Rabbit Lasagne (Cuba & the Caribbean)

Rabbit from the French
supermarket

I'm not going to lie, I was a little dubious about this recipe. Mainly just because it sounded odd. There were no ingredients that I didn't think I would like but I wasn't sure about the Piquillo peppers since I'd never had before. As it turned out though,we weren't able to get any of these in the end so we used bell peppers.  

As for the rabbit, we brought one back from France with us (ready jointed) so that was easy enough to track down. 

The first thing you have to do for this recipe is to cook the rabbit.  Once seasoned, you fry it in the biggest pan you have until it's browned. Allegra gives an order in which to cook the different parts of the rabbit, which we tried to stick to, although we weren't entirely sure which parts were which. She refers to the different parts as legs (which we obviously knew), loins, and bones. What came in our pack of rabbit appeared to just be legs and loins, so we surmised that the bones (ribcage) were still attached to the loins and we might as well cook them in the parts that we had. 

Once the meat is adequately browned,you take it out, fry the vegetables and spices until they begin to soften, then return the rabbit to the pan.  Then you add the white wine and stock, and put the lid back on. You can then leave it to cook at a simmer for about an hour. 

The aubergine is sliced up, salted and sat in oil in the oven for a while, turning frequently. I'm not really sure why it has to be cooked first, since we never pre-cook it in Moussaka but we followed the steps anyway, since we had plenty of time.  

The good thing about this recipe is that Allegra is very good at telling you what you can be doing while you're waiting for something else to cook.  At this point however, all we could do was wait for the aubergine and rabbit.  

When the aubergine is cooked, it comes out and is left to cool. 

After cooking for an hour or so, you take out the rabbit legs and let them cool as well. The heat is then turned up again for 5-10 minutes before you take the bones out and bin them.  Our rabbit however was cut in such away that there were no bone pieces that didn't have meat on, so we didn't bin any pieces. 

Once this has been done, you turn the stock into a white sauce. This is done by making a roux and, instead of mixing in milk, you mix in the stock that the rabbit was cooked in, having strained the veg out of it of course. When the sauce is made, you mix in some cream and the veg you strained out of it, and you have a gorgeous-looking creamy white sauce.  

Next, you shred the rabbit (once it's cool enough to touch) and mix the shredded rabbit with a tin of chopped tomatoes.  This part of the recipe seemed far too simple compared to every other stage so I was a litle worried I'd missed something. But, having re-read the recipe, it really was this simple.  Allegra says that you can add the organs to the mix if you're so inclined but Soph and I decided against that. So it was perfectly simple, shredded rabbit and chopped tomatoes - no seasoning or anything. 

The layering stage

Finally, there is the obvious step of layering all of the components.  I hadn't read ahead in this recipe so I was quite surprised to find out that the second layering step was to put all of the shredded rabbit onto that layer. I was expecting the meat to be split between multiple layers, as it would be in a regular lasagne. On doing this though, I realised that there actually wasn't all that much rabbit so I think it would have been lost in the dish had it have been split up.  After a layer of pasta the aubergine is then sat in a layer of the white sauce and topped with more pasta. In total, there are three layers of creamy white sauce, one of tomato rabbit, one of roasted aubergine, and one layer of peppers.  When fully compiled, the lasagne is baked in the oven for about a half hour (or however long your pasta sheets take to cook).  

When the time came to take the lasagne out of the oven, it looked and smelled absolutely amazing.  The taste did not disappoint. In fact, we were all incredibly impressed by the outcome. The flavours worked so well together and I actually really liked that there was only meat on one layer.  The mix of sauces was delicious and the baked aubergine was perfectly cooked.  It was a shame that we didn't have the piccolo peppers because, although the bell peppers worked okay, it would have benefitted from a little extra spice.  Nevertheless, Soph said this was best lasagne she's ever tasted. She's not that keen on pasta-heavy dishes so for her this had a great amount of extra ingredients that detracted from the lasagne sheets.  I also really enjoyed it because there was more flavour and texture contrasts that there is in a bog standard lasagne.  


I think we'll definitely make a version of this again, probably without rabbit since it's much easier to buy chicken or pork here.  It is a little on the complicated side for a week-night tea because of all the steps and having to make two different sauces but on a weekend it wouldn't be too much work. Having said that, you can make it piece by piece with breaks in between since it doesn't much matter if the separate parts have cooled when you come to make up the lasagne. It's also a very impressive dish to serve guests so I wouldn't hesitate to pull this recipe out again. I've already recommended that all of my friends give it a go because you won't believe how 
fantastic this dish is!

The best looking lasagne I've ever made