The hare that lost.

Have you ever had an ex-boyfriend who, it turns out, was sort of an embarrassment, a less-informed decision than you thought at the time, perhaps missing some crucial traits that would be deal breakers now? And you're glad the relationship is over without much heartbreak on either side, and while it was a learning experience, you're not in a hurry to repeat it. Or even think much about it. But there's all these photographs lying around, and you don't want to get rid of them, because they show part of your life, and parts of it were really fun despite being sort of awkward, and some of them are really pretty, and you just don't know what exactly to do with them?

That's how I feel about the time I made rabbit.

I bought a beautiful, fresh, organic rabbit from one of my favorite butchers in the Italian Market to celebrate the year of the rabbit, and also to experiment a little bit. I was able to watch as he skinned and chopped the hare for me. To prepare, I looked up a lot of rabbit recipes in cookbooks and internets, and found that, while they differed a lot, most of them agreed that browning the rabbit and then slow-cooking it in liquid was the way to go. So I got together some wine and a small group of people that are particularly good-natured about my cooking experiments, and went to town on my rabbit pieces.

Using another purchase from the butcher's - a container of duck fat - I browned the rabbit nicely. It already smelled good (and the duck fat smelled excellent) and looked pretty.

 

I added shallots, fennel, herbs, wine, and rabbit broth, and slowly simmered the rabbit for forty minutes or so. It still smelled good. 

While it cooked, everyone relearned bridge.

We made roasted vegetables, mushroom gravy, and Barbara's fresh bread to accompany the rabbit.

And then we ate it. And it was way too dry. I'm not sure whether it should have been browned more, cooked less, or both, but something terrible had happened in the hour it took to cook. The gravy was the only redeeming factor at all.

It was sort of devastating. A disappointing end to a relationship I'd been a little wary about, but had had such high hopes for.

At least in the end, unlike ex-boyfriends, dry rabbit can be put to another use: