“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” -John Steinbeck, American novelist and writer of one of my most all-time most favoritest books (I have a lot of those), East of Eden

I went to culinary school with an adorable, wide-eyed young lady (and very talented food writer, I might add) named Rochelle.  A girly-girl to the core, she manages always to achieve a level of unapologetic “girl-ness” that I have never quite been able to manage myself without looking and feeling like an awkward doofus – things like wearing a whole lot of high heels, like identifying all of her kitchen tools with pink electrical tape, like having a ridiculously cute lop-eared bunny rabbit named Norbert as a pet.  She knew full well we’d be subjected to “rabbit as food” at some point along the way, and dreaded it, quite understandably.  Our instructors would give her the hardest time about it, too.  I remember expeditors yelling out orders in the L’Ecole kitchen, saying “1 short rib, 2 lamb medium, 1 bunny!” if they knew Rochelle was within earshot.  I remember Chef X warning her, with a mischievous little smirk and a thick French accent, that it would be a hard, sad day when we had to butcher rabbits.  ”I’ll be absent that day,” she’d say with a frown.  I also remember the day she tried rabbit for the first time.  We all gathered around her, cheering her on, as she grimaced and practically choked it down.  ”It’s really good!” she said a few moments later, surprising us all (but mostly herself, I suspect).  A few weeks later, she was butchering rabbits (that still had heads and tongues and teeth, no less!) without much of a problem.

Rabbit seems somehow adventurous in a non-scary way.  It’s not something that’s around very often on American menus, and it’s a rarity at the supermarket.  I can’t, for the life of me, understand why.  Yeah, they’re cute and fluffy and their noses do an awesome little “sniff” thing, and the ears…..oh the ears.  (Do not start me on the lop.)  But, there’s also that other part about rabbit existence:  the part where pretty much all they do is eat food, poop, and get it on.  They have a whole lot of babies, to the point where it’s kind of a schoolyard joke.  Consider these rather amazing facts:  The gestation period for the average rabbit is just about 30 days.  Female rabbits can become pregnant once again within mere hours of giving birth to a litter of, let’s say, 5 or 6 (which is a conservative average).  At this point, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, after the typical ladybunny’s reproductive maturity age of 6 months (and up until probably 3 years later at least), well, that’s a lot of bunnies.  And they taste really, really good, too.  What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a relatively untapped, hugely sustainable food resource in America.

Rabbits reproduce like crazy on their own.  A lot of animals do (we like-a to make-a the nookie, what-a can I say?).  But I just think of cows and chickens and pigs, which are things that we all very commonly eat in this culture, being so “in-demand” that such absurd, un-natural means of reproduction and life support must take place to fill these demands, when things like goats and ducks and rabbits and quail are so plentiful, so un-diseased, and so delicious in the background.  It’s no secret that America’s most popular food animals are, quite literally, manufactured at factory farms, rather than “raised” in any way that remotely resembles a natural process.  If you read enough about what goes on in these places (much of it is still a mystery since the USDA very rarely grants journalists access to these facilities), you start to lose your appetite.

I butchered and trussed and prepped a whole lot of chicken at culinary school.  So did all of my classmates, which is me times 15-18 other students.  Multiply that by several times a week, and sometimes several times a night per student, in addition to multiple other classes that are working on the same thing.  That’s a lot of chickens.  And we weren’t very good at this whole butchering and portioning and trussing thing when we started.  We screwed a lot of this stuff up.  That’s a lot of “wasted” meat.  Of course FCI would bow to the age-old food cost problem and go to a big corporate company for their chicken supply.  (I won’t tell you which one they used, but I will tell you that Perdue is one of the largest privately-held companies in the country, and that Tyson Foods is a publicly traded company on the stock market under ticker symbol TSN.  I think that both of those facts are very interesting.)  Why wouldn’t they?  We were, at first and after all, just getting closer to the bottom line while further ruining already-dead animals.  I get it on that level of business sense.  But what really got to me in a gut-wrenching way was that sometimes I’d just be going down the same mental checklist of chicken-butchering that I always did:  Remove all excess fat at cavity areas.  Remove wishbone.  Manchonner the wings.  And on and on until the chicken was tied up in a fat little package, breasts proudly plumped and appetizing.  But every so often, a bone would just snap in half in my hands.  And I don’t mean, you know, at a joint where it seems logical that it would break in two.  I mean, sometimes the bones just broke in half in my hands, without special force.  I could barely stand to eat the meat from these chickens, either.  It tasted like nothing.

I asked a teacher once about what was up with the chickens we were getting, and you could tell it pained him to tell me that those chickens had been subjected to so much growth hormone at such a young age that it probably was just barely able to support its own body weight.  They were un-natural giants as children, living in a wire cage (among many, many others) that was just big enough to turn around in, if they were lucky.  Imagine the Alice In Wonderland-ness of that, especially to an animal that, in wild nature, exists in relatively small communities having free run of large plots of land.  Imagine this kind of existence, not just 24 hours a day/7 days a week, but for your entire life.  Imagine if that was all you knew of the world from the moment you awoke into consciousness until the moment your eyes closed to life forever.  Imagine that in order to survive this completely wayward existence, you had to be pumped full of antibiotics and medicine so that you wouldn’t succumb to the myriad of infectious diseases that run rampant in these over-crowded, filthy places?  (Salmonella is so overwhelmingly present in American chickens that we can’t “breed it out” anymore.  In Japan, apparently, you can order chicken cooked to medium-rare temperatures because this problem doesn’t exist there the way it does here.  In America, chicken is always cooked to kill disease.  Think about that.)  When was the last time you saw “Wild Chicken” on a menu?  Even ants and common garden bugs have more freedom in their range of motion in proportion to their size.  I know.  I have watched them closely in my own backyard the past few weeks.

I read Michael Pollan and I own 2 Deborah Madison cookbooks and I shop at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket and I listen to WNYC.  I’ve seen Food, Inc. and I know Monsanto is evil incarnate and all that stuff.  I try, though, not to politicize these things too much for myself.  I try, instead, to think about choices in food (and all of life, perhaps…..) more in terms of human nature, and the lesser of two evils.  (As Noam Chomsky said once, “Choosing the lesser of two evils isn’t a bad thing.  The cliché makes it sound bad, but it’s a good thing.  You get less evil.”)  Some of us think about the bottom line all of the time, but all of us think about the bottom line some of the time.  I try to remember that.  I was a vegetarian for many years after my 8th grade history teacher Mr. Reilly showed us footage of a meat plant where things had become so automatic and so utterly “everyday” that it didn’t bother a worker to accidentally pierce a bladder sack, have the dead animal carcass essentially urinate all over itself, and allow it to proceed on down the assembly line like nothing ever happened.  It grossed me out on a lot of levels, and I wasnt able to think the same way, really ever, about what we do to our food animals in this country.  I do eat meat now (for me, it’s too delicious to give up), but I try, whenever I have the opportunity, to choose animals that have been raised in as “wild” a way as possible, and to eat from a broad horizon of options.  I don’t interrogate servers at restaurants about where exactly their meat comes from, and I still eat (and even like!) chicken sometimes.  Food is, to me, very much a pleasure, and too much of this political/business-y stuff tends to ruin the flavor.  I think about this dilemma a lot, of course, because I care about it, but rather than smack my fists down and preach to you while waving a liberal flag, I’d rather just encourage you to try delicious things, like rabbit.  (If you have trouble finding it, talk to the meat purveyors at your local farmer’s market, or visit D’Artagnan‘s online store, where you can find rabbit that has been farm-raised without hormones and antibiotics.)

This recipe is very similar to a dish we made in the garde manger kitchen at L’Ecole.  It was my first proper exposure to rabbit, from butchering to cooking to eating, and it’s really quite delicious.  This is my pretty-darn-faithful interpretation of it.  I braised both hind legs of a large rabbit (I’m saving the rest of the animal for another project) for several hours in veal stock flavored with a whole bunch of yummy things, then pulled the meat off of the bones, strained and reduced the braising liquid down to a really rich jus, and served the meat and sauce with sautéed shiitake mushrooms and hand-rolled sweet potato gnocchi.  If I’ve failed to convince you to try rabbit, this dish would work very well with chicken or pork or lamb too.  And if you’re vegetarian and can’t be bothered with this whole meat business at all, then I encourage you to make just the gnocchi (it’s so good with sweet potatoes in the mix…..) and serve it with a bit of brown butter and sage.  (You’ll have to forgive me on the “loose” and conversational nature of this recipe (I guess that’s sorta my style, though.) – I cook very much in the moment, and by feel, and I can’t tell you how hard it is to translate “the way I cook” into recipes.  I always try to do my best, though.)

Ingredients:

For the braised rabbit & cognac pan jus:

Neutrally-flavored oil, such as vegetable or canola

2 hind rabbit legs with thighs, bones left in, and all excess fat removed

1 large onion, washed, peeled, and cut into chunks roughly 1/2″ in size

2 medium carrots, washed, peeled, and cut into chunks roughly 1/2″ in size

1 large stalk celery, washed and cut into chunks roughly 1/2″ in size

1/4 cup cognac

1 1/2 quarts veal stock (preferably homemade)

2 bay leaves (fresh if possible)

2 cloves garlic, crushed and peeled

1 sprig of thyme, left whole

1 sprig of rosemary, left whole

Small handful of parsley stems

10-15 whole black peppercorns

1-2 strips of bacon, cut into pieces roughly 1″ in size (NOTE:  This is optional, and how much bacon you use depends on, well, how much you like bacon, how much of that flavor you want, and how thick/flavor-heavy the bacon you are using is.)

1 tbsp. parsley leaves, washed, dried well, and chopped fine

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

For the sweet potato gnocchi:

2 russet potatoes, un-peeled but washed well

2 sweet potatoes, roughly the same size as the russets, un-peeled but washed well

3 tbsp. grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

1 whole egg

1 egg yolk

1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus about 2 cups more

For the sautéed mushrooms:

1 3.5 oz. (or so) package of fresh shiitake mushrooms, rinsed very briefly in cold water and immediately dried well (NOTE:  Other mushroom varieties could be used here too, with the exact same cooking method.)

1 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. neutrally-flavored oil, such as vegetable or canola

Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

For the braised rabbit:

1.  In a large Dutch oven or soup pot, heat just enough of the neutral oil over high heat to coat the bottom of the pan with a nice, even layer.  When the oil is nice and hot, season the rabbit liberally with salt and pepper, and then sear the meat on all sides until nice and golden-brown, and little brown bits begin to form on the bottom of the pan.  (If the pan starts to smoke, turn down the heat a bit.)  Reserve the seared rabbit on a plate lined with paper towels.  Dump out the excess oil, but leave the little bits in the pan.  Add a layer of fresh oil, and return the pan to the heat.

2.  Add the onion, carrot, and celery, and stir briefly to coat with the oil.  Cook the vegetables until a bit of golden-brown color develops on them, and then deglaze with the cognac (stand back in case it flames up), scraping up all of the bits with a wooden spoon.  Allow the cognac to reduce by about half, and then add all of the veal stock, the bay leaves, the crushed garlic cloves, the thyme, the rosemary, the parsley stems, the peppercorns, and the bacon.  Bring to a boil over high heat.  As soon as a good boil develops, turn the heat down to a very, very gentle simmer at low heat.  Cover and allow to braise at this steady, gentle level of bubbling, for a good 4-5 hours.  (You’ll know it’s done when you try to pick up one of the pieces of meat, and the whole thing just falls apart.)  While the rabbit is braising, prepare the other components.

For the sweet potato gnocchi:

1.  Place the Russet potatoes and sweet potatoes in a large saucepan.  Cover with cold water by about 1-2″, and place on the stove over high heat.  Add a modest handful of kosher salt to the water.  Bring to a boil, and keep it boiling until the potatoes are cooked through and easily pierced with a fork, about 40 minutes.  (NOTE:  The sweet potatoes will finish cooking, probably, before the Russets will.  Check the sweet potatoes around 30 minutes to see what’s up.)  When potatoes are ready, drain them well and allow to cool until you can handle them, but they’re still warm.  Remove the skins (they should come off super easily…..) and put the potatoes through a ricer or a food mill (with the smallest-holed disc inserted) and into a large bowl.  Allow to cool completely.

2.  Add the Parmigiano-Reggiano, salt, egg and egg yolk, and the first 2 cups of the sifted flour.  Stir together with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon until evenly combined.  (Do not overwork.)  With clean hands, give the dough a quick mix.  If it feels at all sticky or wet, add another 1/4 cup of flour, incorporate with clean hands, and check again.  Repeat as needed until the dough isn’t sticky anymore and has the hand-feel and consistency of a nice mound of soft Play-Doh.  (NOTE:  I needed a LOT more flour. The amount depends on so many things, and you really do just have to feel it out.)  Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and allow to rest in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.  While resting, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil on the stove.

3.  After resting, sprinkle a very clean countertop with a dusting of flour.  Divide the dough into smaller sections (about 6 or so) and work each section into a log/snake/worm-type situation that’s about 3/4″ thick.  When you have a nice, even log, cut it into sections about 3/4″ long and reserve on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.  Repeat until all of the dough is used up.  These, my pets, are your gnocchi for the evening.

4.  Once the salted water is at a nice, rapid boil, quickly set up a big bowl full of ice water next to the pot.  Gently drop the gnocchi into the boiling water a batch at a time (maybe 10-12 or so at once…..too many will overcrowd the pan and cause the water temperature to drop…..).  Let them cook for a few minutes.  When they float up to the top of the water, they’re done.  Transfer the finished gnocchi immediately to the icy water with a slotted or perforated spoon (or a spider) to shock them.  Repeat until all of the gnocchi are cooked.  Strain and reserve.  (NOTE:  If you have any leftover gnocchi, just prepare them up to this point, oil them lightly, and store in the refrigerator or freezer in a plastic container.  They freeze well, actually!)

For the sautéed mushrooms:

1.  Remove the stems from the shiitake mushrooms, and reserve for stock or discard.  (NOTE:  I just chucked them into the braising liquid for the rabbit.  Made sense with the recipe, so why not?)  Slice the caps into pieces roughly 1/8″ thick.  Reserve.

2.  Melt the butter over medium heat in a medium saucepan.  When butter is just melted, add the oil and allow pan to get nice and hot.  Add the mushrooms and a pinch of salt.  Stir quickly to coat the mushrooms with the butter and oil, and then allow to cook until the mushrooms take on a nice golden-brown color, about 8-10 minutes or so.  Dump the cooked mushrooms onto a plate lined with paper towels to drain.

To finish:

1.  Remove the rabbit from the braising liquid when done, and allow to cool on a plate until you can handle it with bare hands.  Strain the braising liquid through a fine-mesh sieve and into a saucepan.  Put the saucepan over high heat on the stove, and allow it to boil/reduce down until it’s in between a soup/stew broth and a thick sauce.  (That’s a jus, baby!)

2.  While the sauce reduces and when the meat is cooled down a bit, remove all of the flesh from the bones.  Reserve the meat in a bowl.  When the sauce is the right consistency, turn the heat to very low, stir in a small pat of butter and season to taste with salt.  Keep warm over very low flame.

3.  When ready to serve, put desired amount of rabbit meat, gnocchi, and mushrooms in a pan.  Add desired amount of sauce, and reheat.  When hot, taste quickly for seasoning, adjust if necessary, and sprinkle in the chopped parsley.  Spoon some rabbit, gnocchi, and mushrooms into the middle of a wide, shallow bowl, and spoon a bit of the sauce over the top.  Serve warm with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on the side.

Yield: Approximately 4 entrée servings, plus extra meat and gnocchi, probably

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