Rabbit legs and tenderloin

Betcha didn't know you could get rabbit tenderloin, didja? I didn't either, I assumed that when you had a rabbit, you threw it in a big pot of stew and stewed it until it was tender enough to eat, because everyone says that rabbit is tough and gamey.

Well, everyone is wrong. This rabbit was tender and delicious. Since we had a whole rabbit, we chopped off the legs to eat pan-fried, and Ed extracted the tenderloin, which supposedly took lots of little cuts along the vertebrae to get it out. Totally worth it, thought, because it was a succulent, juicy piece o' meat. The forequarters we're going to stew.

After chopping off the legs, we put them in a marinade of dijon mustard, lemon juice, white wine, olive oil, tarragon, salt, and pepper, for ~30 minutes. Then we pan-fried the legs until the juices ran clear.

The tenderloin we just salted and peppered, and then wrapped in blanched bacon and pan-fried. While wrapping things in bacon is a well-known way to make them taste better, but this went beyond amazing. It was godly.

We served the rabbit with some [very overcooked] large white beans, couscous with caramelized onions, crunchy kale, and broiled eggplant. Too much stuff on the plate, really we could have done without the [very overcooked] white beans and kale, but, well, worse things have happened than having too much food on your plate.

The stuff on the plate before the rabbit hit.

To broil the eggplant, slice it into 3/4" pieces, and salt heavily with kosher salt. Let it sit for ~30 min, until it has given up a fair bit of its water. First you'll see little droplets on the surface, then a puddle of water underneath the collander. This helps it get crispy rather than mushy in the oven. After its given up most of its water, rinse off the salt and squeeze it to squeeze out any more water. Put the pieces down on a baking sheet, spray with oil on both sides, (or brush it on if you have a pastry brush), and broil for about 3-5 minutes on each side. Keep checking it, once the top is brown, you want to flip it over and brown the other side. Once the other side is golden brown, you're done. Take it out.

How could I have forgotten the morels! We also had about a cup of morels, which got cooked in about half a stick of butter, salted to taste, until they were crispy and delicious. The excess butter was poured over the rabbit legs as they finished cooking. Here we're looking at a picture of the tenderloin, wrapped in bacon, sprinkled with morels. Heaven.

More rabbit leg. The caramelized onion couscous was also pretty good, it was about two teaspoons of rendered duck fat and one big onion, cooked for ~30min until it tasted sweet and caramelized.


This was a very yummy meal. I'll take rabbit tenderloin and morels any day...