but I happen to be a big fan of Ma Beeton … my copy of her book is well thumbed & when it comes to Peter Rabbit, I usually follow her advice. So move over Nigela, in the celebrity cook stakes, she is the errrrrrr daddy …. as well exuding strangely feminine charms from the range.
Ingredients
1 rabbit - a few slices ham or bacon - salt & white pepper to taste - 2 blades of pounded mace - 7½ tsp grated nutmeg - a few forcemeat balls - 2 hard-boiled eggs - ½ pt gravy - puff pastry crust
Method
1. Cut up the rabbit (which should be young), remove the breast-bone &bone the legs.
2. Put the rabbit, slices of ham, forcemeat balls & hard-boiled eggs, by turns, in layers, & season each layer with pepper, salt, pounded mace & grated nutmeg.
3. Pour in about ½pt water, cover with a pastry crust, & bake in a well-heated oven for about 1½hours. Should the crust acquire too much colour, place a piece of paper over it to prevent it from burning.
4. When done, pour in at the top, by means of the hole in the middle of the crust, a little good gravy, which may be made of the breast & leg bones of the rabbit & 2 or 3 shank-bones, flavoured with onion, herbs & spices.
Yummy & to think some people have never eaten rabbit – then again allegedly there are some people out there that have never hunted for their own supper. Amazing!
(p.s. by hunting, I don’t mean scouring the shelves of Waitrose either).