Chief of Staff by Day/Chef by Night

Great GFF friend, Phil Karsting was recently profiled in Politico on his cooking prowess. He is quite a food photographer, too. He recently sent the following recipes and pictures of his preparation of GFF rabbit and turnips (actually, he sent them a month ago and I am just now posting them).

Braised GFF Rabbit with Mustard Greens and Homemade Bacon

Saute lardons of bacon on pretty low heat, and at the same time carmelize onion halves in the same pan. While that's happening cut the rabbit - I had no idea it was basically like taking apart a chicken - piece 'o cake.. rinse, dry, season rabbit parts. Remove lardons and onions from pan and brown rabbit.

Once brown, remove from pan and deglaze with some sweet vermouth....that's the only sweet booze i had handy, though others would work well too.

Then add mustard green, put rabbit on the bed of greens, return onions to pan and throw in some lardons of bacon, if you haven't snacked your way through all of them already.

Add some water and braise in 300 degree oven for a couple hours.

GFF turnip soup

This recipe was in the Washington Post and is very good (and some of my turnips were stored less than perfectly and had gotten a tad limp....didn't matter).

Nothing too unusual: sweat onions in butter, add a bunch of turnips and a small potato, then chicken stock/water. Puree and add some nutmeg. The recipe calls for a little basil as garnish but our end of year basil was looking tough and tasted kind of dodge.

Beautiful!