I hope the squirrel stew was not with reds. My friend is trying to eliminate the Canadian invader to the extent that native reds could thrive. I think he’s up against it but worth trying.
I went to school in Gosforth, Cumberland. Reds still extant in the Lake District.
In those days [‘58-63] culling rooks was an annual Springtime event. A boy 10+ and with parents’ permission was allowed, on the nod from the HM, to access his armoury of .22s, shotguns and ammunition.
Come April, May great was the slaughter of fledging rooks in the rookery of the school beechwood. Then we were driven round the local rookeries to carry on massacaring. I trust it doesn’t happen these days. Rooks have been wearing white hats for some years now.
I used to lecture at Lancaster a couple of days a week up to a few years ago and remember one could always buy grey squirrel at a butcher in the city centre. Ten years further back, I remember rooks being available at the game stall on Newcastle’s Graingzer Market.
These memories prompt the question why could I buy a wild rabbit in Cumbria for £1, but the French version (which seems the equivalent of a battery chicken) costs ten times as much?
OTH my question doesn’t really matter because my wife thinks that eating rabbit would be too physically similar to eating our little dog. Nevertheless, j’aime le goût du lapin…
When I was a child in the UK in the Fifties, my (American) mother would regularly make rabbit curry , but I’ve never come across it since. Also, it was the only curry she ever made (English style with curry powder, sultanas and rice) and it was also the only way she ever cooked a rabbit. Unfortunately, too late to ask her, why?
Back in the late '60’s I had a holiday job in the Ordnance Stores Depot at Catterick Camp, where my father was serving out his Army career. The canteen of the Stores served an excellent rabbit stew.
Going to Bath from London at weekends to visit a g/f I always turned off the M4 early, at J13, Newbury, so I had the 50 miles along the A4 to scope for road kill, rabbits and pheasant. This invariably produced results.
Not only wild, but not even £1, Mark. Tarmac - an excellent source of protein.
One time I picked up two big buck rabbits - probably too busy fighting in the middle of the road to notice doom approaching - and heaved them in the boot.
Next day, going back out to the car in the smkt car park, the g/f opened the boot and started screaming. I’d forgotten about the rabbits. She was a vegetarian.
Back in London, I remember making casserole with plum sauce, as y’do.
I am, as we speak, marinading rabbit pieces in Dijon mustard, prior to doing a recipe from Rick Stein’s ‘Hidden France’ DVD. Getting my hands in the bowl and mixing the mustard and oil over Bunny, I noticed a little eye staring up at me. The pieces included half the head. Stein used the boney bits in the chicken stock, so I will, too.
As a 16 year old I started cooking lessons at school. Lesson 1 the teacher pointed to hens pecking away in the yard and said time to make roast chicken. Lesson 2 she pointed to cage of bunnies and said this week it’s a casserole. Bunnies were a lot easier to kill and prepare. She was a firm believer in learning the whole process, and using every part of a beast. I doubt kids would be allowed to wring a chicken’s neck at school these days…
I had to start by putting up a stock pot, something I should have done the day before. The head and ribcage of the rabbit went in, along with the usual.
The rabbit had been marinading in the mustard, oil and all for 24 hours by the time it went into the pot to be browned off.
I didn’t have tarragon, used cilantro instead. The whole process took about 2 hrs but I surprised myself by how very tasty it turned out. The DVD is ‘Secret France’ not ‘Hidden …’ Good as a travalogue as much as gastroporn.
A pal out in the sticks north of Fumel tried the Aline Renoir chicken casserole recipe from the same source. A self-confessed 30-mins-max man, he reported “Lunch was fab. All I took was the ingredients. Cooking time - common sense”.
In other words he probably skipped the things that made the dish the Renoir family favourite. The isolation - he really is in the middle of nowhere, on his own, at the best of times - is getting to him. His next message was “Also - I’ve found that cooking kills food.” Bonkers.
Too right.
Kids nowadays seem to think that their meat and veg are born on plastic trays.
We had a French girl from Paris who had never seen blackberries except in plastic punnets.
She was over the moon when she could pick our cultivated ones.
In London, a fox would taste like a mélange of chicken tandoori, doner kebab, and Big Mac.
As for steaks hanging over the plate [J.W.] I’ve had that in NYC and LA, in the two branches of the same restaurant. The places only served steak or lobster. I can’t remember the name.
If ordering lobster, the $/lb price that day would be quoted at you and you chose a lobster by price. On location in LA one time, we went there. My boss chose a $49 dollar lobster [$7/lb]. It was gigantic. Its body alone took up all the board it was served on. The huge claws sagged off the end.
"Don’t you guys think you’re gonna get any of my lobster … "
I thought I’d be safe ordering steak but this, too, was vast. I couldn’t eat half of it.
The ribs in damson sauce at La Cuisine de Julie, Brussels, also hung over the ends of the board. After Les Petites Danseus - fab…
Graham, they know how to do big but for flavour give me Belgian every time. I can’t resist copying my review on Google maps of a place in Brussels, La Cervoise, in Grand Place.
"Steaks! Great steaks! Belgian steaks! The best in the world!
*You order a 200/300/400/500 gram piece of steak and a sauce [if you want one] which is a couple of Euros extra. Why mess with the best steaks in the world by putting sauce on them? Your steak is served raw on the side, with a rectangle of sizzling hot slab which looks like some sort of industrial furnace amalgamate to me. *
You slice bits off your steak and cook it just how you like it. It comes with salad and frites, of course. If there are four of you round the table all cooking your own steaks, it gets pretty hot. Send for more beer! "
I wrote a PS
"As one does, after this sort of experience, you want to do it at home. You can buy ‘kits’ of a cooking slab on a rack, some kind of heating stuff that goes underneath it. I did … all a waste of time and money.
The reason is that in the restaurants that do this, the cooking slabs are heated to 600C. There is no way you can get anywhere near this at home, in a domestic oven. These max out at 250C
Rather like pizzas cooked in wood fired ovens or a cosmic solo by David Gilmour, just enjoy it in the moment and remember how it was. You are never going to get near it at home."
Véronique, I looked up Patience Gray. What a remarkable person. To cooking and life what Rosie Swales is to sailing and life.
I make lapin à la moutarde regularly, my children love it. I don’t marinate it in the mustard first though.