Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run...

Baked Pasta with Rabbit

Run rabbit – run rabbit – Run! Run! Run!

Don't give the farmer his fun! Fun! Fun!

He'll get by

Without his rabbit pie

So run rabbit – run rabbit – Run! Run! Run

 

The conversation goes a little like this....

“Why don’t people eat more rabbit? It’s not like there’s a shortage of bunnies?”

“Three reasons – eww, how could you, bunnies are cute; never tried rabbit, so will stick to nice safe steak; and ‘oh, it’s so cruel to shoot and eat wild animals.”

(There’s a fourth reason if you’re Jewish – rabbit isn’t kosher).

Now I like rabbit – it’s lean, full of flavour and carries a sauce very well. Plus it’s usually pretty cheap – posh rabbits from Bolton Abbey estate are £4.50 in Cullingworth’s butcher and I’d lay a bet that you can get them cheaper than that in Bradford’s John Street Market.

Plus, of course, if you can shoot and have a landowner’s permission, you can go and get your own!

So there you are, dead bunny in hand (skinned and cleaned by a helpful butcher in our case) – what to make? Pies and stews are the classics but, for a change, try doing it Italian-style.

Lorenza De’Medici published a book on pasta and accompanying sauces including several recipes for rabbit and I’ve stolen the approach from her (although the actual recipe is not the same).

Baked Pasta with Rabbit (to feed six - or four greedy folk)

One rabbit (cut into sections)

Two medium onions roughly chopped

Three or four good sized carrots thickly sliced

Two good sized sprigs of sage

Large glass of red wine

Pennoni rigati (about 300g)

Pint of white sauce

Couple of fresh tomatoes

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

Heat the oil and brown the rabbit pieces and soften the onions and carrots then transfer to a roasting tray. Roughly chop the sage over the rabbit and vegetables and pour the red wine over the top. Cover tightly with foil and slow roast for about 3 hours at 100° (we want the rabbit to fall off the bones easily without being too dry – it’s worth checking after a couple of hours).

Strip the rabbit meat from the skeleton – you want it to be quite finely shredded so pull apart the meat as you take it off the bones. Mix the meat back into the vegetables and set aside.

Cook the pasta for half its recommended time (typically about 5 minutes in salted boiling water), drain and mix thoroughly with the meat and vegetables. Turn this mixture into an over proof dish.

Make the white sauce and pour it over the top of the rabbit and pasta mixture. Decorate with slices of tomato and bake for 35-40 minutes at 200° (180° in a fan oven). You’ll know it’s done when the top has begun to brown a little and is bubbling.

Lovely!

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Easter - a thought, maybe a blessing

 

We celebrate Easter - the festival of Christ's resurrection. The wonder of that revelation inspires great good and sets us on a path of truth. But is this the only truth? After all the word, Easter, dates from before Christ's death and rising:

The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos."  Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. 

 The goddess of the dawn would be a spirit of fertility - a celebration of the fresh day in the same way that a goddess of spring would welcome the new life this season brings. Which I guess brings us to the rabbits - yet not in celebration of their proverbial fecundity but, it seems, in confusion with their relation, the hare:

In his late 19th century study of the Hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cites numerous incidents of folk custom involving the hare around the period of Easter in Northern Europe. Billson says that “whether there was a goddess named Eostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island.”

So what is it about hares that brought about such reverence during the onset of Spring? Was it their memorable courtship - we forget that hares boxing is the girl checking out the boy not two boys scrapping over the female:

 Hare were - in their mad march way - a great symbol of the explosion of life that occurred each Spring. The active, excitable, aggressive life matched with that other great Easter symbol the egg.

So what of Easter - are you like me witnessing a new summer emerging fresh, scrubbed and new from the dark ground? Are you looking to your family and using the time to eat, drink and make merry with them? This is the message of Easter for me - the joy of new life and the salvation that new life brings. A time to reflect on growth, goodness and the wellspring of ideas.

Above all, Easter, like all our festivals represents a time when the magic of nature comes a little closer. We hesitate to touch that magic, we wrap it up in silver foil, make it from chocolate and surround it with marzipan balls. But it is still there - a spirit of newness, a breath of joyous exuberance in Spring.

I like to think that is why those hares dance - at the joy of Spring.

Happy Easter!

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