The menus at Jacob’s Soho restaurant are constantly changed to keep up with the evolving seasons. This is the sort of dish you might expect in May
Jacob Kenedy opened his first restaurant, Bocca di Lupo, with business partner Victor Hugo in 2008. The menu here, showcasing the more obscure side of Italian cuisine, offered diners a diverse tour of regional specialities, and quickly won foodie fans. Just a year later it came in first place in Time Out’s ‘London’s Greatest Restaurants’ awards, and it is still one of Soho’s most-loved restaurants. Since then, the chef has gone on to open Gelupo, a gelateria across the road from Bocca di Lupo, and Louisiana-inspired Plaquemine Lock, on the banks of the Regent’s Canal. And he has written three cookbooks. Always a champion of seasonal cooking, here he shares the perfect recipe for an early summer feast.
“Vitello tonnato, veal with tuna sauce, is a Piedmontese summer classic, notably served at the Feast of Ferragosto (Assumption Day). The sauce is unusual – a tuna-flavoured mayonnaise – and all the more quirky a combination when you think that tuna, in Italy, is also known as ‘veal of the sea’. At Masuelli San Marco, my all-time favourite Milanese restaurant, they serve rabbit in the same sauce – there with a little salad of radishes and celery. Here I make the dish with the first broad beans of the season.”
INGREDIENTS
Serves 4 as a starter, or 2 as a main
1/2 farmed rabbit (a lengthways half) | 1 small onion | 2 bay leaves | 1/2 carrot | 4 celery stalks | 1 bunch radishes | 500g broad beans (or 125g podded ones) | A few picked flat-leaf parsley leaves | 2 tbsp salted capers, soaked until tolerably salty | 20ml extra virgin olive oil
TUNA SAUCE
1 salted anchovy, rinsed and filleted, or 2 anchovy fillets in oil | 75g best-quality tinned tuna in oil | A few picked oregano leaves | 1 egg yolk | 1 tbsp red wine vinegar | 1 tbsp lemon juice | 1 tbsp salted capers, soaked until tolerably salty | 80ml extra virgin olive oil
METHOD
1. Cook the rabbit: place the rabbit, onion, bay leaves, carrot, and two celery stalks in a pot (cut the rabbit into a couple of chunks to fit, if necessary). Add just enough water to cover, season with salt, and simmer on low heat for 1 hour until the meat is tender and just soft enough to be pulled from the bone. Let it cool in its liquor, then drain, reserving some stock. Pull the meat from the bone.
2. Prepare the tuna sauce: in a food processor, combine the anchovy, tuna, oregano, egg yolk, vinegar, lemon juice, and capers. Blend while slowly adding the olive oil, in a steady stream. Season with pepper and slacken with 2-4 tablespoons of rabbit stock to reach the thickness of double cream. The sauce can be kept in the fridge for up to a day or so, but may thicken over time – in which case, thin it with a little more rabbit stock or water.
3. Assemble the salad: slice the remaining celery on a bias 5mm thick, halve the radishes, and pod the broad beans. Briefly blanch and peel any broad beans larger than a fingernail. Toss the vegetables with the shredded rabbit, parsley, capers, and olive oil.
4. Serve: spread the tuna sauce onto a serving plate and mound the salad on top in a haphazard pile. Serve immediately.
