Snap pea and rabbit risotto

My freezer still has a lot of rabbits in it, and I took out two the other day.  After they thawed I rubbed them with salt and put them back in the icebox, where they've been resting for a few days.  I'm slowly figuring out ways to prepare rabbit that keep the meat tender and tasting like rabbit. 

For the risotto last night, I cut the loins on a diagonal, very thin.  In my enameled, cast iron frying pan I added a pretty big pour of olive oil and turned the gas on.  Over high heat I fried the rabbit, adding only pepper.  The thin slices curled up and browned quickly, so I turned off the heat.  The meat was still very tender.

With our cold, rainy spring, my snap peas flourished, and now in the heat of July I'm harvesting the last of them, the tall vines disheveled and rampant.  Chard runs wild and parsley flavors everything.  At the end of the twenty-fives minutes or so of stirring the risotto I steamed the peas for just a moment, and added them to the creamy, plump rice.  The rabbit bits were saved for the top of the dish; I usually mix the meat into the body of the risotto, but I figured I'd let everyone do that as they saw fit.  Some, like my son, just ate it plain from the top, avoiding the chard.

Today I came home during lunch, turned on the oven, and quickly browned a few meaty legs in the dutch oven.  A scant cup of rabbit stock was next and then I put the lid on and put the pot in the oven.  I  changed into shorts and headed to my community garden plot and did some weeding and picked a few young zucchini.   When I got back home I showered and was soon back at work with clean clothes.   I left the meat to cook in the slowly cooling oven that I turned off as I left the house.

When I got home after work I pulled the rabbit meat from the bones it was barely hanging on to, and put it into a bowl.  I heated up the bit of stock in the pot and added a little flour to thicken it, and added a little more stock to make even more gravy.  With this evening's beautiful weather we ate outside.  I served the rabbit over rice with sauteed zucchini on the side, and a big Caesar salad from the garden.

I still have a few legs left; tomorrow it'll be something else.

How does it get to this?

What started as a few rabbits for dinner became, over time, a reduced, softened and taste-enhanced mess of flavor, a fragrant and humble end to a long set of meals.

Here we are with warm days and evenings filled with soccer and baseball and sometimes weeding in the garden. Fancy meals are a rarity now; what we eat instead is fresh, simple, and easy to prepare. My youngest sister recently visited from Sitka, Alaska with her family, and I wanted to give them a taste of Minnesota in the summer. Admittedly, I’m envious of the range of fish they catch and regularly eat, but I love the food that we pull from our garden daily.

We started them with wide-cut pasta, an egg-rich dough we rested for hours before rolling it out, soft, pliable and generous. A simple tomato sauce and a garden-fresh green salad made for a meal within easy reach.

As the weekend started I cut up a few rabbits and made a nice stock with the bony parts, the base for Saturday night’s rabbit risotto with fresh snap peas. The rabbit pieces marinated for a few days with a rub of garlic, bay leaves, crushed juniper berries, black pepper, and salt. Visiting family members make great kitchen helpers, and I was happy to turn the risotto stirring over to my brother-in-law. As Randy stirred, I cut a tenderloin into thin pieces that cooked in minutes. With a last minute addition of both shelled and in-the-pod snap peas, the creamy risotto was flecked with bites of green freshness.

And finally this evening, just me and my daughter on a soccer night.  A few thin leeks from the garden, sauteed in a little olive oil and fat.  A big spoonful of whole wheat flour to darken and thicken the juices.  And finally, the remains of the day, old slow cooked pieces of rabbit, now dissolved like pulled pork.  And tender, meltingly so.  A scoop and the brown jelly bits dissolve and splatter, thickening in the heat and almost-roux.  Tarragon, a little milk, salt and pepper.

And off to the side in the shallow bowl, the bits of green?  Oh, a little savoy cabbage from a friend's CSA share that he couldn't use this week because they were on vacation.  So I cut thick slices of ginger, soaked dried shrimp in hot water, and crushed a few cloves of just-pulled Inchelium Red garlic, pungent and juicy.  A few minutes in the pan and then we ate, my daughter and I, in the time before soccer with time to spare.  She liked the cabbage and the rabbit, but didn't like the bits of bone that remained.

I watched soccer, sitting in my folding chair, the summer light so just, content, satisfied.

Rabbit cacciatore

My son has the best nose in the family.  I was starting a cacciatore, rich with oil, garlic, and minced carrots and celery, when I added a wedge of Taza stone ground chocolate; Henry called from the family room, "I smell chocolate."  A dark piece to deepen the stew-sauce, red wine next, all bubbling thick and fragrancy, sweet, too.  That old rabbit confit next, pieces still emerging from fat all tender and moist, breaking into chunks just right for a drizzle-grey spring dinner, candelit and tableclothed, clothes still carrying sawdust and paint from afternoon projects.
My daughter stirred the sauce, breaking each tomato in the hot pan, keeping it thick.  For seasoning we added just a bit of fennel to the wine and chocolate, a last minute decision as my daughter smelled and rejected other herbs and spices.  A quick sauce ladled over spaghetti, a beautiful balance of tastes.
The last time I opened an Ioppa 2001 Ghemme I wasn't impressed; tonight's was different, and the nebbiolo-dominated wine opened with cherries and violets, soft with leather-like tannins, graceful and still fresh.  Cacciatore is known as hunter's stew, and the rabbit confit tasted better than most other meats would in the chocolate-and-wine-laced sauce, edible proof that raising rabbits in town is worth the effort.

Rabbit sausage

Saturday was enjoyed in the backyard, building a new chicken coop.  I wanted to keep working until dark, so I paused only briefly to fire up our first grill of the year.  The Weber Smokey Joe is the perfect size for family meals, and my wife grilled rabbit sausage over lump hardwood charcoal.  Cooked over low heat, we removed the lid for the last few minutes to brown the links.  Seasoned with thyme and accompanied by a cold Summit Pale Ale, the sausage was a great start to grilling season. 

Confit of rabbit leg

I was going to roast a pork shoulder for dinner tonight but my wife and daughters went to see Mamma Mia, making a roast impractical, so I decided to break through the fat protecting my recently made rabbit confit and taste the early results.  After a day outside in the early spring sunshine, not turning on the oven was fine with me. 
Every batch of confit is different, and the changes I made while using rabbit for the first time worked well.  Encasing the legs in a sheath of pig skin, and keeping the oven under 200F for the long, slow cooking really preserved the flavor and lightness of the meat.
Unlike duck or goose legs, rabbits don't have any protective skin that wants crisping, so after I extracted the first two legs that broke free from fat, a brief sizzle in the pan was all that was needed.  Good mashed potatoes, and firm brussels sprouts rounded out the plate. 
I had a glass of a Kante 2005 Malvasia from Italy's Carso DOC, a beautiful dry, minerally white wine. The rabbit legs were given a rub of thyme and juniper berry before they were confited, and the lack of fruitiness in the wine let those seasonings continue, in their now-muted role, to linger.

Rabbit: confit, sausage, meatballs, stock

This week I cut up two rabbits and made numerous things with them.  I was surprised at the 8 oz. hind legs, and as soon as I appreciated their size I thought of confit.  I hadn't made rabbit confit before, but the legs had the same feel as the numerous duck legs I've slipped into pots of fat. Some of my rabbit stews this winter haven't gone over well with the family, so I decided to treat the rabbits the same way I do ducks - differently.  I always cut up ducks and use the various parts separately; roasting a whole duck seems like a perfectly good way to ruin half a duck, so I keep away from that time-honored method.  

When I make pancetta I'm usually left with a big piece of pig skin which I throw in the freezer; I first thought of wrapping the long, lean loins in the pig skin and roasting them, but decided to use  the pig skin as a blanket, insulator, and moisturizer for the poaching-in-fat, slow-cooking rabbit leg confit.  After marinating the rabbit meat with a rub that contained juniper berries, thyme, garlic, salt and bay leaves, I unfolded a long piece of pig skin and put it on the bottom of the dutch oven.  The rabbit pieces went on top of that, after which I covered any exposed rabbit with another big piece of pig skin.  I melted a pan of duck fat and covered the whole thing, and put it into a slow, 200F oven. 

I made sausage with the loins and miscellaneous bits of meat, adding a little pork and back fat to the mixture.  The sausage meat also marinated overnight, and the three pounds of links will probably be grilled.  My meat grinder has a space in the front that, when I'm done grinding or stuffing, still holds nearly a pound of meat.  I made meatballs with that loose meat, adding breadcrumbs, eggs, shallots and a little more seasoning before forming small meatballs that I poached in a reduced rabbit stock, made from the stripped-bare carcasses and enhanced with onions, celery, etc...

My kids and I enjoyed a simple plate of pasta, peas and rabbit meatballs this evening, and we all look forward to our upcoming meals with this versatile animal. 

Rabbit-stock risotto

Coming home in the almost dark, the beginning of long nights. I pulled a pot of rabbit stock from the fridge and put it on the stove to simmer. I minced a large shallot and sauteed it in a heavy, cast-iron pan, then several thick slices of pancetta, cut into smaller pieces. I added two cups of Arborio rice and stirred it all together. A cup of red wine was next, adding color, fragrance, depth to the dish. From then on it was half-cups of hot stock, stirred in with a long wooden spoon, my son's arm tiring after ten minutes or so. Then a tablespoon of fresh thyme, minced. A few minutes before completion my daughter added a big bowl of peas. As soon as they were heated through I turned off the burner, added a hunk of butter and less than a cup of grated parmesan cheese. After I dished out the kids' portions, I added sauteed mushrooms, an added treat just for me and my wife.

Yes, cooking takes time. My kids didn't have school today, so while my son stirred he told me about his day, from trampoline jumping to ice cream with a friend and his mom. And I showed him how I like to stir risotto. He and his sisters set the table, lit candles, and brought the bowls of risotto to the table. Grace, and conversation while we ate. Yes, it takes time to cook, but what is time for if not to use with family?

Borscht recipe

Make stock with the bony parts of two rabbits, cooking it long and slow to extract as much flavor as possible.  Cook overnight, carefully topping off the stock pot with water before you turn out the lights and go to sleep, making sure the flame is as low as possible.  In the morning, remove from heat; the stock should be peat colored.

In an enameled, cast iron pot, saute an onion or two and a carrot.  Add dill and a nice fresh tomato from the garden.  Pull four or five good-sized beets from the garden; wash off the dirt and peel them.  Grate into the pot.   Add stock by the ladleful.  Remove meaty pieces from bones and add to pot.  Simmer gently.  Add a cup or two of uncooked, fermented sauerkraut.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  I made the borscht late at night, put it in the fridge, and reheated it for dinner the next evening, adding another two cups of sauerkraut before serving.

My wife also roasted sliced potatoes and onions in the oven and for my second helping I added a scoopful to the bottom of the bowl.  My son likes sour cream; I like the tang of good kraut.

Hasenfeffer (Hasenpfeffer) or Sour Rabbit Stew

As far as I can tell, hasenfeffer shouldn’t have a “p” in it because when it’s spelled hasenpfeffer it leads people to believe that pepper plays a role in this German stew with a well known name and unfamiliar taste. Hasenfeffer is a sour rabbit stew that gets its flavor from a heavily seasoned marinade in which the rabbit soaks for two to three days before cooking. The rabbit is then slow-cooked in a reduction of the strained marinade and served with something to soak up the remarkable juices – that’s the heart of this dish.

I think the recipe originated with a vinegar/wine marinade seasoned with juniper berries and bay leaves, and the likes of garlic, onion and carrots. Black peppercorns, clove, and cinnamon add considerable flavor and complexity to the dish, but if hasenfeffer started as an old German farm and hunting recipe, as I think it did, the poor farmers who made it wouldn’t have been able to afford such exotic spices. However, they’re widely available today and nearly all current recipes call for a medley of spices, herbs and other aromatics ranging from allspice and pickling spices to lemon peel and currant jelly.

Current recipes use either flour or sour cream as a thickener, but the dish traditionally used fresh blood to thicken the dish in the same way that jugged hare – a classic English preparation – does. The blood is added at the very end of the cooking and it isn’t allowed to boil (it could curdle.) Some recipes call for a little shaved, unsweetened chocolate, and others call for toasting the flour the rabbit is dredged in, but whether you use blood, flour, or sour cream the aim is to thicken the cooking liquid and add a little more flavor.

I found a few references on the internet claiming that feffer specifically refers to the use of blood in the dish, but I can’t find any confirmation of the word having that meaning. I spoke with one German professor who agreed that pfeffer doesn’t make sense for the dish, but he added that he doesn’t know of the word feffer used by itself, either.

With an abundance of rabbit meat in my freezer, I expect this recipe to evolve over time.

Good beer, skin-on mashed potatoes and braised kale are the perfect accompaniments for hasenfeffer.

Patrick’s Duck Fat and Politics Hasenfeffer

1-2 rabbits, cut into pieces. I like to use the meaty parts of two rabbits, reserving the bonier parts for soup stock.
1 ½ cups vinegar
1 cup wine
1 onion, sliced
1 carrot, cut into chunks
1 stalk celery, cut
3-4 cloves garlic
8-10 juniper berries
8-10 whole cloves
6 whole allspice berries
1 tsp mustard seed
2 bay leaves
1 piece cinnamon or 1 tsp ground
2 springs fresh thyme
Either ¼ cup fresh blood or ¼ cup sour cream
flour for dredging
salt


Combine all ingredients except blood, sour cream, and flour and marinate for 2-3 days in refrigerator. Mix daily.

When ready to cook, strain marinade and reserve liquid. Discard solids.

Add a little duck fat to dutch oven and turn burner on medium high.

Dredge rabbit pieces in flour and brown.

Turn burner on high and slowly add reserved marinade; reduce liquid almost completely before adding more. Continue until total liquid in dutch oven is 1 – 1 ¼ cups.

Reduce burner to very low, cover, and cook for 1 – 1 ½ hours or until meat is tender. Add a little water if necessary.

When meat is done, turn off the burner, let it cool, and refrigerate overnight.

Next day, before serving, reheat slowly. Taste for saltiness and add salt if needed. Just before serving, add either blood or sour cream and stir to mix, being careful not to let stew boil.

After the stew has been chilled and reheated, the meat begins to fall off the bone and shred like an old Brunswick stew or barbeque. I like it this way, but if you don’t want the meat pieces to fall apart, stir with care.

Rabbit dividends

The advantage of butchering my own animals is that I have the whole animal to use. Unlike a plastic-wrapped boneless, skinless chicken breast or a single grass-fed organic bison patty, a whole animal has lots of delicious parts (which many people have never eaten - except probably in hot dogs.)
The first thing we ate after butchering our rabbits were the hearts and kidneys, sautéed in a little grapeseed oil and flavored with fresh tarragon and a dab of heavy cream. My wife protested, while still managing to spear the last stray heart with her fork,"Why didn't you cook them the way you always do?" disappointed that I used cream with organ meats. We eat them often enough to have preparations we prefer. I sometimes have difficulty make pâté, but I made a pretty good country-style one with all the livers I had. We've been eating it for lunch this week -- a thick slice with a good pickle and a glob of mustard; after that and a piece of fruit I'm ready to return to work.
Last night I made stock with the bones; a slow-cooked, peat-stained stock that looks like a lake in northern Minnesota: tea-brown but perfectly clear. That's the result of a long, slow simmer throughout the night. And for tonight's dinner I used the stock to make my first corn chowder of the season, a real treat with fresh bread and a glass of wine. And marinating in the icebox is a big batch of hasenfeffer, a sour rabbit stew we'll eat on Friday.
Without a whole animal I'd be limited in what I could make. And for the majority of people who rely only on supermarkets for their meat, these stores are reducing the varieties of meats they sell, not increasing them. If you go into a typical supermarket in Minnesota, most of the pork is from Hormel and most of it has added tenderizers and flavor "enhancers" to keep it artificially juicy. And ask in the meat department for pig feet or hocks or pork belly and they probably won't have them. You get the boneless, plastic-wrapped meat and they include a microwave recipe on the label. Additionally, when the pig that gives up its pork chops is killed, the belly and hocks and liver are in the pig. In the old days a real meat market would carry many different cuts and varieties of meat and there were recipes and traditions and budgets for every part of every animal. What happens to all of that now? Does it go into the can of dinner your cat will eat? I like eating kidneys and livers and extracting marrow from bones. I like the bony carcass as much as the meaty legs and I use all the parts in ways that maximize their flavor and value. I want to make food that tastes good and I want to use the entire animal, not just the parts that look like they don't come from one.

Butchering rabbits

When I saw the last bite of dinner on my plate - a bean, a piece of onion, a fragment of tomato, and a morsel of rabbit, all of which was improved by a most fragrant sauce - I was glad we bought a trio of rabbits last fall and have spent the past nine months figuring out how to manage their waste, breed them successfully, and keep them comfortable in our erratic weather.

Saturday afternoon we butchered our first batch of young rabbits: they were eleven weeks old and dressed out at about 2 ½ pounds apiece. I hung a green tarp along the fence to make sure none of our neighbors saw anything they didn't want to. A few came over and showed an interest and I was glad to show them what we were doing. Likewise with our kids. I told them that their involvement was voluntary, and wasn't surprised by their active participation. In addition to the work involved with bleeding, gutting, and skinning ten rabbits, we also dissected an eyeball, saw how poop travels through a body, cut open a stomach, cut a gall bladder to smell bile, began curing several pelts, and marveled at the texture of lungs.

Like anything I don't do frequently, butchering the first few took longer than the last ones. But, I was done in a few hours and now our fridge is full of fresh meat; I also have a big bowl full of livers that I'll cook tomorrow.

We were doing yard work again today and I didn't plan a special first meal with our rabbit meat, so I fell back on the familiar. After sautéing garlic in a little duck fat, I browned a few back legs, which are much meatier than the front ones. Then a sliced onion and a good pour of an Alsatian riesling, which I cooked down. A little water and I covered the dutch oven with a heavy lid and let it braise awhile. I went into the garden and cut a few large sprigs of tarragon and thyme. I added them and continued. My wife picked a colander of birthday beans from this year's bumper crop, and I stewed them with a tomato and a little swiss chard. Finally, a handful of fresh parsley on the rabbit and dinner was ready.

Why am I willing to wait nine months for dinner? What is it about growing vegetables and raising, killing, and cooking animals that fascinates me so much? I was never a farm kid and doubt I'll ever be one. But tasting that last forkful of dinner, all mixed up with rabbit juices and tarragon, I feel like I can look into the past and begin to understand some of what we've abandoned as we've shifted from an agrarian to a mass-marketed society. In a very short time we've lost languages, cultures, traditions and foodways. Cooking beyond a recipe calls for more than an ingredient list; it requires a certain understanding of - and access to - raw ingredients and cooking techniques, most of which can't be purchased in a store. And the stuff isn't fancy or expensive if it's part of your life and environment - making cassoulet in France in 1609 certainly didn't cost hundreds of dollars and multiple trips to Williams-Sonoma and other specialty stores. I want to keep some of these older food traditions an active part of my life and culture because I think they're just as vulnerable and perishable as a language or an endangered species.

Rabbits

 

Finally, baby rabbits. Our two does kindled about two weeks ago and ten of the thirteen kits survived and are doing fine. For their first eight weeks or so their diet is exclusively breast milk; the does usually nurse their young twice a day and otherwise leave them alone in their nesting box - a cozy box filled with hay and fur. The kits are born hairless and the does provide insulating warmth by plucking fur from their own chests in the days before they give birth. For the first few week or so the bunnies are nearly impossible to see unless you part the mound of fur that covers them and keeps them warm. Now that they're growing their own fur and are a bit bigger, the mother's fur has matted in with the rest of the bedding, and isn't needed for survival any longer.
We're going to breed the does several times during the summer, and we hope to have a full freezer by the time winter rolls around again.