TWO HOP STEW

Passport & Plate - TWO HOP STEW

Australia | Tuesday, February 17, 2015 | 4 photos

Ingredients
FOR THE TWO HOP STEW:

2 wild caught rabbits
2 brown onions
500g of homemade salami
1 teaspoon of dried chilli flakes
3 young garlic shoots
1 stork of fresh sage
1 stork of fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons of toasted paanch phoran spice
1 lemon
1.5 litres of English porter beer (mine was a vanilla homebrew so you could substitute with vanilla beans or vanilla paste)
1 tablespoon of rock salt

FOR THE GARNISH:
1 stork of fresh parsley
1/2 lemon
a sprinkle of paanch phoran spice
a drizzle of olive oil

 

How to prepare this recipe
The best part about this dish is that it is slow cooking at its best. Its best to cook it over an open coal fire as the true earthy tastes of the wood and smoke combine so well with the 2 hops that your taste buds will be hopping around for hours afterwards.

Prepare your fire and rake a pile of coals out to form the "hotplate" for your cast iron croque pot. Let the pan get hot before drizzling in a good helping of olive oil. Once she starts to heat up throw in your diced onions, cutup salami, dried chilli flakes, paanch phoran spice and young garlic shoots. Let them move around in the oil and create some texture on the base of your pan. Rip the leaves from your fresh sage and rosemary about 2 minutes before its nicely softened - we don't want these sexy fresh herbs to burn but release their amazing oils and flavours into the onion and salami instead.

So now its time for your first hop - the rabbit. Its simply cutup into good bite sized pieces. Brown it off in the pan to seal the meat. We are just sealing the meat - not cooking at this stage. Grab your lemon, rip off the skin and throw it in the pot. Squeeze the juice from the flesh into the stew and then add the remaining pith and flesh. You may think why? Well its simple - the skin releases the lemon oil that looses its potency when cooked with the pith, the juice adds the flavour and the zing, and the remaining flesh and pith, by way of its pectin content, help the stew to lightly thicken the beer broth as it slowly reduces.

So now your rabbit is browned off. Pour in your beer. This will sizzle and crack and deglaze the awesome flavour in the pan. Whack on the lid and push more hot coals around the pot to get it really hot inside. Sit back for 2 hours and let the magic happen.

To serve, place your amazing 2 hoppy rabbit on a plate. Garnish it with fresh parsley, 1/2 a lemon, a drizzle of good olive oil and a sprinkling of the paanch phoran. Sit back with a fine brew and enjoy what the earth has given you!

 

The story behind this recipe
TWO HOP STEW is an awesome recipe that was created on my friends farm in Riddells creek, Australia. I grew up in country Victoria (Australia) and this dish echoes so much of those early food memories for me. Growing up so much of what we ate was from the farm that we lived on. It was a time when people grew their own meat and vegetables and shared it amongst their friends and families. Much of what we ate was through this means - giving to sustain. This dish to me represents family, the bond of a meal and the hard work that it takes to create it. Fresh ingredients, not altered, but exactly how mother nature intended them to be. It is cooked with passion, love and energy.

Whats truly amazing about this recipe is that is was created completely at the location it was cooked. The rabbits (1st hop) were caught on the land as were many of the ingredients. The beer (2nd hop) was brewed by myself with all location specific ingredients. I cooked this recipe over open coals as it greatly enhanced all of those flavours of the land. It is a rich and epic dish.

Its the type of dish that echoes family and my home grown philosophy. The dish was created literally on the spur of the moment. We had just finished filming my friends farm food journey for my youtube channel and I was inspired by what I had seen. I wanted to create something that the 4 families that had coverged on his farm had the opportunity to connect with. I wanted them to taste the wood from the farm, the rabbit from the farm and the grown produce from the farm. Much of what a true chef does is to take people on a taste journey to connect their customers to a time and a place in their memories. This stew was devoured by everyone, most of whom did not like to eat rabbit in its normal form. We created some amazing food memories through this dish on that day that many still comment on.

You can see the filmed recipe at http://youtu.be/kaCCwkPMdRk at 22:09