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Gibelotte of Hare
Proceed the same way as for civet of hare, French style, replacing the red wine with one pint of white broth, and adding twelve whole mushrooms five minutes before serving.
A one-line variation that assumes you have the civet of hare recipe in front of you: same jointed hare, same lardons and onions, same slow braise, but a pale stock in place of the red wine. Everything hinges on the substitution, so read the parent recipe first.
- What "white broth" meansA light veal or chicken stock, ideally with no browned bones so it stays pale. One pint is two cups, enough to moisten a jointed hare in a snug pan rather than to cover it.
- The point of the swapBecause there is no red wine, nothing masks a scorched fond. Sweat the onions and lardons in fat without letting them colour, and do not brown the hare hard as you would for a civet, or the sauce goes muddy grey rather than blond.
- Civet thickeningA true civet is finished with the hare's reserved blood, which will curdle if the liquid boils after it goes in. If you are working from a butcher's hare with no blood, thicken with a beurre manié or a little cream instead and keep the pot below a simmer.
- Hare and rabbitWild hare is dark, lean and strong; farmed rabbit is pale and mild. Either works, but a hare needs 2 to 3 hours of gentle braising while a rabbit is done in 45 to 60 minutes, and the saddle should be added late so it does not dry out.
- The mushroomsTwelve whole mushrooms, added five minutes before serving, are meant to stay firm and pale; small buttons suit the purpose best. A squeeze of lemon in the pan keeps them from greying the sauce.
- HeatThis is a stovetop braise at a bare shiver, not a boil. The recipe gives no oven direction; if you prefer the oven, a low setting around 300F in a covered pot will keep it gentle.
- YieldOne hare serves four; add small boiled potatoes toward the end if you want the fuller bistro version.
Gibelotte is the white-sauced cousin of the civet: both are stews of furred game, but the civet takes red wine and is generally traced to cive, the old French word for onion, while gibelotte is usually linked to gibelet, a term for giblets, and by extension to gibier, game. In French domestic cooking gibelotte de lapin — rabbit, white wine or stock, lardons, onions, mushrooms, often potatoes — was cheap country fare, the sort of thing eaten in riverside guinguettes outside Paris. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel, published his book in 1896, and its game chapters read like a French professional's index: one full recipe, then a string of terse variations that a trained kitchen brigade could execute from a single line.