Saddle of Rabbit in Applewood-Smoked Bacon with Caramelized Fennel and Fennel Oil

Vacation was lovely, thank you for asking. And, how did I get welcomed home? By getting mugged, thankyouverymuch. At the grocery store, of all places. I'm fine. I wasn't hurt, but the guys who robbed me made off with my wallet, which not only had a wad o'cash in it, but also a drivers license with a kind of awesome photo from when I was really having a good hair and makeup day. Damn them. And, if I may risk sounding girly for just a moment, my wallet was really cute and took a long time to find, so I'm actually kinda pissed about that more than anything. Cancelling credit cards was easy, and luckily, I didn't have anything else of value in there. But I miss my wallet. Maybe Mike Bloomberg can buy me a new one, since he's decided not to run for President and thus will have some extra cash to spend on me. Maybe if you see this wallet in a store near you, you'll let me know. Isn't it adorable?

Let's talk about this dish, because I've been looking forward to making it for a little while now. The only two times I've ever eaten rabbit were in fine dining establishments -- first, in 1992 at Le Cirque and later, in 1999 at Picasso in the Bellagio. I haven't ordered rabbit since then, although I've seen it on a few menus. And, I've never cooked it. When I started this project and was going through the list of dishes, I was excited to try rabbit. I'm not quite sure why, because it's never been one of those meats I've had a hankerin' for, nor have I ever yearned for the smell of rabbit cooking in my house. I think it's because I knew I liked it, but I didn't know why -- and if I made it myself, maybe I'd be able to figure it out.

The day before I knew I wanted to serve this, I made the fennel oil.


I blanched the fennel fronds and the parsley (separately), and ice bathed them. I drained and dried them off, and put half those green lovelies into my blender along with some canola oil. I turned the blender on medium, then high, and whacked them until they were smooth. I added the remaining parsley and fennel in small batches until everything was a blended, smooth purée. I put the purée into the refrigerator overnight. The next day, I florped it onto some cheesecloth, and rigged it onto my Kitchen Aid mixer so that the fennel oil would drop out into a bowl below.


The French Laundry Cookbook suggests that you secure the cheesecloth over the top of a container, and spread the mixture on top and let the oil drip down. I've done it that way before, but had difficulty this time getting it to work, so I improvised. It tasted great, so yay for me.

While the fennel oil dripped (for about an hour or so), I cooked the fennel. I trimmed off the top and root ends of the fennel bulbs, and cut a small "x" into the bottom of each. I put the fennel into a pot, covered the bulbs with cold water, and added some thyme, star anise, fennel seeds, a bay leaf, and some kosher salt.

I brought the water to a boil, covered the pot, and let it simmer for 40 minutes. At that point, the fennel was nice and tender all the way to the core. I drained the fennel before putting it into a container and storing it in the refrigerator until I was ready to do the final steps before plating.


Now, on to the main event. The rabbit.

That package has four rabbit saddles in it, and I only needed three in this dish, so I've got an extra rabbit in my freezer, which I can't wait to experiment with in the next week or so. But enough about me. Let's talk about the bunnies. Oh, sorry. Does it bother you that I just referred to them as bunnies? Some of my friends were kind of grossed out when I told them I was making rabbit. It wasn't as bad a rejection as a certain celery dish, but no one was really all that thrilled to try rabbit. One of my younger tasters outright refused to try it, laughing in the face of my one-bite rule. I wonder if it had anything to do with me taking the package of meat out of the fridge the night before when they were visiting and making the package dance around the kitchen to "Here Comes Peter Cottontail." Perhaps I stepped over the line with that one. Perhaps.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Shocker, I know.

BACK TO THE RABBIT AND COOKING AND NOT GOOFING OFF.

Here's what the rabbit looked like out of the package:


These are what's referred to as "super saddles" -- the saddle (with the ribs attached) along with the kidneys. I turned one of them over and got started on what ended up being a long, laborious boning, cutting and wrapping process that I'm not so sure I a) did correctly, or b) enjoyed. The first step was to remove the kidneys (one of which you can see encased in the yellow-ish membrane there in the center of the rabbit):


Once I'd removed all the kidneys (and the membranes, fat, and other gunk that were present), I was left with three beautiful saddles, six gorgeous kidneys, and a sink full of nastiness:




This next part is a little hard to describe, but I'll do my best. I had to separate the racks (ribs) from the rest of the saddle, yet leave one rib attached to the saddle. Then, I had to split the racks lengthwise to form two (ultimately six) individual racks.

This photo really doesn't describe what I just wrote there, so instead, just close your eyes and picture me and Mike Bloomberg skipping through a field of daisies, feeding bonbons to each other...


The next step in preparing the rabbit is to bone the saddles. This involves removing the loins and tenderloins, trimming the flaps, seasoning the whole shebang with salt and pepper, then replacing the meat I JUST CUT OFF (*WHAT!?!?!?!!*) and folding it all back into a cylinder-type shape-thingie. Then, you get to wrap it in bacon.

I have no idea if I did this properly, and this was one time I really wish I'd taken an advanced knife skills-slash-small animal deboning class, because mama was confused. However, the wrapping it in bacon part? Pfffssshhhtttt. Child's play.

Please enjoy the horrors of my photography, as you try to follow along with what I've just written:





That doesn't look awful, does it? I think it's what I was supposed to do. After I'd made three of these, I tied each of the bacon-wrapped rabbit rolls so that they'd stay together when I cooked them.

So, let's do a quick check of the to-do list:

Fennel oil? Done.
Caramelized fennel? Prepped.
Rabbit wrapped in bacon? Oh yeah.
Kidneys removed and ready to cook? Yeppers.
French the bones of the rabbit racks? Oh, shit.

Yeah, so you all know I'm terrible at this level of detail when it comes to making meat dishes. I am not good at frenching bones. I know it's important, and I know it matters. I wish I cared more about it than I do. But it's hard to muster the excitement, fortitude, attitude, and desire to do something you really don't wanna do, but I figured I'd better give it a shot because I wanted to at least give it my very best. Or, as close to my very best as I could give without having the stabby thoughts.

So, yeah. I started with six racks o' rabbit. I used the right knife. I thought I applied the appropriate amount of pressure/skill/concentration. Basically, I just suck. I broke a ton of bones, pulled off most of the meat, and generally screwed up this step big time. You'll see in the photo below that only two racks survived, and they're lookin' kinda mangy and, in a word, sad.
That's not right. I feel like I need to blur those guys out to protect their anonymity. Poor little rackie-rackers.

It was time to finish the food and get it on the table. I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-size sauté pan, I heated a little canola oil and sautéed the saddles, rolling them around a bit to make sure all the sides were cooked.

I transferred them to a baking pan and put them in the oven, where they needed to cook for an additional 20 minutes (not 5 minutes, like the book said), while I finished the rest of the dish.

I didn't take photos of this step, but I removed the fennel from the refrigerator, sliced it into half-inch-thick slices and caramelized them in a sauté pan. Nor did I photograph the making of the rabbit Quick Sauce. You can click here to see how Quick Sauces are done.

I sautéed the sad little rabbit racks, as well as the kidneys (which popped all over the pan like Mexican jumping beans - it was awesome), and got ready to plate.

I squeezed a ring of fennel oil onto the plate, and in the center of that ring spooned the quick sauce. On the plate, you can see a kidney, a rack, and a slice of the bacon-wrapped rabbit. The fennel slice is under the rabbit; sorry you can't see it:


I know those racks are lookin' kinda ghetto, but let's talk about taste for a minute. I was admittedly quite squeamish about trying the rabbit kidney. There's nothing about the words "rabbit kidney" that is enticing, to me. However, I sliced a little off the side and took a bite. You know what? It wasn't bad at all. I ended up eating the whole thing. No one else touched theirs. I took a little taste of the rib rack, and it was nothing to write home about. Fatty, underwhelming, and just not even worth the effort I had put into it. The bacon-wrapped rabbit? Hello, lover. We all know that here at French Laundry at Home, Bacon Makes Everything Better™. There's nothing that bacon can't improve. The rabbit was actually pretty good all on its own, but the addition of bacon to it, combined with the fennel was absolutely outstanding. Really, just imagine it. Well, if you've never had rabbit, that might be hard to do. Let me see if I can describe what rabbit tastes like: if you could combine the texture of veal and chicken (dark meat), I think that's the texture... and taste-wise, it's... well.... it tastes like rabbit. Not like chicken. I didn't think it tasted gamey, and I really, really liked it.

Would I make this dish again? Parts of it, yes. I'd wrap the loin of a rabbit in bacon and make that for dinner, along with something fennel-related, for sure -- it was totally worth it. All the rest? Not so much.

Up Next: Veal Stock

Resources:
Rabbit from D'Artagnan
Produce from Whole Foods
Spices from Takoma Park-Silver Spring Co-op
Niman Ranch applewood-smoked bacon
365 canola oil

Music to Cook By: Shelby Lynne; Temptation. If you were to ask me what kinds of music I don't like, I'd probably tell you there are two kinds: Country and Western. I also don't like Celine Dion, but it doesn't fit within the joke, now, does it? From time to time, I can stand listening to old classic country like Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, but anything in the country genre that came out in the past 20 years just makes my shoulder blades twitch. Except for Shelby Lynne. There's something about her voice that I just love, and I love that she had already been a successful recording artist for about 15 years when she won a Grammy for Best New Artist. Duh, Academy people. Duh.

Read my previous post: Notes and Notables