Saddle of hare.

I am at the moment trying to reduce the quantity of food in the freezers, I have still quite a bit of small game from the season before last (pigeons and hares in the main) so with this in mind I went down to my chest freezer to see what I could find for Sunday dinner. I came up (it is in the cellar) with two saddles of hare.

I decided it would be slow cooked hare (this would mean I could watch the Scotland-France 6 Nations Rugby match), I prepared it in the morning and put it one at 12:00 this meant we could eat at 17:00, perfect timing.

The following will make enough for two meals or 4 portions.

You shall require:

2 dressed hare saddles

For the marinade:

1 heaped tsp of game spices

10ml of white wine vinegar

10ml of red wine

Salt and pepper

For the cooking liquor and sauce:

50g of leek sliced into rings

40g of Celeriac diced quite small

50g of carrots sliced

10g of parsley root and stalks

10g of garlic crushed (about 3 good sized cloves)

50g of small diced katenschinken (local smoked ham)

1 medium onion

250ml of game stock

250ml of red wine

2 bay leaves

5 sage leaves (or half a tsp of dried sage)

Aromatics:

10 juniper berries

10 pimento berries

A few pieces of mace

1 cardamom pod

3 cloves

Pound all the above aromatics with a pestle and mortar (they don’t have to be too fine) 

1 heaped tsp of cepe powder

Procedure:

With a very sharp knife remove the silver skin, from the saddles. 

Rub with the game spices, give a good grind of salt and pepper.

Place head to tail and wrap in the muslin cloth, pour over the marinade and set aside to marinate for at least 3 hours (overnight in the fridge is better).

In the meantime dice your and slice your veg, and do any other prep that requires doing and make your Schupfnudeln if required (I bought mine already to go), I was also doing Cepes and as these were deep frozen, they required defrosting.

Layer the base of the crockpot (slow cooker insert) with the root vegetables, add the crushed aromatic spices.

Mix the wine and stock and add to the vegetables etc. and add the Cepe powder.

Remove the saddles from the muslin, pat dry and brown over a high heat. 

Sit on top of the rest of the ingredients in the crock pot, turn to high and lid on. 

Reduce to low after 2 hours and allow to cook until required.

I removed the hare and kept warm in the oven while I puréed the sauce ( a thick sauce, if you want it either thinner add more stock, or smoother pass through a sieve) I left it as it was.

 We served it with the Schupfnudel, sautéed with shallots and speck. I also like chicory so I had braised this in some of the game stock, about an hour at 15°C.

We had some nice steamed cauliflower as the main veg. Very, very nice and Scotland won as well.