What do you get if you introduce a slightly deranged individual to a set of very sharp knives? (Meat)

Member Name: rabidsquirrel

Product:	Meat
Date:	21/03/02 (278 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It tastes OK

Disadvantages: I invented it

I enjoy cooking. Well, I enjoy the idea of cooking. When it actually comes to cooking, especially when I have to prepare dinner under the constraints of time, I have a tendency to get rather stressed, to the extent that I start kicking the excrement out of the oven to make it cook faster. It doesn't work though. So I start having a go at anyone else who dares to come near me. I have the temperament of a chef. If only I had the same skill.

However, nevertheless, I enjoy experimenting in the kitchen. This recipe is one of the more edible results of my culinary experimentation, although it was a bitch to prepare the way I did it last Sunday. So, I'm going to tell you how I did it, and then I'm going to tell you how it should be done.

RABBIT, HAM AND APRICOT PIE
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For those of you not familiar with rabbit, the best way you can describe it is that it tastes more like chicken than chicken. It is a delicious meat, but its taste is made up for by the price. It's not cheap, and you could quite easily substitute the rabbit in this recipe for chicken if you're looking for a more economical meal, or are simply repulsed by the thought of eating rabbit (in which case, you're a wimp). Because I have a sister who owns about eight rabbits and devotes a lot of her time to looking after them, I wasn't even allowed to mention the fact that I was cooking rabbit in front of her, and whenever she came into the kitchen, I had to quickly cover up the carcasses before she saw what they were, which was a little annoying. If I had it my way, I would have taken one of her rabbits from its hutch a couple of days before and hidden it, leading her to believe that the rabbit was lost. Then, on the Sunday, I would have started cutting up one of the rabbit carcasses in front of her. That would have been hilarious. But then, I probably wouldn't be here today to write this if I'd have done that t
o my sister. Images of a carving knife in my head spring to mind.

The rabbit meat I prepared was bought in France by my dad, and came in the form of two rabbit arses (sorry, hind quarters). Raw, I couldn't get any meat off the carcass, so I boiled the bunnies (Fatal Attraction style) for 30 minutes. I could then see where the rabbit meat actually was so I could remove it. But even then, I couldn't bring myself to remove the meat from the anal areas of the rabbit. It was probably quite safe to eat, but the area around the anus was a rather nasty looking brown colour compared to the white meat on the rest of the rabbit, and I could only assume that this meat was faeces-stained. Let's just say that it put me off a bit. So, avoiding the brown anal meat, I removed as much meat as I could from the rest of the back halves of the rabbits. Which wasn't a huge amount, to be honest. So this is what you should do (unless you are a proper butcher, which I'm not - I only work on a meat counter at Sainsbury's, which generally involves getting someone else to do the hard work while I stand around looking pretty). Don't get whole rabbits or rabbit that is still on the bone like I did - that will only create more work for yourself. Buy rabbit that's already been boned and diced - it's much easier.

Next, get some ham and dice it. Don't bother buying a ham joint, or anything stupid like that - tinned ham will do fine. Oh, sorry about the lack of measurements in this recipe, but I never weighed anything out during cooking - it was more a case of chuck it all in and hope for the best. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Well, most of the time it doesn't, but that doesn't stop me. Anyway, get a packet of dried apricots (preferably the ones that you don't soak overnight, unless you're one of these people who does actually prepare meals the night before. I'm not, so I got some dried apricots from Asda wh
ich you don't have to soak). Chop the apricots in half and chuck them in a saucepan with the ham, rabbit, and apricot. Now, at this point, I added some of the water I boiled the rabbit in and added a chicken stock cube for extra flavour. If you've followed my instructions, you wouldn't have needed to boil any rabbit beforehand and you'd be a lot less stressed than I was by this point. So make some chicken stock of your own and put it in the saucepan. Cook it in the saucepan for a little while, adding corn flour to make the mixture a little less watery and more like a sauce. Take it off the heat once the sauce has thickened.

Now for the pastry. I personally used short crust pastry that was accidentally bought in France by my dad, who thought it was pâté, which I can understand, seeing as it said pâté on the front. Stupid language, French. But I digress. Short crust pastry is fine for this dish, but it would probably be better if you covered the bottom of a pie or casserole dish with the pastry first before putting the mixture in, then adding a pastry lid, otherwise it becomes less a pie and more a casserole with a little bit of pastry on top, which it basically is. Now if you're using puff pastry, which I personally prefer, then just putting it on top of the mixture will be fine, trying to seal as many possible air pockets as possible. You can make this pastry up yourself if you like, but if you ask me, that's just a load of arsing around for nothing, and you'd be much better off just buying it ready made.

Now for putting it in the oven. If you're clever, you will have already preheated the oven. If you're like me on the other hand, you will have forgotten, and will have to spend another ten minutes waiting for the oven to heat up just so that you can start cooking. Then you can put your pie in. What temperature? I don't really know. Gas Mark 6 seemed to work, which equates to, erm, 200ºC I think. Leave it in
there until the pastry turns golden brown, and starts puffing up nicely if you're using puff pastry.

Serving suggestions? Well, it's up to you really. Mashed potato and veg would probably go quite well. But I don't know. You can eat it with a doner kebab for all I care. Actually, that sounds quite nice.

Summary: