Last week-end, I was idly browsing the meat department at the grocery store. I was trying to decide whether on Wednesday I would be feeling like Chicken, Beef or even say Veal. Not that it really mattered what I wanted to eat on Wednesday. It would most likely be the same as what I had on Tuesday. Cooking is easier if you take the option and choice out of it. If you only have fish, then you know you have to make something with fish. You don't waste time trying to decide if you would rather have chicken.
And as I slowly moved across the section, I saw an employee with a roll of bright stickers. She was eyeing the meat packages and then every now and then, she would stick a sticker on a package. My eyes started to gleam. She was doing the meat reductions. And as she was only doing it right now, the meat was still fresh. I started looking for the bright stickers. And as I moved down the freezer looking at the packages, I realized that the package in front of me contained rabbit; to be precise half a rabbit. Nine-something for a piece of meat seemed expensive, but four-something seemed reasonable. I briefly thought and popped it in my basket.
To my knowledge, I had never had rabbit. I had no idea what it was going to be like. The piece of meat looked nice, however. At home, I decided that I had better cook it tonight as I was not going to have the mental energy during the week. Browsing through the cook-books, I discovered that rabbit was a white meat, low in fat, and basically fairly good for you. I looked for the simplest recipe that I could find.
One was mustardy rabbit. It claimed to be a classic French Bistro dish. There's something about being told that a recipe is a classic French Bistro dish. You feel that not only is it going to be good but there will be something rather nice about it. However, I am beginning to suspect that the something rather nice about a dish means that at some point, it's had alcohol tipped into it.
The recipe was rather simple. You smeared herbs and mustard over the rabbit pieces, browned them, removed them from the pan while you did onions and made the sauce, then you put the rabbit back in, clamped the lid on and let it all simmer away.
End result - incredibly moist meat that was nicely flavoured with a sauce that was rather nice. Near the end, it began to feel a bit rich and you had to watch for the smaller bones, but on the whole, I was pleasantly surprised. I think it would be a good dish for guests. Fearfully simple and hardly any work and yet it packs a high gosh factor. As your guest tries to figure out why the piece of meat that seems like chicken at first, clearly isn't chicken and dares to inquire, "What are we eating?". You can causally reply, "Oh, I am so sorry, I should have said. It's rabbit. We've been having rather a lot lately. They've been eating all the radishes."
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