The Fresh Cooking Patio at this year’s Realtors Home & Garden Show promises to enliven your taste buds with a packed selection of cooking demonstrations from area chefs and food experts.  Read more and get the full Cooking Patio schedule.

On Friday, March 27 at 5:30 p.m., Chef Bradford Shovlin of Smyth Restaurant in the Iron Horse Hotel will present a session entitled "Rustic Wisconsin Fare in the form of Wrought Cuisine."

Chef Bradford Shovlin is a native of Detroit, Michigan. His earliest cooking memories involved spending time with his late father in his home kitchen before he was even able to see above the stove. His dad's intensity and attention to detail to cuisine, though not a professional chef, resulted from his job as a highly successful plastics and mechanical engineer. It was in this time that Shovlin realized his intended path in life.

While attending Western Michigan University, and earning a Bachelor's Degree, he spent time in several of the best restaurants in Kalamazoo. After a two-year stint at The Hill Seafood and Chophouse, under Michael Connery, Shovlin attended and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y.

He then headed to Chicago, where he worked at North Pond with Bruce Sherman, and then with Suzy Crofton of Crofton on Wells, where the restaurant earned a one-Michelin star rating during his tenure. Chef Shovlin was most recently the Executive Chef of two successful start-ups, in Seattle and in Chicago, before landing here in Milwaukee at The Iron Horse Hotel.


This recipe for rabbit meatballs showcases some of what the audience will see and taste from Chef Shovlin on Friday evening at the show.

Rabbit Meatballs

2 pounds rabbit
¾ pound pork butt
2 rabbit livers, soaked in ice water overnight, if available

Panada:
2 eggs
1 ¼ cups Panko breadcrumbs
1 cup Heavy cream
¼ cup Dijon mustard
½ cup Parsley, finely chopped
1 cup Sartori SarVecchio, rasped
2 shallots, sliced
6 cloves garlic, sliced
¼ cup frsh chopped Thyme
1 leek, sliced, white and light green only
½ cup White wine, to deglaze
16 grams of kosher Salt
5 grams white pepper
1 cup rabbit glace (made from the rabbit bodies, roasted)

Method:
Clean rabbits of all of their meat, dice. Reserve and soak livers in ice water.
Weigh rabbit and use appropriate amount of pork. Dice and chill.
Paddle together all panada ingredients and allow to bloom for at least 30 minutes.
Sweat leeks, shallots, garlic and thyme, deglaze with wine and reduce au sec. Chill this mixture. Add to the pork, along with the livers and salt and pepper. Grind on fine die.
Grind the rabbit meat on the next largest die (medium).
Add the pork and rabbit grind to the panada, paddle slowly to combine, while streaming in room temperature rabbit glace.

Portion the meatballs into two ounce balls, and steam for 7 minutes. Chill.
Saute to give color on the outside, add chicken stock, butter and glaze in oven.