RABBIT, RABBIT

 

Country-style rice cazuela with rabbit, mushrooms and asparagus.

I was definitely looking for something that wasn’t chicken. Or fish, for that matter. And, what should appear, but a package of cut-up rabbit in the meat section at the supermarket. Rabbit it is. Hopefully it will bring good luck for a new month, a new season.

Rabbit once was widely hunted in Spain, a nice addition to Sunday dinner or the paella pan. Nowadays it is farm-raised. Rabbit is a lean and tender meat, very tasty, not in the least gamey. I’m cooking the chunky pieces, not in paella, but in a cazuela de arroz, rice cooked in a cazuela, country style.

  

“Cazuela” refers to an earthenware cooking dish, usually wide and fairly shallow, as well as the food cooked in it. Experienced cooks use these clay vessels on a gas stove as well as in the oven. However, as more and more home cooks switch to induction cooking (me included), earthenware is used less and less. Use any wide sauté or braising pan or flat-bottomed wok for cazuela recipes.

This country-style cazuela is finished with a majado or picada, a mixture of fried garlic and almonds mashed up in a mortar (use your mini-food processor) with pieces of the rabbit liver (chicken liver can be substituted). If you do not have or prefer not to use the liver, use a slice of fried bread instead. 

Cultivated oyster mushrooms.

If seasonal wild mushrooms are available, use them in this country dish. Otherwise, ordinary mushrooms such as oyster mushrooms or other cultivated ones can be used. Use any vegetable, foraged or cultivated, in place of the asparagus. (Tip: if you want the asparagus to keep its bright green color, instead of cooking it with the rice as directed in the recipe, blanch it in boiling water and add to the rice at the end of the cooking time.)

Use Spanish short-grain rice, the same type as for paella, preferably the Bomba variety. Bomba rice is forgiving, cooking “al dente” without becoming mushy as other varieties can do if not carefully timed. The rice in this cazuela is cooked “meloso,” or juicy, not dry like paella. You will need triple the quantity of liquid to the volume of rice: for 1 ½ cups rice, use 4½ cups stock. Save a half-cup of the liquid to mix with the ground almonds. Don’t stir the rice while it cooks, as stirring develops the starch, making gummy rice.

I’ve used half a rabbit, about 1 ¼ pounds, cut into two- to three-inch pieces. You don’t eat rabbit? Try the recipe substituting cut-up chicken.

Rice is cooked meloso, somewhat juicy, rather than dry, like paella rice.

Country-style means you can eat the rabbit with your fingers! 

Country-Style Rice in Cazuela with Rabbit

Cazuela Campera de Arroz con Conejo

Half a rabbit, cut in chunky pieces.

Serves 4. 

1 ¼ pounds rabbit pieces

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Thyme, leaves and sprigs

4 tablespoons olive oil

5 cloves garlic, peeled

1 rabbit or chicken liver

10 almonds

2 tablespoons parsley

5 peppercorns

¼ teaspoon saffron threads

4½ cups stock or water

1 cup chopped onion

4 ounces mushrooms, sliced

1 ½ cups sliced asparagus

¼ cup dry white wine

1 ½ cups short-grain rice

Lemon wedges to serve (optional)

Sprinkle the pieces of rabbit with salt, pepper and thyme leaves and allow them to come to room temperature.

Sofrito with meat, onions, garlic, mushrooms

Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a cazuela/pan on medium heat. Fry two of the cloves of garlic, the liver cut in three pieces and the almonds until they are golden. Skim them out of the pan and place in a mortar or mini-processor. 

Crush the peppercorns and saffron in a mortar and add to the mini-processor with the other ingredients. Blend to make a paste. Blend in ½ cup of the stock or water. Reserve this mixture.

Add remaining 3 tablespoons of oil to the pan. Brown the pieces of rabbit on medium heat, 5 minutes. Add the chopped onion and continue sautéing 5 minutes. Chop the remaining 3 cloves of garlic and add to the pan. 

Add the mushrooms and asparagus and sauté 5 minutes. Add the wine and stir to loosen any browned bits in the pan. Let the alcohol cook off, 1 minute, then add 4 cups of the stock. Bring the liquid to a boil. Taste and add salt if needed. Add sprigs of thyme. Stir in the rice, distributing it evenly.

Add mashed almonds and liver when rice is nearly cooked.

Cook the rice on medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Stir the rice again and lower the heat. Cook, without stirring the rice again, until the rice is nearly tender, 10 minutes. Shake the pan to keep the rice from sticking on the bottom, but do not stir.

Add the mixture of liver-almonds-saffron, distributing it with as little stirring as possible. Continue cooking 3 minutes. Allow the rice to set 5 minutes before serving. Serve with lemon wedges, if desired.

More rabbit recipes:

Rabbit, Ronda Style.

Rabbit in Wine Marinade.

Rabbit with Figs, Mudéjar Style.

Rabbit, Sierra Style.

Sheet Pan Rabbit with Garlic.

Rabbit with Beans and Pasta.

Rice in a Skillet with Rabbit.

Paella with Rabbit and Sausage.

Rustic Valencia Paella.

More versions of rice in cazuela:

Baked Rice with Seafood in Cazuela.

Rice Cazuela with Pork and Seafood.

Rice in Cazuela with Pork and Sausage.

THIS IS NOT PAELLA!

Not paella! A rice dish with chicken and sausages, topped with egg.

Jaime Oliver, the “Naked Chef,” caused a Twitter frenzy a while back, when he posted a recipe for Spanish paella with chicken thighs and chorizo sausage. Spaniards, Valencianos, in particular, were outraged! Paella never, ever, has sausage. Not chorizo, not “Italian” sausage. No! “This is an insult to our culture!” “WTF???” “Remove the chorizo. We don’t negotiate with terrorists.” (Read more comments here.)

Indeed, I am puzzled as to why American and British food writers invariably call for sausage in paella recipes. In Spain, this is heresy.

Now, I’m not a stickler for authenticity. I’ve been criticized for calling for “yellow coloring” in place of real saffron in a paella recipe. Not to sound too defensive, but I know that not everybody—including Spanish home cooks—can afford real saffron.  I like using boneless chicken thighs instead of hacked-up chicken with bone splinters. And, since I don’t cook paella outdoors on a wood fire, I’ve switched from a traditional rolled steel pan to a no-stick paella pan that fits on the stove top. (Lamentably, giving up the socorrat, the crunchy rice on the bottom.)

Still, chorizo or other sausage just seems so wrong.

Authentic paella as made in Valencia, where the rice is grown and the dish was born, doesn’t include sausage nor even seafood! Nope, no shrimp, no clams, no mussels, certainly no lobster!

Paella (named for the wide, flat pan in which it cooks) was born in the wetlands of the Albufera, not far from the city of Valencia. The Albufera is a lake separated from the sea by sand and silt. It is a region rich in wildlife—ducks, mallards, herons, eels, frogs—and it is where rice has been cultivated since the epoch of the Moors.

The people of the Albufera traditionally lived by hunting, fishing and rice growing. The original paella was a dish cooked by the rice reapers, who made their midday meal from the foods that were hunted, fished, foraged and grown—rice, eels, wild duck, wild rabbit, snails, frogs’ legs—cooked over a wood fire in a shallow, flat-bottomed pan called a “paella.”

Valencia paella has big butter beans, flat green beans, chicken and/or rabbit and/or duck, and snails. Snails! No sausage.

But, Valencia has hundreds of other rice dishes. Some of those do contain sausage! Just don’t call them paella!

This one comes from Orihuela and Elche in the adjoining province of Alicante, where rice is also grown. It’s called arroz con costra, rice with a “crust,” because it’s finished in the oven with a topping of beaten eggs. It can contain two or more types of sausage. More appropriate for Lent, a vegetarian version without the sausage is called arroz con perdiz, rice with “partridge,” with a whole head of garlic standing in for the fowl.

Under the crust of cooked egg--rice with chicken and sausages.

This rice dish with a touch of saffron has chickpeas as well as chicken and vegetables.

Sausage! But, don't call it paella!

A whole head of garlic--the "partridge"--cooks in the center of the rice. Separate the cloves and mash them into the serving of rice.

Traditionally, this rice dish was made with leftover chickpeas and caldo, broth, from the cocido, boiled dinner. It was cooked over a wood fire and finished, not in the oven, but by setting a brazier of hot coals on top of the cazuela to set the eggs.

Rice with Sausages and Egg Topping
Arroz con Costra

Use an earthenware cazuela, a paella pan or a wide, shallow metal pan that is oven-safe to cook the rice. 

White and black butifarra are cooked sausages that finish on top of the rice when it goes in the oven. But longaniza or salchicha is raw. It gets fried first, releasing some of its fat, then cooks with the rice.

At the top are black and white butifarra, cooked sausages. Below are two kinds of salchicha or longaniza, raw pork link sausages. These cook with the rice. Like chorizo, the red one is seasoned with pimentón (paprika) and garlic.

If preparing a vegetarian version, double the amount of oil and add 1 teaspoon of pimentón (paprika) to the rice. Use water or vegetable stock.

Serves 4-6.

Use "round" Spanish paella rice, a medium-short grain, for this rice dish. Shown here are both cut-up rabbit and chicken and the sliced sausages. This dish has cooked chickpeas and vegetables, such as squash.

2 pounds chicken and/or rabbit, cut into 2 ½ -inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 ounces pork link sausage
3 ounces red pork link sausage
3 ounces white butifarra sausage, sliced
3 ounces black butifarra or morcilla (blood sausage), sliced
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 head garlic
½ cup grated tomato pulp
2 cups rice
½ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed (optional)
4 cups hot chicken stock or water
Sprig of fresh rosemary
8 ounces pumpkin or squash, cut in cubes
1 cup cooked or canned chickpeas, drained
4 eggs
2 teaspoons chopped parsley

Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and bring them to room temperature.

Cut the pork link sausages in 1-inch pieces. Slice the white and black butifarra sausages.

Heat the oil in a cazuela or oven-safe wide pan. Fry the pieces of link sausage until browned and remove them. Add the chicken pieces to the oil and fry them on medium heat until browned on all sides, about 10 minutes. It should be partially cooked in this time. Remove the chicken pieces.

Remove papery outer skin of garlic. Trim the root end. Cut off the top, exposing the cloves of garlic. Brown the head of garlic in the oil. Add the tomato pulp and fry it on medium-high heat 3 minutes. Add the rice and sauté it 2 minutes. Return the pieces of link sausage and the chicken to the pan.

Add the crushed saffron, if using, to the hot stock. Pour the stock into the pan and distribute the sausage and chicken pieces evenly. Add the cubes of pumpkin. Place the head of garlic, cut-side up, in the center. Add the sprig of rosemary to the pan. Taste for salt. If using water rather than seasoned stock, be sure to add salt to taste. 

When rice is partially cooked, sliced sausages and chickpeas are placed on top.

Bring the liquid to a boil. Reduce heat slightly and let the rice bubble 5 minutes. Remove the rosemary. Scatter the chickpeas over the top. Arrange the sliced white butifarra and black sausage on top. Cook 5 minutes more. Rice will not be completely cooked and some liquid should remain.

While rice is cooking, preheat oven to 425ªF/ 220ºC.

Before rice is cooked, pour beaten eggs over the top of the rice and place in the oven to finish cooking.

Beat the eggs with ½ teaspoon salt and the parsley. Pour the eggs over the top of the rice. Carefully place the cazuela or pan in the oven. Bake until eggs are set and slightly browned, 8-10 minutes.

Allow the rice to set 10 minutes before serving. Alternatively, let the rice cool to room temperature. Slice it into wedges to serve. 

Once cooled, the rice can be sliced into wedges and served room temperature.

More rice dishes:

Rice with Chicken (Arroz con Pollo).

Rice with Clams.

Rice on the Side (A Banda).

Baked Rice with Seafood in Cazulea.

Rice in a Skillet, Córdoba Style.

Black Rice with Squid and Shellfish.

Rice with Pork and Seafood, Málaga Style (Cazuela).

Paella With Chicken and Seafood.

Brown Rice Vegetarian Paella.

And, a rice-less paella:

Low-Carb Paella.

BEYOND PAELLA

Arroz con pollo--rice with chicken--an easy dish.

Do you have a favorite go-to dish, one that you can whip up without too much planning and feel good serving to guests?

For me, that dish is arroz con pollo, rice with chicken. Like paella, it is generous and festive. Everything cooks in one pan, so it’s an easy dish for entertaining. But, unlike paella, it requires little prepping. No shrimp to peel, clams or mussels to steam open, squid to prepare.

Sofrito--garlic, onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms.

Like paella, this rice dish starts with an easy sofrito of onions, garlic, peppers and tomatoes to create the flavor. You brown the chicken pieces, add stock or water, then the rice.

Unlike paella, this dish can be cooked in almost any pan—an earthenware cazuela; a deep, lidded casserole; a big skillet; a paella pan or a perol, a deep two-handled frying pan. The proportion of liquid to rice is slightly more than double, so it isn’t a “dry” rice, like paella, but meloso, or slightly juicy. That’s pretty forgiving—but you still have to take care not to overcook the rice. And, unlike risotto, the rice is not stirred while cooking.

Arroz con pollo is a dish easily stretched to feed last-minute guests. Just cut the chicken into smaller pieces. This is rice with chicken, after all, not chicken with rice!

I like to use one chicken piece per serving (legs, thighs, wings, breast cut in quarters). I use the backs and wing tips to make a quick and easy stock. But, even this is not necessary. You can use canned low-sodium chicken broth or—water!

Arroz con pollo is a dish that, except for fresh chicken, can usually be put together with ingredients in the pantry or freezer. In the spring, fresh habas (fava beans), peas, artichokes and asparagus are perfect additions. In this season, I’m using green beans from the garden. Zucchini, mushrooms, canned butter beans are other options.

Medium-short-grain rice.

Use Spanish medium-short-grained “round” paella rice for this recipe. If you can get it, the bomba variety is best, because it does not swell up and “flower” when cooked with lots of liquid. In Latin-America they make arroz con pollo with long-grain rice. It’s good, but the rice doesn’t soak up the flavors the way it does with Spanish rice.

Saffron is optional in this rice dish. Use it if you’ve got it. In any case, use enough sweet pimentón (paprika, not smoked) to add a slight ruddy color to the rice. I like to add a pinch of smoked pimentón as well. It gives a hint of sausage to the rice.

Flavorful rice, chicken and vegetables.

Rice with Chicken
Arroz con Pollo

Serves 6 to 8.

3 pounds chicken pieces
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup chopped green pepper
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup peeled and diced tomato
1 cup fresh or frozen peas
1 cup fresh or frozen fava beans or lima beans
1 cup fresh or frozen green beans, preferably romano, cut in short lengths
5 cups chicken broth or water
¼ teaspoon saffron threads (optional)
Pinch of ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet pimentón (paprika)
Pinch of cayenne
1 bay leaf
1 cup diced potato (1 medium potato), optional
2 cups short-grained rice

Sprinkle the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and allow to stand for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a large cazuela or skillet. Brown the chicken pieces in the oil, turning to brown all sides. Remove the chicken as it is browned.

Sauté the garlic, peppers and onions 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and sauté on high heat for 2 minutes. If using fresh peas, fava beans and green beans, add them now. Add 1 cup of the broth and 1 teaspoon salt. Return the chicken pieces to the pan. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat so the liquid bubbles gently. Cover the pan and cook 15 minutes.

In a mortar, crush the saffron, if using, to a powder. Mix it with a little of the remaining broth or water.  Add the saffron water to the pan with the pepper, cloves, cumin, pimentón, cayenne and bay leaf.

Turn the chicken pieces and add the potatoes, if using. Cover and cook 5 minutes more. Add the remaining 4 cups of broth. Bring to a boil and stir in the rice. (If using frozen peas, fava beans, and green beans, add them now.) Taste for salt and add additional if necessary. Reduce heat so liquid bubbles gently. Cover the pan and cook 15 to 17 minutes, stirring only once during this time. The rice should be al dente. Not all of the liquid will be absorbed.

Remove pan from the heat and let stand, covered, 10 minutes before serving.

DINNER WITH A RACIST PLOT

Moros y Cristianos--black beans and rice.

Moros y Cristianos—Moors and Christians. An unlikely name for a pot of beans and rice. But these are black beans—the Moors—and white rice—the Christians. In Spain, they have a long history of dueling it out. (Clue: the Christians win.)

A moro in Spanish is an Arab, a Muslim, a Berber, a dark-skinned person, an invader, a pirate (as in, hay moros en la costa). To this day, it is insulting to call someone the M-word. Maybe not as vile as the N-word in English, but definitely not polite.

The rancor began some 1300 years ago. In 711, the Moors swarmed across the Straits of Gibraltar, swashbuckling their way across most of the country, as far as the French border, claiming the land for the caliph of Damascus. Their dominion over parts of the country was to last for almost 800 years.

The Reconquest by Christian armies began almost immediately. The shifting frontier between Moorish and Christian lands went on until the taking of the last Moorish kingdom of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the 15th Century (1492, to be exact).

The long struggle of the Reconquest is still commemorated with festivals reenacting famous battles between Moors and Christians, replete with costumes, trumpets, swords, charging horses.

This dish of black beans and rice, another reminder of that past, curiously, seems to have been adopted by Cubans. My version is vegetarian, but the bean pot could include chorizo or longaniza sausages. To confuse the racist plot, let me add that the dried beans are black before they are soaked and cooked, but dark brown after cooking.

Because I have extremely hard water, I always add a pinch of baking soda to the soaking water, so the beans soften more readily.


MOROS Y CRISTIANOS
Black beans and White Rice

Serves 6.

1 pound black beans, soaked 
8 cups water
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
10 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon pimentón (paprika)
1 teaspoon smoked pimentón
1 teaspoon hot pimentón
6 tablespoons olive oil
3 teaspoons salt
Pepper
Chunks of pumpkin (optional)
1 orange
½ cup chopped onion
1 ½ cups long-grained rice
3 cups water
Parsley
Sliced spring onion for garnish
Sliced orange for garnish


Drain the soaked beans. Put them to cook in the 8 cups of water with the quartered onion, sliced carrot and celery, crushed garlic and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, skim, then simmer, partially covered, until the beans are nearly tender, about one hour.

Mix together the three kinds of pimentón, 3 tablespoons of the oil, 2 teaspoons of salt and pepper and stir into the beans with the pumpkin, if using, and the juice of one orange. Cook until beans are tender, about 30 minutes more. Let the beans sit for 15 minutes. Ladle them with a skimmer into a serving bowl.

While the beans are cooking, heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of oil in a pan and sautée the chopped onion until softened. Stir in the rice and sautée it until translucent. Add the water and 1 teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce to a simmer. Cook until rice is tender, about 15 minutes. Allow to set 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork.

Pack the rice into an oiled bowl or ring mold or individual molds. Unmold the rice onto the black beans. Garnish with parsley, sliced onion and orange.