Clarrisa Dickson-Wright was on the telly
yesterday as part of the BBC2 series The
Great British Food Revival where various chefs and food writers highlight
British foods that have fallen out of favour and are in danger of falling
completely out of use. Needless to say, I approve. Ms Dickson-Wright’s food of
choice was the humble rabbit.
Why has it fallen out of favour? There are
two main reasons really – there’s the ‘Fluffy Bunny Brigade’ as Clarissa calls
them that couldn’t possibly eat something fluffy and cute. This opinion is fine
if you are vegetarian or vegan. Otherwise it’s a great double-standard. Another
reason is the association with myxomatosis virus – a deadly bug that killed off
99% of them. It’s under control now, but mud sticks.
I think there are other reasons too: rabbit
is thought of as poor people’s food, and people also have a problem with eating
wild animals. Well the bottom line is that rabbits are a huge pest (they are
not indigenous to the UK) and need to be controlled. In fact they are one of
only two official game species, along with wood pigeon, that do not have a
hunting season. We are over-run and they must be killed in order to manage the
countryside efficiently.
It is for this reason that they are
relatively cheap, and because they are wild they are truly organic and
free-range and low fat too.
I coincidently cooked a rabbit recipe from English Food the other day. It’s less of
a recipe and more of a suggestion really with very sparse instruction. Here’s
the full entry:
Wild
Rabbit
roast: 1 hour, mark 6, 200⁰C (400⁰F)
inside:
herb
stuffing
serve with:
see hare [redcurrant jelly, port wine sauces…]
Here’s what I did to roast the rabbit:
First up is to prepare your rabbit – you should
find inside the kidneys, liver, heart and lungs. Remove those. If you like you
can chop the liver and use in the stuffing. Instead, I made a little offal
kebab from the heart, kidneys and liver. Then I larded the rabbit’s legs, loins
and saddle with some thin slices of back fat. You can buy a special larding
needle for this job but I used a skewer (it was a bit of a nightmare so I have
bought myself a needle for next time). I then seasoned it inside and out and
loosely stuffed it with the herb stuffing (see here
for the entry for that) before placing it in a roasting tin with a jacket of
back fat. You could use streaky bacon if you’d prefer.
Then it was straight into the preheated
oven for an hour.
I had some stuffing left over so I rolled
that into small balls and wrapped them in some smoked bacon. I popped those in
for the final half hour until brown and crisp.
When the hour was up, I took the rabbit out
of the oven and let it rest on a serving plate and covered it with foil. I then
got to work on making some gravy. I put the roasting tin on the heat and
deglazed it with a splash of red wine and then some chicken stock and a
tablespoon of redcurrant jelly. After it reduced and started to thicken, I took
it off the heat and whisked in a couple of knobs of butter to thicken it further
and give the sauce a nice shine.
Hey-presto! A roast rabbit!
#359 Rabbit.
Well I enjoyed preparing this one and it did look like something from a
medieval feast when it was finished. The flavour was good, though it was on the
dry side; my rabbit was a young one I think and perhaps could have done with 45
minutes. Nevertheless, a tasty and fun meal to eat, though not quite as good as
the rabbit pie. It did make delicious soup the next day though! 6.5/10.
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