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Eating In: Rabbit redux

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A prized traditional game meat, rabbit is back on the menu for many Atlantic Canadian cooks

In the tight quarters of a kitchen prep space at the Brooklyn Warehouse, chef Graeme Ruppel is poised to tackle a tray of meat for evening service. He has lined up half a dozen little skinned animals, a few pounds apiece.

Knife into flesh, he deftly removes a plump hind leg from one body, sets it aside and quickly moves on to the next. “I can take apart anything,” he says. “Close to the bone, small strokes. That way you can avoid big mistakes.”

With its soft pink flesh, the meat looks a lot like chicken. But this beast has never taken flight—unless you consider the hopping. This is rabbit meat and it will star in a savoury slow-cooked dish Ruppel added recently to the menu of the Halifax restaurant. “I had served rabbit at an Edmonton restaurant where I was working and was waiting for the chance to get it on the menu here,” says Ruppel as he liberally sprinkles salt on front and hind quarters.

That opportunity came last year when he ran into supply issues with lamb. “It’s something lighter and it’s tasty too,” Ruppel says. With a dozen orders a week for the rabbit, his customers seem to agree. “The dining scene is definitely getting more open and adventurous these days,” he adds.

Hunters and cooks have long prized rabbit for its lean, gamey meat and its domesticated version was a popular item on menus in the 1980s. Now it’s bouncing back onto the culinary scene as a fashionable food in some Atlantic Canadian restaurants.

Chef Ruppel buys his from Wood N’ Hart, a Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia-area farm that sells 500 rabbits each year, mostly to restaurants and also at their stand bearing the name at the Halifax Farmers’ Market. But if you’re craving braised bunny for dinner, you might want to call ahead first. The day I spoke to owner Bill Wood, he was “fresh out of rabbit” due to robust restaurant sales.

Business is hopping for Wayne Oulton, too. “We used to have rabbits when I was a kid and would sell about 20 a month,” says Oulton, owner of W.G. Oulton’s meat shop outside Windsor, N.S. “Now we sell 100 a month.” He sources full-grown rabbits from five producers in western Nova Scotia, butchers them at his plant and sells them under the Martock Glen brand to restaurants and specialty shops, such as British Butcher at Pete’s Frootique locations in downtown Halifax and Bedford. “I would say the demand has increased. We’ve had a surge in rabbit sales in the past year,” Oulton says.

Laura Robinson runs an organic farm in Mount Stewart, Prince Edward Island. A few months ago, she added a small number of New Zealand and Giant Flemish meat rabbits into the mix. “People are concerned about food-safety issues and I think it’s pushing them into trying new things,” she says. “I think the resurgence came after mad cow hit, then everybody bounced into pork, then Swine Flu came along, and now with a strong ethnic population, we’re introduced to goat, lamb and rabbit.”

Still, the idea of dining on adorable-looking animals associated with Easter may be too much of a leap for some. “Even with my own friends, I’ve said, ‘I can sell you a mother and father to breed,” says Robinson “And they say, ‘we couldn’t eat rabbit!’ It’s an excellent source of protein, cheaper to raise than chickens but it’s that cute and furry factor that gets in the way. They are big, cute furry rabbits!”

However, many people aren’t the least bit squeamish about eating rabbit. Europeans have long valued the animal for its lean, high-protein meat. In Italy, braised coniglio is typical family fare. In France, the wild lièvre or domesticated lapin is served in traditional stews and slow-cooked dishes.

Here in Atlantic Canada, it’s part of the Acadian cooking tradition. “Wild rabbit was a staple in our family,” says Claude AuCoin, culinary instructor at the Nova Scotia Community College. “My father and older brothers would snare them.”

AuCoin grew up in a large Acadian family in Cheticamp, Cape Breton. “I have fond memories of eating it,” he says. “My mother would serve ragoût de lièvre (wild-rabbit stew) in a big pot, family style, and place it on the counter and she would use every part of the rabbit. If we had friends over for dinner, they’d be shocked to see a rabbit head in the pot. But we’d actually fight over it because it was the choicest bit!”

He cautions that these days, it’s not recommended to eat the brain of a wild animal as it can carry disease.

For years, regulars have been able to order rabbit at Café Chianti, an Italian restaurant in Halifax. “Braised rabbit has been on the menu for 20 years,” says owner Jan Wicha. “It’s so popular we’ve kept it on all these years, although the recipe has changed. We used to serve it in a red sauce but now it’s in a rich cream sauce and that seems to be more popular.”

At Nectar Social House in Dartmouth, N.S. you’ll find a Middle Eastern-inspired curried version on the winter menu. “We sell around 10 portions a week,” says chef David Clark. “A lot of people who haven’t had rabbit will try it. Others tell us that they used to have wild rabbit as a kid and they want to order it.”

While some people still prefer the taste of wild rabbit, take note that any meat sold to stores or restaurants is farmed and government inspected. Wild rabbit has much darker meat because it’s exposed to wider range of food in its habitat. The farmed variety, on the other hand, has very lean all-white meat and tastes similar to chicken. It can be dry and rather bland, unless cooked properly.

“Even farmed rabbit meat, it’s just slightly gamey—not overpowering,” says Clark, “And if done properly, it melts in your mouth, just like the most expensive cuts of meat you can get. But it needs to be slow cooked because it’s a tough meat, fairly bony and very muscular.”

Typically, suppliers sell the meat whole and skinned for about $7 a pound. Look for it in the game meat or specialty section of the grocery store, farmers’ market or butcher shop.

Or you can also track down someone raising meat rabbits for a hobby or on a limited scale.

Kalden Wood is a 12-year-old budding rabbit farmer, who, along with big brother Jaron, keeps about 20 rabbits at his family owned Maple Wood Farm outside Summerside, P.E.I. These aren’t pet rabbits and the Wood brothers don’t name them.

“It takes 12 weeks for them to grow to four to five pounds [1.8 to 2.3 kg], till they’re big enough to eat,” Kalden Wood says. And that’s just what young Wood did for the first time this past spring. “My mom and I cooked it,” he says. “We cut it up into pieces, dipped in flour that we spiced up and fried it in oil. It tasted similar to chicken. I didn’t mind it at all!”

Recipes featured in this article:

Braised Rabbit Legs With Ham Hock Stuffed Loin
Rabbit Pancetta
Wild Rabbit Ragout

 

 

 

Donna Gabriel

East Coast Living