The Wabbit
I promised to post my great rabbit experiment, so here it is. As I said before, I hadn't the foggiest idea what to do with rabbit meat in general, never mind a whole one. I decided I would cut it up, rub the pieces with a garlic infused olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and pan fry them. I began by putting the critter on a pan to cut up. Even without a head and guts, it looks like it's trying to run away. I felt bad for it. I mean, the damn thing was already dead and I felt bad going at it with a knife. Oh well. Observe the poor beast:
You cut up enough poultry and after a while you forget that it's actually an animal. So you figure, I've carved up an animal before, how hard could this possibly be? And then you get to the rabbit and for the first time it occurs to you: rabbits don't fly, jackass. They aren't birds. So yes, their anatomy is slightly different from chickens and turkeys. Just getting the damn legs off was not like ripping it off a bird. It required some Oomf (I believe that's the technical term). So yeah. After about a half hour of feeling like some sort of deranged serial murderer, here's what I ended up with:
Tell me that doesn't look like I've been carving a trout. So psychologically, I've gone from cutting birds to rabbits to fish. I'm exhausted and we haven't even started cooking yet. So the pieces are arranged, rubbed with oil and seasoned like so:
Since the back legs were the biggest (rabbits are the BMW's of the fast furry critter underworld racing scene), I started with those first. Here is what they looked like before:
And nicely pan fried afterward:
Which might look nice (and you're very nice for saying so, thank you) but they weren't that good. What I ended up with was something reminiscent of bad calamari. It was tough, bland, heavy on the garlic, and in case I forgot to mention, tough. Rabbits run all day. That's all they do if they aren't caged up. They spend all day every day running and humping, running and humping. Not so great for the meat. That and, as I suck at pan frying things, it wasn't entirely cooked all the way through. So, I did something I almost never do. I attempted to fix it by turning it into something else. I started by pulling all the meat apart. Which is hard to do with your sharp-ass teeth already, so oily fingers didn't get the job done any quicker. Anywho, I tore all the meat up and was left with a good amount:
I tossed that in a pan and covered it in my new raspberry balsamic vinegar from Sawers (which has become my favorite thing in the whole world to cook with):
I then pan fried it until all the vinegar had burned off and the meat had a nice brown to it:
What I was left with was a tender, delicious meat with a slight hint of raspberry sweetness. I cut up some of my new favorite cheese, busted out the crackers, and had myself a fantastic dinner of cheese and rabbit on crackers:
Suck it, Bugs Bunny! I ain't afraid of you!And that was the great rabbit experiment. A rare first-time success for only five pounds worth of rabbit, which is about $8 in real money. I hope you will all try something daring soon, as even a glorious failure can be a great story. Stay tuned for my risotto dinner coming later this week, and remember that Foodies never die. That is all.