Don't Judge Me!

I cooked rabbits.

I know, I know, But before you say "But eating bunnies is so cruel! Wook at their widdle faces!" I'll just say this-
Yes, bunnies are really cute, but then so are pigs, chickens, pheasants, lambs, cows and even prawns. The rabbits I cooked were wild and so as free-range as you can get. They're a fabulous source of lean protein and super cheap, at a mere £2.50 each from a game supplier at my favourite local farmers market.
I'll admit that for many years I couldn't conceive of eating bunny, as I'd had them as pets growing up but I would much rather that than cook any of the millions of factory-farmed animals that never see the light of day or live any kind of natural life.

*Give me a second to climb down from my soap box....*

I've only cooked rabbit a handful of times before, having tried Jamie Oliver's Essex Fried Rabbit once with tough, dry results and a few casseroles and stews with marginally better texture and flavour.

The problem with rabbit is similar to those we all experience with many game birds in that if the whole rabbit is cooked in the same way, you end up with at least one tough and chewy component.
The legs benefit from long, slow cooking much the same way that duck legs do, while the loin turns to dry, splintery nastiness when given anything more than a quick flash in the pan or oven.

I bought Flopsy and Mopsy home without any real idea of what I wanted to do with them, but I knew it had to be something different from my previous attempts and that if the result wasn't satisfactory, I would probably leave bunnies alone from here on out. I thought about it for a few days and decided to give the rabbits a little bit of a Chinese treatment, slow 'red' cooking the legs and then giving the loin a quick stir-fry with some carrot (of course!) and cashew nuts. Simple right? You'd think so....

So that afternoon, I can't remember why, I got to thinking about Nine Inch Nails and how much I loved Trent Reznor when I was in my teens. I decided to Google him to see what he was up to these days and landed on his Wikipedia page. At the bottom, there was a link to a video that he had narrated for PETA about the Chinese fur industry. I am not going to post a link to it here, because there is no amount of disclaimers or warnings that could prepare you for what you see, and his isn't even the hardest of these Chinese fur PETA vids to watch. Basically, the undercover video shows images of animal abuse so horrific, it makes the Hostel and Saw movies look like Sesame Street. Google them if you like and try to watch if you can. I have said before that when we were in China we were shocked by the animal welfare standards (or lack thereof) but this is something else. I have resolved to never again buy a Chinese animal product, including leather.

Wow, look! I somehow ended up back on my soap box!

*climbs down*

So I felt pretty guilty while washing residual fur from my rabbits and really didn't think I'd be able to eat them, especially cooked Chinese style. I told myself that I was being silly and that these rabbits had had happy, hoppy lives and had been dispatched in a humane way and that I couldn't stop cooking Chinese food just because of a horrible video. I forged ahead and I'm glad that I did, because the result was by FAR my best rabbit result to date. If you do cook rabbit, I would definitely give this a try. If your childhood memories of Peter or the Velveteen Rabbits are still too fresh, then skip this post and stick around for the completely animal-free one coming tomorrow.
If you dig on swine, the red cooking is traditionally done with pork belly and is seriously out of this world.

Red-Cooked Rabbit Legs
serves 4, takes 2 1/2 hours (only 20 mins or so work)

4 each front and back rabbit legs (either wild or free-range)
2cm piece of ginger, sliced approximately 2mm (1/8") thick
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 tbsp caster or granulated sugar
3 tbsp ground nut, canola or sunflower oil
3 star anise
3 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine
3 tbsp light soy sauce
500ml (1 pint) chicken stock (home made or good quality bought)

It's best to leave the meat on the bone, but if you have family members who whine when you leave bones in messy meat dishes (as I do) you can remove them. It may also be necessary to cut the legs into pieces to make it easier to remove any buckshot. Leave the meat on the bones of the front legs.

In a hot sautee pan or wok, heat the oil over a med-high heat and add the sugar, stirring for a minute until the sugar has melted. Add the rabbit pieces to the oil and stir-fry for a few minutes in the sugary oil until you have a nice, brown colour all over. Add the remaining ingredients to the pan, bring it to a simmer, then cover the pan, lower the heat and let it cook for about two hours, checking now and then to make sure there's still liquid in the pan. When the two hours is up, remove the lid and turn up the heat to allow the remaining liquid to reduce into a thick, syrupy sauce.

Stir-Fried Rabbit Loin with Cashews and Carrots
serves 4 (as part of the 2-part dish) takes 20minutes

4 rabbit loins (from two rabbits) silverskin removed
1/2 cup raw cashews
8-10 small Chantenay carrots, topped and quartered
1 tsp Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
3 spring onions (scallions) sliced about 2" long
2cm (3/4") piece of ginger, julienned
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp preserved black beans
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp Szechuan rice wine
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tsp corn flour
2 tbsp ground nut or other flavourless oil
Slice the rabbit loin into 1 inch pieces.

Mix together the soy sauce, rice wine, vinegar, black beans, peppercorns and corn flour together in a bowl and add the pieces of rabbit loin, set aside to marinade while you prep the rest of the ingredients.

Heat a wok or frying pan over a high heat until smoking, then add the oil. Toss in the garlic and ginger, stir-frying for a few seconds until fragrant but not brown. Add the marinated rabbit pieces to the pan, leaving the marinade behind and stir-fry for a minute or so, until beginning to brown on the surface all over.
Add the cashews, stir those in and then add the scallions and carrot, stir-frying for a further minute-90 seconds. (if you prefer your carrot soft, add it before the cashews) Add a couple tbsp of water to the marinade and pour this into the pan, cooking for another minute until the sauce has thickened and coats all the ingredients well.

Serve both rabbit dishes on either side of a pile of plain boiled rice with some extra sliced spring onion.

We're Monsters.

It's true.

We're a couple of murderers.

Those of you who read my blog semi-regularly might remember that we've had an uninvited guest living in and off of our compost bin for the past couple of months. It had been digging tunnels between the bin and the greenhouse, shifting phenomenal amounts of partially-decomposed veggie scraps and lawn clippings and eating its way through discarded old potatoes and apples.

We've been going back and forth about what we thought it might be for weeks. Logic says 'rat' but the copious amounts of poo he/they left behind were much bigger and rounder than my pet rats' used to be. To be honest, I didn't WANT it to be a rat, because I knew what Drew would insist on doing with it and I didn't want to hurt him. I had visuals of him laying on his back in the dark, on top of banana peels and tea bags, rubbing his swollen belly in a blissful euphoria. That thought made me smile.

It was a rat.

Drew flushed him out of the little hole he'd dug at the base of the bin by giving the compost a really good poke with a bamboo cane. He shot out the back and raced around the corner, behind the greenhouse and down another little hole he'd dug under the fence into our neighbour's garden. I wasn't there to witness this, but apparently, he was "THIS BIG!!" (about 12").
Despite my protests, Drew went off to Homebase and purchased two very angry-looking black plastic and steel traps. Ugh.

Two days later, while weeding the asparagus, I noticed that one of the traps in the gauntlet Drew had set up at the corner of the greenhouse was no longer visible.

Ohsweetbabyjesus, shall I look?

And there he was. A pretty little grey-brown fluffkin, eyes still open, looking at me as if to say "You let him do this to me! I wasn't doing you any harm, I was just after your old apples and potatoes! This is my family's summer home and now the kids wont have any vacations anymore because you killed their Dad and they'll have to go to a little rat orphanage! Murderer!"

I felt like Myra Hindley.

Drew SWEARS that the rat he flushed out was HUGE and that this rat is not him (Which makes it even WORSE!)
Drew is convinced that if we don't catch him, one of the dogs will and will catch some nasty disease that will end up on my lap on the sofa, then he'll put his head in my lap to watch TV, catch the disease and then will give it to me when he kisses me.

So if the little fella we murdered ISN'T Aubrey (the rat's name), then the one buried in the garden is basically the victim of a roadside bomb. OMG, maybe he was one of Aubrey's kids??

Drew says that the alternative is poison scattered in the compost, but I use that compost to fertilize our veggies. I think that we should use live traps and release him into the wild (or another neighbour's garden? That old lady who last Christmas told me I was "naughty" for picking a few branches of holly from the MASSIVE woods behind our house, that I (thankyouverymuch) keep clean and tidy with regular litter pickings! Old bat.)

So I have decommissioned the traps. I can't go through another burial. I can't handle the guilt. I wonder if I can put them in a tree to catch a couple of wood pigeons? They're tasty!

So really, the reason for the hyper-vigilance on our part with regard to the compost is because of the vegetable garden. It stayed cold for a long time this spring and we were too broke to buy seeds for a while, so we're a little behind.  If you like, have a look at some of the fun stuff we have coming up outside.

There are a lot of seeds coming up in the greenhouse, which will be transplanted to the bare spots in the veg patch and I'm trying to do it all organically again this year, which means I'm cutting back on my brassicas, because one person can only pick so many cabbage white caterpillars off leaves in a day.


French breakfast radishes

Sorrel

THREE different kinds of courgette!

Peas!

A few varieties of potato and some Jerusalem artichokes in bags

A crab apple tree we inherited with the house and some rhubarb I planted last year.

See that teeny tiny green spot on the ground to the right of the tree, about three feet away? That's a lavender bush I just planted. I buried Mr. Rat right next to it. sigh

There is a big ol' patch of empty in front of that tree and I'm going to try a 'three sisters' planting like the South Americans do. The idea is that you grow corn (my seedlings are TEENY!) in a grid and then you plant beans at the base of the stalks so they climb up them. You then plant squash on the ground in between because the big leaves shade the soil and keep the ground moist. Beans are a brilliant companion for a lot of veggies because they pump all kinds of nitrogen into the soil.

I'll be interested to see how it all comes along and will be sure to update you! 

I bought a book of veggie growing three years ago and it's just about the smartest thing I could have done. If you only buy one book about growing veggies at home, make it this one. It could almost be called "for dummies" and takes you all the way from sowing, through feeding and care and then harvesting and storage of your crops. Useful tips about companion planting are great for organic growers too.

Here's our modest little asparagus patch.

We've had two good harvests already, so I'm letting them grow into ferns now so that we can have a bumper crop next year. It's incredibly hard to restrain myself, but I discovered last week that the little shoots that grow off each spear are exactly like mini, super-tender asparagus spears, so I think I'll steal a couple off of each plant to have with dinner later.

As for the rest of the attempts at veggie self-sufficiency, we have garlic, carrots, turnips, salsify and parsnips already poking out in the dirt outside and in the greenhouse we have chillis, peppers, tomatoes, herbs and lettuces.

The one and only flower bed we have has land cress, rosemary, thyme, garlic, rocket and MORE lettuces, because they look so pretty.

The goal is to buy as little veg as we have to, and if the past two years are anything to go by, we should be pretty successful. Last year I went a bit nuts and planted 62 different varieties of veg and herbs, which was retarded because we live on a small plot in suburban Bracknell, not Southfork Ranch.

I was just thinking I would go out and play in the dirt for a bit, maybe have a word with the strawberries, but it's started raining. 

That's the great thing about greenhouses:-)

Too Soon?

Ok, I already know that these are controversial. I grew up going to Roman Catholic church schools and then, when we moved to the States, a very conservative Christian school. If I hadn't developed a bit of a sense of humour about the whole thing, I'd either be in a convent or in prison by now.
I made raspberry jam filled stigmata cupcakes a few years ago, and they went down well. The fact that every time Drew and Christian ate one, one would say "The body of Christ" and the other "Amen" did feel rather blasphemous, even to me.
Last summer I came across a shiny new hand-shaped cookie cutter, which I snapped up in excitement. It has sat for the past eight months next to the Easter cutters, just waiting for its debut.
I have made 'proper' Easter cookies too, but to me, these have far more to do with the actual holiday than eggs, bunnies, flowers and lambs.

I have made the royal icing rather thin, so that I can paint it on instead of pipe it and I use raspberry jam with the seeds still in because the texture is better. I toyed with the idea of liquorice nails sticking out ofthe wounds, but I thought that might be a step too far, and wouldn't taste at all good.

Stigmata Sandwich Cookies With Raspberry Filling
Makes about 3 dozen sandwich cookies

340g (12oz) butter
400g (14oz) golden caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
625g (1lb, 6oz) plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 pinches, salt

For the icing:
450g (1 lb) icing (confectioners) sugar
juice of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lime
brown gel food colour
red gel food colour
yellow gel food colour

Good raspberry jam (I use Bonne Maman)

In the bowl of your mixer, cream together the sugar and butter until pale and smooth. beat the eggs in one at a time, making sure each is well incorporated before adding the next. I learned for the umpteenth time not to keep the mixer going while you crack each egg in, as you'll more than likely drop a shell in and then spend the next twenty minutes picking shell out of the mix...

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, and stir well into the buttery mix. Scoop this lovely lot into a big ball and wrap in clingfilm. Refrigerate for a couple of hours or until tomorrow.

Divide the ball of dough roughly into 4 balls, rolling out one at a time and keeping the others wrapped until you need them.
Turn your oven to 170C (340F)

Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface to a thickness of about 5mm (1/4") and use your hand-shaped cookie cutter to cut out your shapes. Flip every other one over and cut out a circle from the centre of it. I used the metal screw lid form a bottle of glycerine, but just try to find something about 1cm (1/2") in diameter with a sharp edge. If you want to create both hands, then on every-other pair, cut the hole out of the other hand. That way you'll have a back and a front for both left and right hands.
As you go, lay the hands on an ungreased, cool cookie sheet and (as I learned later) use the cutter as a guide to position the fingers properly, as they'll wiggle about when you move them. If the fingers are all over the place, they wont line up when placed back to back as a sandwich.

refrigerate each tray of cookies for a few minutes before baking for 8-10 minutes, you want the edges to just be going golden. Remove from the oven and cool on the sheet for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into the bowl and pour the juices over, stirring constantly to combine. You may need to add a little more juice or water to make the mixture smooth and about the consistency of custard. It should not hold its shape for more than half a second when drizzled back on itself in the bowl. Use a toothpick to add a teeny tiny bit of the brown, a little less red and even less yellow colouring to make the flesh colour of your choice and mix well.

Use a pastry brush or large, clean paintbrush to paint the icing over the hands with the holes in and leave at room temperature for an hour to set/dry.

Use a teaspoon to put a blob of jam in the centre of the hand without the hole, then top with the holey hand and squeeze together so that the jam oozes out of the hole a little.

Now go to church.
Glazed Sugar Cookies