Rabbit Stew in White Wine Sauce

By Anne Hilton Wednesday, June 15 2011

Cycling home from school on a cold, wintery afternoon in the UK during World War II, I was looking forward to my favourite dish of rabbit stew for dinner. The odd thing is, now I come to think about it, that although my Mother liked me to help her in the kitchen, making cakes and pastry, cutting up vegetables, watching her make stews and casseroles or using all our meat ration to buy a roast of beef or lamb or pork for Sunday dinner and learning her various methods of stretching the meat ration by making tasty dishes out of the remains of the Sunday roast, yet I never once saw her cook rabbit stew.

When we (my husband John and I) had a four-acre “finca” – house and land in the country – in Colombia, I could never, ever reproduce my mother’s melt-in-the-mouth tender, tasty rabbit stew. Yet ours were strictly rabbits raised for eating – the brown European kind, that we fed on grass and lettuce leaves, carrot tops, any green vegetation growing on the finca, with the occasional treat of some fruit (but not banana). We sold the rabbit meat to the local supermarket but did give a baby bunny to a friend who wanted an Easter present for her five-year-old son. That rabbit was a feisty one, it terrified the family dachshund and, so I was told, generally ruled the roost.

However, try as I might I could never reproduce my Mother’s tender, tempting tasty rabbit stew. Now, thanks to the internet, I know the secret of cooking rabbit is long, slow or pressure cooking. In the days before slow cookers were invented I reckon my Mother must have put her casserole of rabbit over the kerosene stove we used to heat the kitchen at about 9 am, or thereabouts; it was ready for me to eat at 7 pm or thereabouts.

I don’t have a slow cooker, so I adapted this recipe for pressure cooking my rabbit – and it was delicious, truly scrumptious, thanks to the wine and mushrooms it was even better than my Mother’s casserole of rabbit.

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I am in LOVE with the cooking cremes! It's nice to have a simple food to make our GF food fast. I especially love the pot pie recipe on the container, I just use leftover chicken, and make Garlic Cheddar bisquits seperately with Pamalas. Thanks for the great recipes! My family has enjoyed everyone I've tried and I love how easy it is to make something in the crockpot!

Hi Stephanie- I'm a HUGE FAN & I've been following you since the original challenge. LOVE your story! S I have been shredding zuchini squash on the fine side of grater & 'sneaking' into several of my crockpot recipes when I feel like the dish is 'meat heavy'. My son & hubby who both think they HATE squash have been gobbling it up in everything from meatloaf to marinara. It does add quite a bit of liquid to meatloaf, but I just drain it & it leaves it very moist.

I've Googled and read numerous blog posts, but I still don't get what Philly's Cooking Creme is. Is it cream cheese with flavorings mixed in? Is it a frugal mom's creme fraiche? I definitely like the idea of putting a cream-product in at the start of cooking. My slowcooker stroganoff recipe calls for adding sour cream in the last hour, which means that dinner isn't ready when I walk in the door which is simply tragic! ;)

The list of ingredients on these cooking creams is no better than the list of ingredients on the cream of something soups. I'm disappointed that you are turning to this. I realize you are getting paid to do it, but it seems like you are compromising your standards for money. Before this you seemed to care about what you put in front of your family. Just bc your children don't have an immediate negative reaction the way they do with gluten doesn't mean this garbage isn't hurting them. And worse, you are encouraging others to do it. Sure, some things like soy sauce you can't replicate at home, but we can find better versions of them. There is no need to use these cooking creams. Stroganoff has been made for generations without it. I am not against you making money for providing us all with great recipes, but I am against you compromising your standards and your readers' health to do it. People eat what you recommend, and if you say this is ok, they will believe it. You have a responsibility, and you signed up for it.

Stephanie, I don't mind the compensated blog posts, in fact I'm really glad to see the new recipes and be introduced to this product (you can tell the Philly people it's working). Before I got diagnosed with celiac I used to make a chicken and dumplings dish at Let's Dish that my family loved, I tried to duplicate it at home but it called for a cup of "culinary cream" and I didn't know what to substitute in it's place. I suspect that the Philadelphia Cooking Creme is very similar and will be excited to try it; especially since someone just told me how great the GF bisquick is. Thanks for posting this recipe, I love the blog and your recipes and all the work that you do.

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