.…in which Kitchencounterculture explores local food, locavorism, veganism, climate impacts of diet, and A MASSIVE LIST OF RABBIT RECIPES from a really great collection of cookbooks…
In my freezer are two rabbits, which a local man, H, the getting-elderly but still a-hunting brother of a friend, had in his freezer. For £3 each it was hardly a sale but rather an exchange. “Cook it like a chicken,” he advised, and told me he’d cut it in seven pieces: two back legs, 2 front legs, two middle bits and a “bonnet” (the ribs). He recommended I “casserole” it: fry the pieces in a pan with carrots and onions, then tip it in a roasting tin with gravy, or wine, or beer.
My friend, H’s brother P, said H would have hung it for a few hours after bringing it home (probably this time with a ferret not a rifle — I didn’t think to ask but will, and will update here), then gutted it, then hung it again for a few days before skinning and putting it into parts. These are men who’s childhoods would have been 70 years ago. H remembers his mother Sybyl roasting rabbit very plainly, but she would never eat anything wild herself, though duck was also on the menu for these country children of mid-Wales back then.
Lots of British country children in days of yore grew up eating rabbit, sometimes hunting it themselves, often with ferrets. My mother-in-law spoke of doing this as a child in the Forest of Dean, before the war. Rabbits, however anthropomorphised by Beatrix Potter, remain a pest to gardeners. They are also a meat one could raise “sustainably“, maybe on much the same scale that people keep hens for eggs. Thanks to VintagePosterBlog for these beautiful pictures:
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(Now, I recognise that I’m conflating raising animals to kill, and hunting pests. But rabbits have a long history in Europe, with a little of both of these things happening, both as wild and kept creatures. (Read about rabbits and medieval economy in East Anglia, for instance.).
A month ago, the writer Jeanette Winterson was the eye of a storm when she posted pictures on Twitter of cooking the rabbit she’d caught feasting too heartily in her garden, this year in which she’s seeing “a plague of rabbits”. Here she is speaking about why this is much more humane than eating supermarket, fast food or factory meat wrapped in plastic, the normalcy around which there’s not much popular outcry.
Listening to her, I wanted to connect with my friend Hugh Warwick , who is a great fan of Winterson’s books, a long time “political vegan“ (“vague-an,” he later qualifies), and an ecologist with a great love for animals, and an interest in eco-systems and habitat fragmentation. I was so curious about his take on the brouhaha, and then fascinated by his nuanced response.
Hugh talked about the different values that float locavorism and veganism, and how contradictions swarm both. If he could get his head around eating roadkill , he said, to be a locavore , he would do– but was unable after so long not eating meat to take the psychological leap to do so, even if it were raised “happily” or existed as a resource of carnage and waste on the road. For him to eat meat would be a bit like being a lapsed Catholic– still deeply inflected with teachings and guilt.
For this reason he included a recipe for Hedgehog Carbonara in his book APrickly Affair (in the USA, The Hedgehog’s Dilemma), so that roadkill will not have died in total vain.
Hugh sees the contradictions of a Vegan ecologist eating European Soya Milk or Tunisian Lentils from afar. We are all part of a system we can’t completely escape, he said, all implicated and compromised in the purity of our values and the coherence of our arguments. To recognise this and the impossibility of black and white feels honest and the best you can do. The best? “To minimize the amount of crap I do to the place.”
He talked about the reaction against Winterson’s (fairly graphic) culinary representation of rabbit as “a massive indictment on the state of British journalism. Most people are so inured to where meat comes from, that an act of killing something yourself, in which you feel the weight of this yourself, changes the moral issue. Of course it would be obscenity to kill and not eat it,” he said, “and a massive waste of a resource which is super abundant and having an impact on the ability to grow food. People are so disturbed by seeing the killing that they are overlooking the violence of the industrial meat industry and the gluttony it supports. This should be the journalistic story,” he said. To ignore the origins of your meat is cowardice, and Jeanette Winterson is brave.
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Meanwhile back at the proverbial ranch: my family eats meat. Yet I’m concerned to reduce the amount we eat, as drastically as I can command, and to eat better meat, in the interest of not taking part in cruelty, in the case of factory-raised animals, and to reduce the climate changing impacts of methane, fertilizer, transport, etc. of the meat industry.
It’s pretty clear that reducing meat consumption reduces climate impact from food.
This article has great info-graphics about Greenhouse Gas Emissions by protein, and by beef vs chicken, in terms of “enteric emissions,” feed production, manure emissions, transport of inputs , and more. We also know that there are transport emissions and fertilizer emissions, let alone other impacts to shared ecological resources. It’s a major thing to study, meat and environment.
Compared here is the diet of meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians and vegans. Also from the Food Climate Resource Network is this detailed and educative “discussion paper” on “What is a Sustainable and Healthy Diet?” And this article about reducing lamb, beef and dairy consumption.
Here are more infographics comparing impact by diet.
For me this knowledge begs questions about cooking for people who really like to eat meat, who feel their bodies kind of need it– what am I to do? Rabbit is interesting to consider. It’s a pest. It’s very low impact– uses no resources, has no climate consequence to speak of. Hmmmmm. Maybe it’s an animal for climate conscious carnivores to eat occasionally?
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OK then what to do with those rabbits in our freezer? I’ve catalogued, a little obsessively, rabbit recipes in my quite numerous collection of (mostly excellent) cookery books. You can see by this list that rabbits figure across a wide geography of people’s food and fancy food . I’ve annotated a little, but not much.
If you are dying to know more about a particular recipe and can’t find it on line, just ask in the comments and I’ll spell it out. (Saving myself for your enquiries.) I think this is hypnotic list. A dinner invitation is extended to whoever can guess the three that interest me the most. And now to offer it to thee:
Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Rabbit, Boiled –Broth –Curried –Pie Mark Bittman, How to Cook Everything (a title to quibble with!) Hasenpfeffer Giuliano Bugialli, Bugialli on Pasta Pappardelle Sul Coniglio (Tuscany) Taliattelle alla Frantoiana / Rabbit Sauce with Olives (Umbria) Penelope Casas, Delicioso: The Regional Cooking of Spain Rabbit in Almond and Olive Sauce –With Blackberries and Brown Sugar –Coated with a Honey-Garlic Mayonnaise –With Crisp Bread Bits –Marinated in Sherry Sauce –Paella –In Spicy Wine and Vinegar Sauce Penelope Casas, The Foods and Wines of Spain Rabbit With Almonds and Pine Nuts –Broiled, with aioli sauce –in egg and Lemon Sauce –Hunter Style –Paella –Pate –Potted –With Red Peppers and Zucchini –In Tomato Sauce Daily Telegraph, Good Fare: A Book of Wartime Recipes Rabbit, Brown Fricasee Curried Elizabeth David A Book of Mediterranean Food Rabbit, au coulis de lentilles –in melokhia (soup) (North African, made with a kind of mallow (pictures here) –pate Elizabeth David, French Provincial Cooking Rabbit Potted with Pork –Stewed in Red Wine Gilli Davies, Lamb, Leeks and Laverbread Rabbit with Damsons Anna Del Conte, The Classic Food of Northern Italy Old Fashioned Rabbit from Umbria Rabbit in Sweet and Sour Sauce Fuchsia Dunlop, Sichuan Cookery Rabbit With Peanuts in Hot Bean Sauce –With Rock Sugar –With Sichuan Pepper Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt, The Gaza Kitchen Butter Rice and Griddle Bread with Chicken or Rabbit Basic Spiced Broth (Chicken or Rabbit Bones) Jean-Noel Escudier & Peta Fuller, True Provencal & Nicoise Cooking Bundles of Rabbt Brignolaise Rabbit Civet –Fried, Marseillaise Roasted Stuffed Rabbit Farmhouse Fare, Recipes from Country Housewives Collected by Farmers Weekly Old Devonshire Rabbit Brawn Curried Rabbit Harvest Rabbit Rabbit Paste Rabbit Pie Rabbit Pudding with Mushrooms Somerset Rabbit Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The River Cottage Cookbook Bunny Burgers Rabbit Satay with Spicy Peanut Sauce Bobby Freeman, First Catch Your Peacock Rabbit in Lentils –Stew Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, A Taste of Ancient Rome “Within the section dedicated to recipes with ground meat, the Apician manual includes this curious rating: “The ground meat atties of peacock have first place, if they are fried so that they remain tender. Those of pheasant have second place, those of rabbit third, those of chicken fourth, and those of suckling pig fifth.” The recipe for the patties in this book includes myrtle berries, garum , pine nuts, etc…. Patience Gray, Honey From a Weed Rabbit with Garlic Sauce Rabbit with Prunes and Pinenuts Jane Grigson, The Cooking of Normandy Rabbit with Mustard Sauce Jane Grigson, English Food Boiled Wild Rabbit with Onion Sauce –Dressed in a Casserole English Jugged Scotch Stewed Welsh –Wild Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking Rabbit with Rosemary and White Wine Fergus Henderson, Nose to Tail Eating Confit of Rabbit Leg Rabbit in Broth –With Garlic Jellied Rabbit with Pea and Broad Bean Puree Saddle of Rabbit wrapped in Fennel Twigs and Bacon Madeleine Kamman, In Madeleine’s Kitchen(I know MK had some deep feeling about being trumped in celebrity by Julia Child– I’ve learned so much from them both but lately have been really loving Madeleine. You can read a little about this.)
Rabbit, Jellied with Vegetables –with Juniper and Beer –Terrine with Truffled Leeks Madeleine Kamman, Savoie Civet (this recipe she explictyly says can be used for squirrel!) Grilled Loins of Rabbit with Tomato Mustard Madeleine Kamman, When French Women Cook Civet (stew) with Chartreuse Pate with Hazelnuts and Genepi With Shallots and Cornichons Stewed with Walnut Sauce Diana Kennedy, The Essential Cuisines of Mexico Rabbit in Chile Sauce Nigella Lawson, How to Eat Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor’s Salad Carl Legge, The Permaculture Cookbook rather than recipes, Carl makes good suggestions to add to Paella, Lettuce and Pea Soup, and “Curries” – a sustainable, flexible approach that I like! Edna Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking Baked Rabbit Smothered Rabbit Elisabeth Luard, European Festival Food Rabbit Casserole Provencale (British) Rabbit Pie Elisabeth Luard, European Peasant Cookery (The Old World Kitchen in the US) Stew (an Italian veal stew subsitution) Rabbit with Beer and Prunes (Belgium_ Rabbit with Garlic (Spain) Jennifer McGruther, The Nourished Kitchen Rabbit Pie with Bacon and Chanterelles Maxime McKendry, Seven Hundred Years of English Cooking Spiced Creamed Rabbit (15th Century) Rabbits Surprised (1806) Jamie Oliver, Jamie’s America Rabbit Stew with Dumplings Jamie Oliver, Jamie’s Great Britain 12-Hour Rabbit Bolognese Honey Roasted Lemon Rabbit Sweet Leek and Rabbit Pie Jamie Oliver, Jamie’s Italy Grilled and Marinated Rabbit Rabbit in Mixed Roast Jamie Oliver, The Return of the Naked Chef Pappardelle with Rabbit, Herbs and Cream Richard Olney, Lulu’s Provencal Table Rabbit and Carrots in Aspic –with Mustard –Stew Stuffed with Prunes Richard Olney, Simple French Food Rabbit Pappiotes Saffron Stew With Cucumbers Sausanges Stuffed Roast Saddle and Hindquarters Terrine Jennifer Paterson, Feast Days Rabbit Dijonaise –with Anchovies and Capers Marguerite Patten, 1,000 Favourite Recipes Mustard Rabbit Rabbit Pie Ragout of Rabbit Gary Rhodes, New British Classics Rabbit Leg Casserole with Marjoram and Mustard Rabbit, Pork, and Cider Potato Pie Irma S Rombauer, Joy of Cooking (1975) Braised with Onions With Chilli Beans Fricasee Rabbit A La Mode Roast Rabbit Rabbit and Sausage Casserole Sauteed Rabbit Savarin, Real French Cooking (in a section entitled “Rabbits and Furred Game” – includes instructions to skin and to gut)Fricassee of Rabbit
Marengo Rabbit
Roast Rabbit
Goodwife’s Rabbit
Trompette Rabbit
Rabbits and Prunes
Potted Rabbit
Blanquette of Rabbit
Boiled Young Rabbit
Mustard Rabbit
Tartare Rabbit
Jugged Rabbit with Noodles
Saupiquet of Rabbit
Amunategui (sic) Rabbitnd Furred Game” – includes instructions to skin and to gut) Fricassee of Rabbit Marengo Rabbit Roast Rabbit Goodwife’s Rabbit Trompette Rabbit Rabbits and Prunes Potted Rabbit Blanquette of Rabbit Boiled Young Rabbit Mustard Rabbit Tartare Rabbit Jugged Rabbit with Noodles Saupiquet of Rabbit Amunategui (sic) Rabbit Michelle Scicolone, A Fresh Taste of Italy (a book I LOVE—ask me why) Rabbit Braised with Sweet Peppers and Garlic –with Herbs and Olives –with Olives and Pine Nuts Delfina’s – –and Sausage, Pappardelle with… Jane Sigal, Backroad Bistros, Farmhouse Fare Rabbit in Creamy Mustard Sauce With Mushrooms With Italian Prune Plum Sauce Marinated in Muscadet Wine Paul Bertoli, Chez Panisse Cooking Rabbit Salad with Browned Shallots The Silver Spoon (that Phaidon tome) Braised Rabbit with Rosemary Fried Rabbit Marinated Rabbit Rabbit “Tuna” Rabbit and Tuna Roll Rabbit Cacciatore Rabbit in Cider Rabbit in Milk Rabbit in Olive Oil and Lemon Rabbit in Red Wine Rabbit in Vinegar Rabbit Stew with Anchovies Rabbit Stew with Tomatoes and Basil Rabbit Stew with Walnuts Rabbit with Bay Leaves Rabbit with Honey and Vegetable Rabbit with Mustard Rabbit with Peperonata Rabbit with Prosciutto and Polenta Roast Rabbit Stewed Rabbit Stuffed Rabbit Delia Smith, The Evening Standard Cookbook Rabbit Pie –in Red Wine Roast Stuffed Rabbit Musia Soper, Encyclopedia of European Cookbook (1962) Rabbit in Beer (France) Rabbit in Cream Sauce (Scandinavia– recipe includes Soya Sauce ??? and Evaporated Milk!!! Rabbit Paprika (Hungary) Rabbit Paste (Czech) (reading this recipe makes me gag) Rabbit Stew (French) Rabbit with Prunes (Belgian) Jeanne Strang, Goosefat and Garlic Braised with Herbs and Cream in Pork Terrine Potted with Prunes Stuffed Terrine of Wild with a Piquant Sauce Alice B Toklas. The Alice B Toklas Cookbook Rabbit with Dumplings S Minwel Tibbott, Welsh Fare: A Selection of Traditional Recipes Rabbit in Lentils Rabbit Stew Ruth Van Waerebeek, Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook Rabbit marinated in Abbey beer with Mushrooms Sauteed with Cherry beer and Dried Cherries Stewed with Prunes and Beer Patricia Wells, Bistro Cooking Rabbit with Green Olives –and Hazelnut Terrine –with Mushrooms and Thyme, Monsieur Henny’s –with Mustard Sauce, Cafe des Federations’ ed Florence White: Good Things in England Rabbit,Baked —Boiled with Rice Clifford Wright, A Mediterranean Feast Rabbit Broth Cordoban style rice with chicken, veal , pork, and… “Poor Folks” peppered stew Commando-Style Braised, with tomato and chocolate sauce And only one link: Chris’ Rabbit Stew to be cooked over an open fire in an enamel cauldron hung from a tripod….
Kitchen Counter Culture 
Reblogged this on The Powys Diet and commented:
a good summary of the locavore / vegan /ethical eating debate plus a LOT of rabbit recipes from Kitchen Counter Culture
Here’s a nice Greek recipe on another WordPress Blog — i like the idea of the cinnamon and rosemary…… http://kouzinacooking.wordpress.com/2014/07/10/reflecting-on-the-rascally-rabbit-kouneli-stifado/
Greek rabbit stifado – the stew you mentioned in your comment is a very common way to cook rabbit in Greece. However, I’ve also had it grilled or deep fried in Greece. There is a tiny, family run restaurant at the foot of the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete that only serves rabbit. And, it is delicious! Also love the Tuscan pappardelle sauce usually made with hare, but equally good with rabbit.
Wow. Something about the words “family run” and “at the foot of the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete” sounds pretty magical!
It is a magical place!
Oh Kitchen Witch, Take me away!!!!
Another great article with some great links Annie!
Love your point about eating the pests. It is the animal analog of eating the weeds.
But, ironically, while I was reading your post about cooking rabbit, my daughter was looking up information about bunny pets. I didn’t dare tell her what I was reading about. Yes, I admit it, I’m terrified of my kid!
Hooray for your daughter’s strength of purpose!!!!!
Re pests, when we lived in Oxford, river was strangled with Louisiana crayfish, who were making life impossible for native species. Hubby and friends used to go out fishing for them lots. True pests…… I was an ambivalent eater, must admit, though enjoyed the cooking…
Absolutely fab article Annie! Research fantastic. I have exactly the same sentiments. We regularly kill and eat grey squirrels here as I am trying to grow lots of another sustainable protein – hazel nuts. My take is that the grey squirrel is just processed nuts anyway and they were my nuts! We also shoot and eat wood pigeon which is also a major agricultural pest and which also eats my brassicas and peas. The meat of the wood pigeon is the most superior meat in my opinion out of the three pest species.
Hi Michele, the hilarious thing is, originally I collected all these rabbit articles for use with squirrels, after interviewing a friend who is really distressed by the damage that grey squirrels do to red squirrel habitats and to reforestation efforts in vulnerable habitats….. And interesting re wood pigeon, would love to try….
My goodness Annie – there really are loads of rabbit recipes in this post! Thankyou for the tip-off. I was much inspired and exercised by that energetic discussion last month over (my) plate of lamb stew and your vegetarian fare. I am continually trying to situate myself within this meat/climate/health discourse – I have a sense that my position (as for many people) will never be static… but I resolve to remain active and mindful in my choices as I make them… and perhaps to keep a better stash of data in my head for when I sit down to a plate of meat in carbon-conscious company(!) (Am going to work my way through your links). I’ve been much inspired by reading John Lewis Stempel’s ‘The Wild Life’ over the holidays. Stempel writes candidly about killing wild game, especially rabbits, on his own land, and for all my recent (very) hands on meat handling and eating I am now uncomfortably aware that I have never knowingly killed an animal. That is something I’m considering deeply. I can’t stop reflecting on how, in the UK at least, it seems we have shifted our place in the food chain by eliminating animal predators… and how that has shifted our relationship to animals below us in the chain, and in turn, our relationship to life, Nature even, itself. The wider social/ecological/emotional/commercial etc. issues around that intrigue me… and somehow that links in my mind to what you said in the Guardian interview about considering food a commons rather than a commodity. Zx
[…] tried to get at some of the difficulties in moral purity when I wrote this piece about veganism and locavorism faced with eating rabbits and roadkill.) What I’m interested in is the slippage between best practice and the ease […]
Another wonderful post! If your arguments for raising/eating rabbits don’t convince readers (but I think they will), that impressive list of recipes certainly will. The only meat I eat now is what I buy and cook myself at home. It’s one of the few things I know my daughter will not refuse. I am able to buy grass-fed beef but chicken has become a bit of a problem at the moment. The butcher counter has a new supplier and these chickens aren’t as free ranging as those from the previous supplier. So many dilemmas…Bottom line for me: if you eat meat, raising and killing it yourself is the ideal. (This coming from a certified crazy animal lover. I saved a larvae earlier today…no exaggeration…) People raised rabbits during WWII alongside their victory gardens. We need to tie self-sufficiency in with patriotism again.
[…] I wrote about rabbit over a year ago, I catalogued recipes in my cookbooks to give readers a sense of culinary […]