In Celebration of the Hare
January is a cold, wet, and dreary month. Christmas is over, the hours of daylight are short and it’s a long time ‘til Summer. On top of which we are often found struggling with new diets and saving our pennies after the excesses of Christmas and Hogmanay. What we don’t need to do is make things worse with tasteless low-calorie diets. We need delicious, warm, comforting food to see us through to Spring and one of our seasonal favourites is hare.
Hare is an amazing meat. It is very lean and if cooked properly, very tender. It has a gamier flavour than rabbit so needs a sometime hanging to achieve the right depth of flavour, and because it is a bit bigger than a rabbit it can feed up to eight people making it a really good nutritious way to feed a family at a low cost.
‘Jugged Hare’ is the traditional way to prepare hare with “Jugged” referring to the stoneware jug in which it was cooked along with its blood and liver, herbs, claret, red currant jelly, onions and cloves. But our favourite is a simple hare pithivier, or small pie, made with a slow braised hare in a puff pastry dome and served with some pureed celeriac, and roasted root vegetables; ideal with a glass of our Veldt Range Ruby Cabernet 2009 from South Africa, a soft, juicy wine packed with winter red fruits.
January’s Seasonal House Menu starts Monday 9th January 2012.
