Sauteed Rabbit in Red Wine with Prunes

This one is from X. Marcel Boulestin's Recipes of Boulestin. I've tried it before with farmed rabbit, but the rabbit-oh shouting his wares on Sydney and Melbourne streets in the 1920s wasn't a hobbyist breeder of big white Angora rabbits. The wild rabbits came from Coles this morning, and they were the smallest two. One big farmed rabbit would substitute.

Two wild rabbits

Knob of butter

12 small onions (ideal), or 3-4 medium onions

2-3 rashers thinly sliced bacon

1 cup red wine

2 tbsp wine vinegar

12 prunes, pitted

Parsley and thyme

Take two wild rabbits, and remove the legs, thighs and saddles. (I'm using the best bits so each serving is a leg and saddle, and reserving the rest for a rabbit ragu.)

In a wide-based pan, saute rabbit pieces in butter with onions and thinly sliced bacon, adding fresh parsley and thyme, salt and pepper. When rabbit is browned, add one cup of red wine and a little vinegar for sharpness, stir and reduce a little. Simmer covered on low heat for 1 hour.

Halfway though, remove bacon, onions and herbs and add a dozen or so pitted prunes. Serve with pureed potato and a green vegetable.

Episode 1 - Cocaine Blues

The five-course menu I created in advance of this episode bears little resemblance to the food and drink actually consumed in it, but you could say it's thematically linked. Phryne drank cosmopolitans, champagne (twice) and tea, but the only food that passed her lips was a piece of plain toast. The murder victim also had toast, with cumquat marmalade, but it was laced with arsenic or strychnine.

Like Phyrne's cosmopolitans and the victim's cumquat marmalade, the menu of oyster cocktails, Waldorf salad, lobster cutlets, sauteed rabbit and quince fool is predominantly red: the tomato in the oyster cocktail, the lobster's flecks of coral, red wine in the rabbit and the blood red of the quinces.

This 1920's menu is anything but bland: Tabasco, Worchestershire and Cayenne add heat, celery lends crispness and colour, and the lemon cuts the oil and flour in the cutlets.