entirely safe and fun

Punam came up with the excellent idea of making a rabbit to bring to our friends’ Easter party. I mean, seriously excellent. The only problem I faced was that Punam, having grown up in a vegetarian setting, was a little squeamish about handling a whole game animal, leaving me to handle its preparation.

I am one for two with rabbit. The first time I made rabbit, I tried to roast it, which was a dismal failure. Rabbits are painfully lean, and their various parts are of very different thicknesses. Much better roasters than I have succeeded in making rabbit in this way, but ex hypothesi I’m not a better roaster than I am (ex hypothesi! really!). Chastened, I chose a moist cooking method the second time, and made a pretty simple but tasty rabbit stew - basically rabbit, stock, time, vegetables, flour. I figured I’d do that again. So we procured a rabbit from Mountain View’s best butcher shop, Dittmer’s, and headed up to San Francisco with the Easter Bunny.

The next morning, Punam and I and our friend Anna embarked on the stew process. I wish I had taken some pix of the cutting-up operation, as it’s hard to describe well - here’s a picture of a rabbit skeleton, if it helps. Basically, I cut the rear legs off at the hip joint, including most of the meat between the tail and the bottom of the ribcage, while excluding bones other than the femur, tibia, and fibia. It goes without saying that any rabbit unlucky enough to be in a butcher’s case doesn’t have any feet, of course… Then, I cut around the fifth or sixth thoracic vertebra, separating the forequarters and forelimbs, which I flattened, and removed the ribs as best I could. Finally, I trimmed the bone-only regions fore and aft of the saddle (loin), and cut out the ribs, leaving a flat, cape-shaped cut of meat. Then, Punam took over and began browning the pieces in a little oil. Once that was done, we deglazed the pan with about two or three cups of beef broth flavored with a handful each of rosemary and minced garlic, carefully scraping up the browned bits to flavor the liquid, and then dropped the browned rabbit back in to stew for a couple of hours. We watched Brazil, in fact, which gets better with each passing year. When we got back to the stew, the meat was falling off the bone, and so I pulled it, carefully removing the remaining bones. As my pile of meat accumulated, the reality that we actually were going to have a real Easter Bunny sunk in - my futile childhood ambition of catching said paschal lagomorph in his crepuscular oocryptic pursuits replaced by the actualized reality of eating the damned beast. I was pleased. Punam tossed five coarsely cubed potatoes, a cubed turnip, a generous double handful of “whole” “baby carrots” and three or four chopped onions into the stew for about forty minutes, and then we thickened the whole thing with a half cup or so of 50-50 water-flour slurry, stirred in thoroughly. It turned out pretty well, but in hindsight we didn’t use enough - any! - salt in the recipe, and it could probably have used some.

We had intended to spectate at the Easter Bonnet Contest and Hunky Jesus Contest put on each Easter by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Dolores Park, but the uncannily long and wet rainy season prevented that event from happening as planned. We did see this gentleman in the area, but weren’t sure if he was, in fact, some sort of genuine penitent rather than a disappointed participant in the Sisters’ show. Punam chased him down the street to get a picture anyway. It looked more or less like she was planning to tackle him, but sadly, she had the camera, and so the picture of her fixin’ to tackle a Jesus impersonator will most likely have to wait until next year.

When we arrived at Ryan and Vanessa’s house for the party, stew in hand, there were a few more happy surprises. In addition to superb black-bean hummus and tasty hot sandwiches, there were hard-boiled eggs and elaborate Paas decoration kits on hand, along with Marshmallow Peeps. I don’t really like marshmallows, but I have been known to make a peepeep on occasion - it’s like a turducken, but anatomically simpler. Amy hesitated to eat the compound bird, but I believe she would confirm that it tastes just like marshmallow chicken.

The egg decorations were pretty good. Note the chicken, complete with breasts, in the upper left-hand corner. This constitutes more evidence, if any more were needed, that good taste and cleverness do not always travel in the same vehicles…

Finally, Punam and I decided to take advantage of a momentary break in the rain to repair to the roof where we were finally photographed with our “Bad Dudes“-style monogrammed head-, arm-, and wristbands.Punam has had these around the house forever, but were waiting for the right President- kidnapped-by- ninjas moment to don them. The ninjas were taking too long, though, and we got impatient. My only regret is that I was not more fully sporting my pirate shirt (PIRATES 4 LIFE YO!) for this photo.