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Rabbit is one of the most popular meats in Italy, why aren't we consuming more here in Vancouver?
The Easter bunny makes a delicious family dinner
My brother has recently moved from London, England, to San Francisco. The immediate benefit for me is that he was able to visit us for Easter. As we have in previous years, we forwent the traditional Easter lamb in favour of rabbit. When I talked to people about our Easter feast I was stunned by how many of them were revolted by the thought of eating bunny-meat.
Putting aside any notions that we somehow destroyed Easter by dining on its tasty mascot, rabbit is a very sustainable choice of meat. In much the same way that diversifying the choice of seafoods we eat to include smaller fish—like sardines and herring—is sustainable, rabbit has been popular in Italy for hundreds, if not thousands, of years because they are easy to raise, require minimal pasture and they breed like, well, rabbits.
Much in the colouring and texture of rabbit meat resembles chicken, as does the size and general anatomy, but to say that rabbit tastes like chicken would be a gross injustice to rabbit’s strong, rich flavour. Certainly there are similarities—it’s like saying turkey tastes like chicken—but at the end of the day (around dinner time) rabbit tastes like rabbit.
For some reason, rabbit often appears in stew pots (both in the cartoons and in real life), here’s how we prepared ours:
4 tbsp olive oil
1 rabbit cut into portions
2 red onions
1 large carrot
3 celery stalks
2 garlic cloves
2 sprigs of rosemary
16–20 dried figs (halved)
2 cinnamon sticks
12 juniper berries
3/4 cup white wine
4 cups chicken stock
3 tsp cornstarch
1 dried red chili
Salt and pepper to taste
N.B. At this stage we removed the meat from the bones (and the bones from the stew) before serving it to our guests.
We served the stew with some barbecued polenta and sautéed spring vegetables.
If Frank Pabst were to do an unsung heroes menu for land creatures, rabbit would definitely be on the list.