Iberia · Volume 09, Gofio, the Guanche Grain Beneath a Castilian Table
Conejo al Salmorejo Canario
Tenerife and Gran Canaria
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 24 hours 40
- Researched
- 4 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Worth stating plainly, since the name invites confusion: Andalusian salmorejo, treated elsewhere in this atlas, is a cold tomato and bread soup. Canarian salmorejo shares nothing with it beyond the word itself; here it names a wine-and-vinegar marinade for meat, above all rabbit, and Canarian sources are explicit that the two are simply not the same thing.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. A full 24 hours marinating, then about 40 minutes to cook.
Ingredients
- 1 whole rabbit, jointed
- 250 ml white wine
- 50 ml white wine vinegar
- 100 ml olive oil, plus more for frying
- 7 garlic cloves
- 1 bay leaf
- 10 g pimentón de la Vera
- 10 g ground cumin
- 5 g dried oregano
- 5 g dried thyme
- a good pinch coarse salt
- to serve papas arrugadas, to serve
Method
- Pound the garlic to a paste in a mortar with a good pinch of coarse salt, then work in the cumin and pimentón.
- Combine with the wine, vinegar, oil, bay leaf, oregano and thyme.
- Coat the rabbit pieces thoroughly in the marinade, seal in a non-reactive container, and refrigerate a full 24 hours, turning once or twice.
- Remove the rabbit from the marinade, and fry in hot olive oil until well browned all over, or roast in a hot oven until cooked through and lightly crisped at the edges, basting occasionally with the reserved marinade.
- Serve with papas arrugadas.
What a modern chef changes
The marinade's full day of work respected, and the meat cooked with a precision the frying pan alone cannot give it
Rung 4
Method
- Sous vide the marinated rabbit at around 65°C for 3 to 4 hours before finishing, so the meat cooks through completely evenly, then finish briefly in a very hot pan or on a Big Green Egg for colour and crust, a genuine improvement on a pan alone, which tends to overcook a lean rabbit's outer layer before the bone-in centre is done.
- Reduce the strained marinade separately into a thin sauce while the rabbit cooks, rather than only basting with it raw, concentrating flavour the traditional method leaves diluted in the pan.
- Grind your own cumin and dried herbs fresh in a dedicated spice grinder just before use, a small but real difference against pre-ground spice that has already lost much of its aromatic oil.