Green Briar – Recipe from David Embury’s ‘The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks’

A Dry Manhattan but with Scotch in place of rye or bourbon with a dash of orange bitters and a dash of Cointreau.

Yes, I’m still in the aromatic whiskey based cocktail section of Embury.

Tonight my mother in law made her famous rabbit dish and I’ve been in home cooked meal heaven. I find rabbit delicious, although the quality of meat makes a massive difference to how it tastes, and varies wildly from rabbit to rabbit in this country.

My father, and most New Zealanders would be very happy for this as a culinary turn as rabbits literally destroy farms in New Zealand’s South Island with labyrinths of tunnels causing massive erosion for hillside farms due to a complete lack of predators. Part of me wonders why we don’t try and push this as a delicacy, I suspect wild rabbit doesn’t have a lot going for it compared with farmed in Europe, and most dishes would fall into the almost too tough to chew category.

This was a perfect post dinner tipple, I find all Manhattan-esque cocktails fill this niche for me these days. The Cointreau doesn’t add a lot to be fair, there isn’t much room for subtle flavours in small quantities alongside Antica Formula and Dalmore, the name pairs beautifully, reminding me of the Br’er Rabbit folktale.