Don’t Tell
the Kids
Jennifer May for The New York Times
A rabbit at
John Fazio’s farm in Modena, N.Y. More Photos >
Published: March 2, 2010
RABBITS are supposed to
be easy to kill. The French dispatch them with a sharp knife to the
throat. A farmer in upstate New York swears that a swift smack with the
side of the hand works. Others prefer a quick twist of the neck.
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From the Rabbit Cover
Holly
Henderson for The New York Times
Rabbit leg stuffed with egg, bacon
and offal. More Photos »
It didn’t seem so easy at
the rabbit-killing seminar held in a parking lot behind Roberta’s
restaurant in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in November.
The idea was to place the
rabbit on its belly on straw-covered asphalt, press a broomstick across
the back of its neck and swiftly yank up the rear legs. Done right,
it’s a quiet and quick end. But it takes a little skill and a lot of
fortitude, which some of the novices lacked.
Nine people had paid $100
each to learn how to raise, kill and butcher the animals. One was a
woman hoping to start a farm in the Bronx. Another was considering a
move to family land in Montana. A couple dressed in black had traveled
from the Upper East Side with their knives and cutting boards in an
Abercrombie & Fitch bag.
Sharleen Johnson, who
rode a bus in from Boston, wanted to raise livestock in her backyard.
“This is my gateway
animal,” she said.
In an age when diners
scoop marrow from roasted beef shins and dissect the feet of pigs raised
by people they’ve met, rabbit certainly seems like the right meat at
the right time.
American rabbit is
typically raised on smaller farms, not in some giant industrial rabbit
complex. The meat is lean and healthy, and makes an interesting break
from chicken. For people learning to butcher at home, a rabbit is less
daunting to cut up than a pig or a goat. And those who are truly
obsessed with knowing where their food comes from can raise it
themselves.
Still, it’s a rabbit, the
animal entire generations know as the star of children’s books and
Saturday-morning cartoons, and as a classroom mascot.
Buttermilk Channel in
Brooklyn had rabbit on some menus shortly after it opened in late 2008.
But after a table of guests walked out, it came off. Now the only rabbit
served at the restaurant is disguised in a country terrine.
“It seems to me that the
more you can make rabbit not look like rabbit, the easier it is to sell
people on it,” said the restaurant’s owner, Doug Crowell.
But not everybody is
squeamish. Some restaurant chefs are lining up for well-raised rabbits
from small farms, using the meat in coconut chili braises, liver pâtés
and even upscale sliders inspired by White Castle.
“Every time I put it on
the menu it flies out the door,” said Chris Kronner of Bar Tartine in
San Francisco.
Rabbit is also becoming
popular among those with an interest in raising farm animals but without
much space or experience. Sure, rabbits can be fragile. They get scared
and have heart attacks. Heat or the cold can knock them off. They can
be bad parents, abandoning their babies or worse.
But they breed like,
well, you know. That means they produce a lot of meat for not much
money. And they’re clean and quiet — especially welcome traits in the
suburbs.
“I always say rabbits are
the new chickens,” said Novella Carpenter, who built a farm on an
abandoned lot in a poor section of Oakland, Calif., and turned her
experience into a book called “Farm City.”
“You can pay more, which
is the Slow Food method,” she said. “Or you can do it yourself. Which is
my method.”
Ms. Carpenter believes
anyone who is thinking of raising rabbits should kill one first. That is
one reason she, along with Samin Nosrat, a Bay Area cooking teacher,
conducted the Brooklyn class.
The seminars were part of
a larger East-West rabbit cultural exchange organized by the magazine
Meatpaper. It was built around a series of rabbit dinners at Bar Tartine
last month and at Diner in Brooklyn last November.
As the pre-slaughter
lecture in Brooklyn began, Ms. Carpenter prepared students for the
moment.
“Today is a somber day
because we are going to be killing rabbits,” she said. “But I am always
psyched after slaughter because I’m like, now I’m going to eat.”
The rabbit events
appealed to the kind of adventurous cook who signs up for weekend
sausage-making classes, in part because rabbits are an especially good
way to learn basic home butchery.
“They have the same
muscle structure as a pig,” Mr. Kronner said. “For someone who hasn’t
broken down a large animal, a rabbit is a great place to start.”
The classes and dinners
also attracted those seeking a slower way of living.
“American palates are
expanding and looking backwards, and rabbit is a big part of that, ”
said Sasha Wizansky, the editor in chief of Meatpaper, who first
suggested the bicoastal food exchange.
Still, arguing that the
country is in the middle of a rabbit renaissance might be overstating
it. Rabbit never really had a strong first act to begin with.
It has always been
something of a crisis meat in America. Poor rural dwellers who moved to
the city and European immigrants looking to assimilate found other
animals to eat as soon as they could (the French notwithstanding).
And although rabbit
consumption spiked during World War II, when the United States
government encouraged people to raise them for meat, it never translated
to the supermarket. When the French food revolution changed American
dining in the 1960s, rabbit in mustard sauce would turn up at the
occasional dinner party or restaurant. But the country never quite got
past the pets-or-meat problem.
Ever since the Victorians
began keeping them as pets, the relationship between the rabbit and the
table has been uneasy.
“It’s this weird
association with Easter,” said Sean Rembold, the chef at Diner and at
its sibling restaurant next door, Marlow & Sons.
Chefs have to tap-dance
between customers who are excited to eat rabbit and those who find the
mere idea intolerable. And despite its reputation as a staple in frugal
times, rabbit isn’t cheap these days. A seven-pound live rabbit might
weigh four pounds cleaned and cost a restaurant $25 to $30. D’Artagnan
sells a whole fryer rabbit for $36.99 on its Web site.
Chefs searching for
local, fresh rabbit can’t always find enough. In the Bay Area, cooks
wait for a call from Mark Pasternak of Devil’s Gulch Ranch in Marin
County. Along with his wife, a rabbit veterinarian named Myriam
Kaplan-Pasternak, he raises the most coveted rabbits in Northern
California.
They are such believers
in the economic and health benefits of eating rabbit that they travel
regularly to Haiti to teach families to raise rabbits on foraged food.
The Pasternaks and their two daughters were in Haiti during the recent
earthquake, when they turned their attention from rabbits to rescue.
Mr. Pasternak began
growing rabbits about 12 years ago for his mother-in-law, who is from
France. She brought a French chef to dinner and word leaked out to Bay
Area cooks. Soon, Mr. Pasternak was selling rabbit to Chez Panisse and
the French Laundry.
“I went from two to 2,000
in no time,” he said. Not that he butchers 2,000 rabbits every week.
Usually, it’s about 100. But he is preparing to quadruple the number of
breeding rabbits he keeps, making chefs in the Bay Area happy.
“I turn down two, three,
four restaurants every single week,” Mr. Pasternak said. “I get calls
from all over the country, but I discourage shipping the rabbits. You
don’t need me shipping rabbit back to New York.”
Some chefs in Manhattan
turn to John Fazio, who sells his rabbits with most organs intact to
restaurants like Savoy and Marlow & Sons and to a few Italian
markets on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.
Mr. Fazio started raising
rabbits near his home in Modena, N.Y., 80 miles north of Manhattan,
after an accident left him unable to make a living as a truck driver. A
couple of years ago, a chef at Cookshop in Chelsea started ordering
them. Others followed. Now he sells 300 to 400 a week.
He slaughters to order.
And he has a signature.
“If they don’t have a
rabbit with a head on it, they don’t have a rabbit from me,” he said.
Both he and Mr. Pasternak
raise a mix of New Zealands and Californians, the two most popular meat
breeds. New Zealands are longer and thinner but produce more babies.
Californians are a little meatier. Mr. Pasternak adds in some
tri-colored Rex rabbits, which are used in the fur trade and have a good
temperament.
In the kitchen, rabbit
can be a challenge. The bones are tinier and more fragile than those of
chickens, making splintering a constant concern. The meat sticks and
clings in an endless number of small nooks and crannies.
Like chickens, rabbits
have parts that cook differently. But it’s hard to roast the whole
animal at the same temperature without making some meat too dry or
tough.
The hind legs especially
almost always need a moist, slow braise. For frying, plenty of cooks
like to give them a good soak in buttermilk or a light brine.
The saddle, or center
portion of the rabbit, is a different story. The meat can be fried, but
it can be dry. So it helps to apply a bit more finesse.
“Treat the loins like
pork tenderloins and wrap them in pancetta,” Mr. Rembold said. “It’s a
great home cook trick. It’s like a chicken breast.”
For a salad
of bitter greens and rabbit he served at the Brooklyn rabbit dinners,
Mr. Rembold removed the legs, sautéed the rest of the rabbit whole, then
removed and sliced the meat to toss with frisée and a mustard dressing.
To make the most of all
bits of the rabbit, Mr. Rembold suggests a sausage made with a medium
grind mixed with some fatback or chicken skin to enrich the lean meat.
Ms. Nosrat likes to use up all the scraps and legs in a long-simmered
ragù.
Angelina Lippert, the
woman who took an Abercrombie & Fitch bag and her boyfriend to the
class in Brooklyn, brought home the legs of the rabbit they killed and
braised them with almonds, apples, Calvados and cream. The saddle,
kidneys and heart went into a rolled roast with garlic, sage and
rosemary.
The killing itself was a
little more intense than she had expected, she said.
“When I was the first
person to volunteer to break the neck, it all seemed so easy and
emotionless that I didn’t realize until after I’d done it that I was
shaking,” she said.
But she recovered
quickly. After all, there was a rabbit to dress.
Ms. Lippert still has the
pelt, the head and the feet. They’re in her freezer, awaiting the
taxidermist. But she doesn’t have the boyfriend.
“He ended up leaving me
for a vegetarian,” she said.
Please write to let them know this unacceptable, inhumane and barbaric!!
261 Moore St Brooklyn,NY
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/dining/03rabbit.html?ref=dining
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