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Brer Rabbit
But we haven't yet done with cooking the ubiquitous rabbit that every hunter bags and even humble housewives know how to handle almost as well as a French Canuck guide. The trouble is there are more than a hundred standard recipes and each one quite as tasty as its brother. So, in season, try to choose for yourself between Braised Rabbit with Pistachio-nuts, bunny civeted, colloped or curried, devilled or epigrammed, jugged, stewed, minced and mumbled, good old Hasenpfeffer, Rabbits au Gratin, in soufflé or plain pudding. So many, many succulent styles they get in your hare. Even rabbits' ears are deemed delicious by diplomaed degustateurs. Almost equal, indeed, to nightingale tongues, or the tip of the partridge wing.
For ourselves we'll roast it with oysters. A dozen will do, chopped together with a good-sized sponge cake to make the stuffing for Brer Rabbit.
With butter of course and a mere soupçon of cayenne. That's all. Just stuff 'em, roast 'em an hour and eat 'em in ten minutes, with a sauce of the oyster liquor and butter simmered together with a little flour for thickening, more cayenne and a touch of cinnamon. And by the way oysters are equally excellent when heated through in the melted butter served in the sauce boat that goes with boiled birds.
Under the wordplay there is a complete recipe: rabbit stuffed with chopped oysters and sponge cake, roasted, and served with a sauce built on the oyster liquor. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how a roast behaves, so the numbers need filling in.
- Choose the right rabbitOnly a young animal will survive an hour of dry roasting. A wild rabbit past its first season, or any hare, has connective tissue that needs long moist heat, which is why the older cookbooks push those animals toward jugging and stewing. Farmed rabbit of 2½-3 lb roasts well.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A stuffed rabbit of that size wants 350F for the stated hour; much hotter and the lean saddle dries before the stuffing is hot through.
- The stuffing is the hingeSponge cake here is doing the job breadcrumbs do elsewhere -- it absorbs the oyster liquor and butter and sets soft. Use a plain, dry, unfrosted sponge, crumbled, not a modern sweetened supermarket cake, or the dish turns cloying.
- Oysters and their liquorA dozen shucked oysters, chopped, is roughly a cup with liquor. Strain the liquor before it goes into the sauce; shell grit is the usual fault. Chopped oysters inside a stuffing cook long past the two minutes a whole oyster wants, so expect them to read as savoury body rather than as oysters.
- Cover the loinRabbit carries almost no fat. Bard the back with bacon or a buttered paper for the first 40 minutes so the meat does not go stringy while the stuffing comes up to temperature.
- Check the stuffing, not the clockA stuffed cavity is the slow point. The centre of the stuffing should reach 165F; the meat itself is done at about 160F at the thigh.
- The sauceOyster liquor, butter and a little flour is a small blond roux loosened with liquor -- perhaps a tablespoon each of butter and flour to a cup of liquid. The cinnamon and cayenne are period seasoning and should stay at a trace; add both off the heat and taste, since strained oyster liquor is already salty.
- YieldOne 3 lb rabbit with stuffing serves two generously, three at a stretch.
- The list of dishesThe parade of names in the first half is a menu of alternatives, not steps: colloped means cut in small slices and pan-cooked, epigrammed means crumbed and grilled, jugged means stewed slowly in a covered crock, and Hasenpfeffer is the German soured, peppered hare stew.