The Sicilian original rabbit hunter style recipe

original -hunter-rabbit- style-recipeThe one I wrote is the true, traditional and original recipe of rabbit hunter style. I prepared this Sicilian dish just some days ago. The one you perhaps know as the true recipe is not the original one. The original recipe is prepared with wild rabbit, even though it is very hard to find wild rabbit to use for this dish. You can prepare this recipe also with rabbit bought at the butcher’s shop. In Sicily, for example, there are many butchers who sell wild rabbit to prepare this delicious dish. Follow the paragraph below and learn about how to prepare the recipe. Before deepening the recipe, I want to talk about the history of the rabbit hunter style.

History

Vizzini sightThe Sicilian recipe of the rabbit hunter style has a very curious history. The recipe was discovered by the music composer Pietro Mascagni during a quarrel against the Sicilian writer Giovanni Verga. The latter was a quarrel man and at that time, the musician used the history of the novel Cavalleria Rusticana for one of his theatre works without the permission of the author. To fix the troubles due to this fact, the two artists met in the birth land of Giovanni Verga, namely Vizzini (see the image), a beautiful Sicilian village, in the province of Catania, placed in Noto Valley and only a few kms from the baroque town of Palazzolo Acreide. After a fun tour in the downtown of Vizzini, to visit churches, alleys and museums, the two artists had lunch at a local tavern that served them with a delicious dish with wild rabbit. This recipe was invented by the owner of the tavern as an homage to the two artists. Just think that the things ended up well and they made friends. It is really true that in front of a good Sicilian dish, the pointless world problems fade. But now, it is time to talk about this recipe.

Original Sicilian Recipe

rabbit-hunter-styleTo prepare the recipe of the Sicilian rabbit hunter style, remove head, paws and entrails of rabbit, and cut it in large pieces. Among the entrails you can retrieve liver to be added to the pieces. Use liver only if it is red, while put it in the bin if it is already brown. I adore also eating the rabbit liver in this recipe, but if you dislike this part of the animal, you can well remove that. Put the rabbit pieces in a pan, turn the flame on and let them dry from their own water. As soon as the pan is without water and rabbit is becoming white, add chopped garlic, onion, salt and extra virgin olive oil and fry them slightly. Then, add mint (not parsley) and red wine. After the wine has half evaporated, add also a spoon of tomato sauce, chopped green olives, pepper, salted capers (if you want) and another glass of red wine. Continue cooking until the wine has completely evaporated, turn off the flame and serve the dish. As you can see, this is a very easy recipe to prepare. I know about many recipes that include flour to fry chopped onion and garlic, but I swear that even though I am Sicilian and live in Sicily, I never ate this recipe with flour. Furthermore, rabbit is really delicious with mint, not with parsley. Other similar recipes add also carrot, rosemary and celery to this dish. It is possible to add them to the recipe, but this way, you’ll lose all the delicious taste of fried mint. Prepare the recipe as I said and let me know. It was good?

Photocredits:

Recipe  image – Youtube

Recipe image in a pan – Cucchiaio.it

Vizzini – Rudolf W

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