Rabbit tagliatelle recipe
As pasta dishes go, this takes some beating. Rabbit has a beautiful sweet flavour, with similar white meat to chicken but with a subtle gamey depth. Paired with porcini mushrooms, which are native to British woodlands, and a creamy smoked bacon and sage sauce, this is a pasta dish which is rich and flavoursome, intensely moreish and just sings of the British countryside.
This dish is very adaptable, you can use chicken if you wish instead of rabbit, or any mushrooms if you can't find porcini.
Ingredients
- 1 whole rabbit (we like The Dorset Meat Company)
- 4 rashers of smoked back bacon (we like The Dorset Meat Company)
- 15 g dried porcini mushrooms
- 500 ml chicken stock
- 100 ml white wine
- 9 sage leaves
- 2 sprigs of thyme
- 2 tsp Dijon mustard
- 100 ml single cream (or crème fraîche)
- 500 g fresh tagliatelle, or 250g/8.8oz dried tagliatelle
Details
- Cuisine: British
- Recipe Type: Rabbit
- Difficulty: Easy
- Preparation Time: 30 mins
- Cooking Time: 45 mins
- Serves: 2
Step-by-step
- Put the dried mushrooms in a mug, then add boiling water until they are just covered. Soak while you prepare the rabbit. (If using fresh mushrooms, fry these with the bacon instead.)
- Prepare the rabbit. Buy or ask your butcher for it jointed. You'll need to trim the two loins out from either side of the backbone and set aside. This will leave you with two sausage-shaped pieces of meat as these cook much quicker than the leg meat.
- Thinly slice the bacon and fry until crispy. Add the sage leaves and fry flat until they are crisp. Remove six of the sage leaves and set aside for the garnish. Put the bacon and sage in a saucepan, then deglaze the frying pan with the white wine and add to the same pan.
- Add the jointed rabbit to the saucepan, then the thyme and stock. Add the mushrooms and soaking liquid. Simmer gently for 45 minutes – you want to poach, rather than boil the rabbit.
- Once the meat is tender, remove it from the pan and separate the meat from the bones. While doing this, put the stock pan back on a heat and reduce until it begins to reduce and thicken to a sauce consistency.
- Gently fry the rabbit loins until cooked, just pink in the middle. Slice and mix with the strips of rabbit meat.
- Now the sauce is reduced, stir in the mustard and cream (or crème fraîche). Add the meat to the sauce and stir.
- Cook your tagliatelle, then spoon into bowls. Spoon the meat sauce on top of the tagliatelle and top with the crisp sage leaves, and serve with a crisp white wine.
This recipe is courtesy of online butcher The Dorset Meat Company.
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