Recipe January 2012

Photo by David Winch. Copyright The Riviera Times, all rights reserved

Serves 4

Ingredients:

4 rabbit legs

6 big potatoes

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

2 shallots finely sliced

500g pumpkin, peeled and cut in cubes

400g sanguin mushrooms, cut in 6-8 slices

400g blettes (only the leaves)

100g pitted black olives

100g unsalted butter

10cl milk

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

4 sprigs fresh thyme

3 bay leaves

Instructions:

Pre heat the oven to 160 degrees celcius. Peel the potatoes and cut them lengthways about half a centimetre thick, you need 3 slices per person. Boil the potatoes in a pan of salted water until almost cooked, but still a bit hard. Drain and set aside.

Season the rabbit legs with salt and pepper, put them in a roasting tray with some garlic, thyme and bay leaves, and drizzle with olive oil. Cook for about 35 to 40 minutes.

Wash the blettes leaves in cold water and cut them into a similar size to a spinach leaf (approximately 2 x 2cm). Meanwhile, chop the remaining potatoes and the pumpkin into chunks and boil in a pan of salted water with two sprigs of fresh thyme until cooked (about 15 minutes). While that is boiling, heat a frying pan with a little olive oil and add the potato slices and cook them over a medium to high heat until golden brown (approx 2-3 minutes each side), remove and keep warm.

Make a mash from the cooked potatoes and pumpkin using some butter, milk, salt and pepper and put this in a piping bag and keep warm.

Heat a frying pan with a little olive oil and add the sanguin mushrooms with the shallots and some garlic, cook until golden brown and at the last minute add the olives. Take out of the pan and keep warm. Using the same pan, add the blettes with some olive oil and cook for about 3 minutes on a medium heat.

Now begin plating. To start, on the side of the plate arrange your millefeuille of potato and pumpkin: using the piping bag squeeze a bit of mash onto the plate (approximately the same size and shape as the potato slice), on top of this place one of your potato slices, cover the slice nicely with another layer of mash (about 1 cm thick) and place the second potato slice on the mash, cover it again with mash from the piping bag and put the third slice on top. In the centre of the plate, place a spoonful of the blettes and then put the rabbit leg on top. Spoon the sanguine mushrooms and olive mixture over the rabbit leg and drizzle some olive oil and cooking juices over the top to finish.