The life and photography of Mr Bunny Chow

As many of you will know I’m something of an oenophile and lover of food. Although it’s a topic I have barely scraped the surface with in these pages I thought it might be fun to share some favourites with you and invite anyone out there to share one or two of their favourites either in comments or emailing me a full guest post to rantingmrbunnychow@gmail.com

This post was in part inspired by our friends Caroline and Craig over at Damn Fine Food

As I’ve named my dog and subsequently my dog in honour of the fabulous Bunny Chow I thought I’d kick things off with a simple bunny chow recipe.

The Bunny Chow despite many people’s assumptions is a style of food and there are no hard and fast rules although it generally does not actually contain bunnies, fluffy cute ones or otherwise. The recipe below is for my personal favourite type of curry mutton but feel free to substitute it with chicken, beef, venison or even if you must a vegetarian option.

Ingredients.

“The below roughly feeds a generous two but adjust to suit you”

Half a kg or so of roughly diced and preferably fatty mutton, lamb will do fine if mutton is unavailable but the cheaper the cut the better.

a couple of large onions roughly chopped

a tin of chopped tomatoes (use fresh if you prefer)

a thumb sized piece of grated ginger (the pre chopped jarred stuff is fine or even ground if in a rush I like loads)

Loads of garlic, this is down to your taste but I’d be thinking up to a full head

a couple of fresh chilli’s again down to taste with or without seeds

a teaspoon or so or turmeric

a teaspoon or three of chilli or paprika powder again down to heat preferences

a tablespoon or so of ground coriander

a teaspoon or so of garam masala (mixed spice or curry powder is fine)

a pinch of fennel seeds

a pinch of mustard seeds

a few curry leaves if you have them

any other veg you feel like but potato’s, squashes, carrots and pumpkins hold up well as do pulses and chickpeas.

optional but tasty is chopping in a couple of under ripe bananas and or some fresh coconut.  

a little flour and black pepper

A loaf of unsliced fresh crusty white bread

Method.

Bung your diced mutton, flour and black pepper in a plastic bag and do the shake shake to coat evenly.

Brown your meat in a big arse pot or Dutch oven (mine looks like this) 

then put the meat to one side and add some cooking oil or ghee to the same pot, chuck in your fennel and mustard seeds, when they begin to pop, turn the heat right down and add your onions to sweat gently.  While they are taking on a little colour grate in your ginger and pound your garlic and chillies into a paste, if they’re ready chopped then just chuck them in as is but the paste does add a little something. At this stage also add the rest of your spices whether following my earlier suggestions or using your own favourites.

Return the meat to the pot and add the chopped tomatoes and veg of choice if you’re using any, top up with stock or water to cover put the lid on and keep the heat down low and forget about it for as many hours as you can bare to or at least as long as it takes to cook the spuds and the meat to be meltingly tender. 

serve in the hollowed out centre of the bread loaf using the scooped out bread (known as the virgin) to mop up gravy.

Wine wise I’d serve this with a hearty meaty red something like a South African Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz blend, Nederburg Baronne immediately springs to mind.

Speaking of wines we’ve recently been doing our wine shopping with www.nakedwines.com and I’d be tempted to try the above with this Shiraz from them.

Anyway I look forward to seeing some of your recipes and hearing about your favourite wines.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow