How to cook rabbit better

My rabbit's been put to shame, y'all.  Also shameful: these awful pictures.  Abe and I splurged to install french doors in our dining room as our mutual Christmas gift, and Santa forgot to bring me the digital camera of my dreams this year.  I also forgot to know anything about photography.  So close your eyes if you have to, Ben Depp.

This rabbit was slow-braised with onion, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, fresh thyme, and of course lots of red wine by my friend Aubrey.  And when I say "slow-braised," I mean put it in the oven, wait til you're starved, wait til the hunger passes, and wait some more. (Or serve hors d'oeuvres. Thanks, Aubrey!) It will be very, very worth the wait.  Justin (my coworker at HMG & Aubrey's boyfriend) was responsible for the amazing roasted garlic of which I ate an entire glove like a greedy and starving person.

We feasted, and then had grown-up hot chocolate for dessert.  Meals like this are why we raise our own food.

How to cook rabbit

As I think I've previously mentioned, rabbit is delicious.  The only trouble I've found with eating rabbit is the part that comes first - not the cooking, which I can teach you to do here.  It's the killing.  Evidently in NYC, there are seminars for people who want to learn, but NYC is an awfully long way to travel to do something for which I have no interest (or stomach). 

So if you're squeamish as I am, find yourself a hardy partner to do the butchering.  If that partner happens to be running late for work, maybe you can convince a family member to do a little extra rinsing - no one likes a hairy rabbit stew, I mean.  (No one warns you about hairy rabbit ribs when they tell you to raise your own. They don't tell you that your chickens will lay their eggs in poop, either.  Both of these occasions bring out the sissy in me.)

Your rabbit pieces will be delicious and tender if you kill the rabbit 24 hours ahead and let the meat rest in the fridge. (And by "you," I mean you.)  The day of your Fête du Lapin, marinate the meat in white wine, white balsamic vinegar, oil, herbes de provence, rosemary, onion and garlic.

Around dinner time, sear the pieces on all sides in a pan with olive oil.  (Our bunny was super-sized - we had ample supper for four and three big pieces we didn't even cook.)  When the meat is lightly browned, add garlic, onion, and a few big scoops of the marinade.  Sprinkle in more rosemary, and let it cook with a lid on.  Let the marinade almost cook off, and add more white wine and stir.  Near the end, add a cup of broth.  You can test the rabbit for done-ness by cutting open the larger pieces.  When it's cooked, remove the meat from the pan, but don't remove the pan from the stove.  Add about 1 tsp of flour at a time, whisking, until you have a beautiful sauce.  Serve with crusty bread and roasted asparagus.

Best enjoyed with quality wine and company.

multiplication of rabbits

Blog, Meet Jena-from-the-wedding-this-weekend. In addition to having unusually long and silky ears, she is a dear, dear friend of the bride.  She dressed like a rabbit, I told her about my faithful baby-rabbit-blog followers (known less formally as "mom"), and she obliged me with a photo. Then I obliged her by stalking her on facebook in order to spell her name correctly.

Yes, thanks for asking, the wedding was fantastic. It was (appropriately) held at a retired dairy farm in Lancaster County.  It was even more beautiful than it looks here (and much, much, much, much much much colder):

There was love and drink and dancing and much bundling in sweaters. There may have also been accidental flashing - a story for another day.  When we got home, we got busy with this rabbit:

...which we're hoping to bring home soon to be our very own VW Rabbit Pickup. As everyone knows, farms need rabbits and pickups. It's older than Abe and I, but runs really well and can also carry more stuff than we can.

And then, both of us under-the-weather from all the wedding cooties, Abe cooked up this rabbit:

...featuring fresh bunny meat, tomatoes, and herbs from our garden. Before making all of Franc's dreams come true, we're fairly certain this bad boy fathered another litter of kits, so we can prolong this baby-rabbit thing for at least a few more months.

Thank goodness, because I'm afraid we just don't have anything else to talk about anymore.

T.G.I.F. - the FOOD

This morning Abe told me he's glad for our starter farm because of its impact on what he eats.  We do get spoiled by the persimmon muffins in the winter, baby lettuce in the spring, tomatoes and muscadine grapes in the summer, fig jam and fresh eggs all year round.

It tastes so much better than what you'd buy at the store, or even the Farmer's Market.  I like to think the difference is what satisfaction tastes like, because there's a healthy pride in enjoying things homemade and homegrown.  Abe loves the eggs and proteins that he raises himself, but my favorites are the vegetables we grow.

Franc (the uneasy "farm" cat) longs for the delicious union of those proteins and vegetables, and brings you your daily rabbit:  bunny stew.

your daily rabbit

Today's rabbit takes it indoors and welcomes vegetarians, vegans, or people who just eat papier-mâché painted and shaped to look like vegetables.

If that is you, please stay for a real tomato sandwich. We still have some lovely tomatoes.

Carolina Backyard Furrybottoms?

Obviously, as busy farmers with busy farming lives, the past few days we have been much, much too busy to blog.  We've had to take very, very important naps with teeny, teeny, tiny rabbits.  We've had to weigh the pros and cons of making this a blog dedicated entirely to pictures of those rabbits.

(Pros:  teeny, teeny, tiny, and rabbits.  Cons: the name might be misleading.)

We might be making this a blog dedicated entirely to pictures of rabbits.