Bert’s Fish Soup (Bouillabaisse-like)

Ingredients:

• Vegetables: Bell peppers, parsley, fenel, celery, leek, chives, garlic
• Fish stock (you can make it yourself by cooking some fish heads for a couple of hours)
• Rouille (you can find it online or in French supermarkets)
• Fish fillets without bones (cod, whiting, plaice, flounder, tilapia), scallops, shrimps
• Croutons and grated cheese (e.g. Emmentaler, Gruyère or Parmesan)

Preparation:
Wash, cut and boil the vegetables in a big pot with not too much water. When the vegetables are boiled, dissolve the Rouille into the pot. Pan sear the fish and scallops with butter in the pan and add them round after round to the pot. If the shrimps are red then they are already cooked, so add them like that to the soup, if the shrips are gray then sear them first until they get red. Add the fish stock to the pot, and make it hot but without boiling it. Serve hot with croutons and grated cheese.

Here are more photos.

How to Cook Rabbit (Now For Real)

Here are three of my mother’s recipes for cooking rabbit, translated to English.

First, you don’t really need to stalk, chase and catch the rabbit You can find rabbit meat in many super-markets.

Second, you must know that rabbit meat is more tasty if you marinate it before cooking (the only exception is rabbit soup). You make a marinade from water, 4-5 spoons of white wine or vinegar, 3-4 spoons of oil, slices of onion, carrots, and celery, savory, salt and freshly ground black pepper. You put the pieces of meet in this marinade and keep it in the fridge for 2-3 hours. Every now and then you should turn the meat.

Recipe 1. Rabbit Steak in the Oven

Ingredients:

• a rabbit = around 1.5 kg of marinated meat
• 100g of bacon
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• one onion
• 100ml of white wine
• oil and water
• salt and black pepper

You take the meat from the marinade (the other things you just throw away) and you quickly wash it so that it does not loose it’s flavor. You cut many small “pockets” in the rabbit meat and stuff small pieces of bacon and garlic inside. You put the oil and the pieces of meat in a big casserole, together with the water and the onion cut in tiny pieces. You put the casserole in the oven at 220-200 degrees for 2 – 3 hours. You should add more water if necessary, and when it’s almost done you can also add white wine. You should turn the pieces of meet every half an hour or so.

Recipe 2. Cold Rabbit Dish with Olives

Ingredients:

• 1 kg of marinated rabbit meat
• 4-5 big onions
• 20 welsh onions
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 3-4 spoons of olive oil
• 20 black unsalted olives
• 2 bay leafs
• 50-100ml of white wine
• 4-5 black peppercorns
• salt

Soften the pieces of marinated rabbit meat on both sides in a pan. Add the cut onion then slowly add warm water. Cover with a lid and let it boil so that the meat becomes tender. Then add the welsh onions cut in small slices, the white wine, the bay leafs and the freshly ground pepper. Let it boil with the lid for a while and add extra water if necessary. When the meat is almost cooked and the sauce is consistent enough you add the garlic, the olives and the olive oil and continue cooking it. When it’s done take it away from the stove and let it become cold. This dish must be served cold!

Recipe 3. Rabbit with Mushrooms

Ingredients:

• 1 kg of marinated rabbit meat
• 300g of mushrooms
• 200g of bacon
• 4-5 onions or 25 welsh onions
• 3-4 spoons of oil
• 3-4 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 spoon of wheat floor
• 100ml of white wine
• parsley
• savory
• oil and water
• salt and black pepper

Lightly fry the bacon, the onion and the mushrooms in a pan with oil. Separately, put the pieces of rabbit meat in a pot, together with some water, the wine, the freshly ground pepper, the parsley, the savory, and the mashed garlic. Boil this with a lid at low temperature until the meat is cooked. When this happens add the bacon, the onion and the mushrooms from the frying pan. Add the floor dissolved in a small cup of water, then boil everything one more time until the sauce becomes consistent enough.

Bon Appétit!

How to Cook a Rabbit

Step 1. Stalk the rabbit

Step 2. Chase the rabbit

Crème Caramel

Ingredients
1 liter milk
6 eggs
1 big cup + 6 spoons of sugar
4 small bags of vanillin sugar

Special equipment
One 2 liter pot that fits inside a bigger pot with water, that in turn fits into the oven.

Preparation
Boil the milk and let it cool down.

Put the cup of sugar in the 2 liter pot with a spoon of water. Put the pot on a hotplate and stir continuously until the sugar caramelizes and gets a gold color (but not darker as it might give a bitter taste to the cream). After the sugar is caramelized take the pot of the hotplate and tilt it so that the fluid sugar covers all the sides of the pot. Take care not to get burned. Leave the caramelized sugar become cold and solid again, and don’t get scared because of the cracking noise.

Separately mix the eggs whole with the 6 spoons of sugar and the vanillin sugar, then add the boiled and cooled down milk (it is important that the milk is no longer hot!). When the sugar dissolved pour this liquid creme over the cooled-down caramelized sugar in the 2 liter pot. Put the 2 liter pot inside the bigger one with watter, and both of them in the oven for 45 minutes at 200 degree Celsius. The cream is done when it starts detaching of the sides of the pot. Take it out of the oven and let it get cold, then (if you are brave enough) turn it upside down on a big plate/bowl.

Enjoy!