My Christmas roast: stuffed roasted rabbit

Here we are, time to share the main dish of my Christmas menu for Ferrari Formaggi. It couldn’t be anything else but a glorious piece of roast meat, because there is no Christmas without the heavenly smell of roast coming out of the oven and welcoming your guests as they enter the house. Yes, I know, I also said that it is not Christmas if the pasta is not melting with stringy cheese, but what can I do, I am a traditionalist when it comes to Christmas menu. It doesn’t mean that we have the same dishes year after year, but surely there is a constant thread, a reassuring and classic character which permeates every Christmas menu. Whether pork, salmon or chicken, at Christmas you eat a roast.

You begin in the early morning, you have your strategy and timing, something that would make green with envy the best military strategists or experienced Risk players: bake lasagne, roast the meat and the vegetables on the side, toast the bread and do not forget the spinach flan, oh luckily we baked the cake yesterday… at the end of the morning everything is ready, warm, filling the kitchen with a festive smell.

This year I chose to make the stuffed roasted rabbit, a recipe I was willing to make in a long time.

It is not difficult to make a stuffed rabbit, just follow all the directions and have the required ingredients ready. First of all ask your butcher to bone the rabbit: after this step the recipe will slip away just as easy as making a roast turkey breast. The difference is that the result is totally unexpected and jaw-dropping. It will impress everyone, your mother, your mother in law and even the most critical guests. It looks like a haute cuisine masterpiece, but the evidence shows it is only a matter of organization.

Once the rabbit is ready make the filling, which must be tasty, but not too much to overpower the delicate flavour of the white meat of the rabbit. I chose ground veal meat and white bread soaked in milk as a base. To these ingredients I added a fresh pork sausage, grated pecorino cheese and ground black, which adds a dry scent of resin, the final touch to a Christmas roast.

Now everything is simple: spread the filling onto the rabbit, wrap it on itself and tie it with a kitchen twine. Rub the meat generously with salt and pepper, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and add some vegetable as a side dish, potatoes and onions are perfect. Throw the rabbit into the oven for just over an hour. Remember to baste it every now and then with the gravy and you’ll have a nice golden crust.

Link Love

These are recipes which involve rabbit, a classic meat loved by the Tuscan country cooking but usually overshadowed by the most renowned bistecca alla fiorentina, the big glorious juice t-bone steak.

• pot roasted rabbit, also know as coniglio ad arrosto morto, is one of the first dishes grandma taught me to cook and one of the first recipes I posted on the blog, do you remember it?
• Emiko‘s ragù di coniglio is a recipe that many families keep jealously as a treasured secret, hand written in old notebook,
  
• this is another incredible recipe you can find on Emiko’s blog, the Tuscan style fried rabbit, a Sunday classic for me,
• this is a recipe I still have to try, but it’s on my wish list since ever, the rabbit tuna style, tonno di coniglio, made by Judy from Divina Cucina.

Leggimi in Italiano

Related posts:

A Tuscan Christmas lunch – Stuffed roast chicken A traditional Tuscan menu for Christmas and a roast pork loin with pears The meatloaf of the Tuscan peasant cooking Potato gnocchi with sausage ragù. Days in a bubble