Italian · Main
Coniglio alla Ligure
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a briny, maritime salinity, a floral thread lifting the aroma, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 1 rabbit, about 1.4 kg, jointed into 8
- 60 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 sprigs rosemary
- 2 bay leaves
- 8 g fine salt
- 2 g black pepper
- 200 ml Vermentino or other dry white wine
- 350 ml light chicken stock, kept hot
- 120 g Taggiasca olives in brine, stones in
- 30 g pine nuts
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: nuts · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Salt the joints and brown them in the olive oil with the garlic, rosemary and bay in a wide uncovered pan until they are gold and the pan smells of resin rather than scorch.
- Pour in the wine and let it boil away completely, turning the joints, until the pan is dry again and the meat is frying in oil rather than sitting in liquid.
- Add the pepper and a ladle of the hot stock and cook uncovered, turning the joints and adding another ladle each time the pan runs dry, for about 45 minutes, until the hind leg meat gives at the bone; loosen with a splash of hot water if the stock is gone before it does. 45 min
- Stir in the olives and pine nuts for the last 10 minutes, leaving the stones in so the olives hold their shape, and tell the table the stones are there. 10 min
- Let the last of the liquid go so the joints fry once more in the oil, then take the pan off the heat and swirl it until the oil and pan juices cling to the pieces.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Pinot Noir or Gamay
- Also Right
- Chianti or Barbera
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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