The Easter Bunny... Barbecue style

Easter was for us this year a rather timid affair; both of us working at various points throughout yet we still managed to get the allotment dug over and planted up with potatoes (Duke of York), onions, shallots, garlic, broad beans and rocket; borage, lovage and oregano went into my herb pots and seed trays now adorn the kitchen windowsill filled with the potential of tomatoes of every hue and size.

Thus the dinner menus were also a tad subdued. Usually I go overboard with great legs of lamb and new spring greens but lamb is tricky to track down and I didn't have that much time. Easter Sunday turned out to be a roast chicken, but with goose fat-roasted potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli and the last few tiny baby leaves of kale from the allotment sauteed with garlic and a sauce made from pan-deglazing, white wine, crème fraiche, tarragon and halved green grapes.

But it was Saturday's quick meal that was really the highlight of the weekend. My freezer is chock-full of meat, mainly due to my inability to just say 'no' at the amazing cuts of beef at the farmers' market. However at the back was a whole jointed wild rabbit - of course - the Easter bunny, just waiting to be lovingly consumed at this appropriate junction. However, I didn't want to do the KFB recipe and I started thinking about the Deep South and barbecue.

Now, I know rabbit, with its tendency to dryness and its physical layout ain't that similar to pork ribs but I had a yearning for smoky barbecue sauce, coleslaw, cornbread and so on. SO:
Either the day before or in the morning, concoct a rub for the rabbit, mixing together a good slug of 3 of olive oil (helps keep the rabbit moist) with a tablespoon of paprika, ground ginger, cumin, a little (or a lot of) chilli powder, salt and pepper and a touch of mace or nutmeg if you haven't any. Leave the rabbit to marinate.

For the barbecue glaze, mix together English mustard, ketchup, cider vinegar, sugar, starting with a tablespoon of each and double the amount of ketchup and then tasting as you go. I added a dollop of barbecue sauce and a little of the smoky chipotle Tabasco I seem to have hanging around. You want it to be sweet, smoky, punchy with mustard and ultimately finger-licking.

Heat the oven to 180C and tip your now rather angrily-red bunny into a roasting tin, paint with half the glaze and whack in the oven for 15 minutes. Then remove from the oven, paint with the rest of the glaze (cover the tin with foil if you think it's burning a little with the sugar) and put back in for another 10 minutes. At this point the rabbit is cooked, but you may want to give it 5 minutes with the foil off to enhance the stickiness.

We had this with own-made cornbread (recipe to be posted), coleslaw and a garlicky, lemony baby spinach and tomato salad.

Kentucky Fried Bunny - seriously, try it....

I loathe fast food. I loathe it in and of itself, i loathe how it purports to be the affordable alternative to 'real' food, I loathe the advertising, the plastic crap, the targeting of children and those living adjacent to the poverty line, the garish colours, the flavour combinations (even the fact that I have to write 'flavour combinations' makes me gag). You get the picture.

What I find most satisfying is simply to make my own - from burgers to kebabs, pizzas to hot dogs and even - if you can bear it - fried chicken. Loads nicer and doesn't get that peculiar leathery texture that the most famous brand seems to acquire an approximate 8 minutes after buying. This weekend - after a particularly French brasserie-esque meal - more about that later on the Saturday, Sunday felt like a day for dinner in front of the TV, eaten with our hands. But chicken I had none; well, I did, but it was remains of a roast for which I had plans, so I dug out a rabbit I had in the freezer, followed the same method as I would for chicken and, reader, it was F.A.B. I'm posting the recipe below - please please try it, adapt it and make it again and again. Even with chicken, if you must.

1 rabbit (I happened to have farmed; wild would benefit from the same treatment)
1 pot buttermilk + 100ml milk or 300ml milk
120g-ish of plain flour
Cayenne pepper or chilli powder
English mustard powder
1 egg, beaten
Salt and pepper

Join the rabbit. It's dead easy with a big knife, cutting off the 4 legs and then chopping the saddle straight across into 3 or 4 pieces. If you feel squeamish about this, by all means get your butcher/boyfriend/husband/Pa to do this, but I like a bit of butchery, I must say...

Cover the rabbit pieces in the milk or buttermilk/milk combination. The reason to do this is two-fold. It tenderises the rabbit now and results in a moister finish after frying. (I nicked the idea from Nigella - it works a treat for chicken too). I left it about 30 minutes, then I tipped both bunny and milk into a saucepan, brought it up to the boil with the lid on and left it simmering until the meat was cooked through. Took about 20 minutes, but just keep testing. You want no hint of pink.

When the rabbit is cooked, lift it out of the pan. Admittedly at this point in time, it's going to look a god-awful mess, but nonetheless, set the rabbit pieces on a draining rack to cool and soak your pan in washing up liquid and water! (That's very important - it's a bugger to clean, that pan, if you're not prepared.)

While the rabbit's cooling, mix the flour with the cayenne, mustard powder, salt and pepper in a freezer bag or such like. How much you use is up to you - how fiery you like your coating - I go for the idea of something devilled, so I used 2 tsp cayenne and about the same of mustard. Once the rabbit has cooled to about room temp, dredge it in the flour, dip it in the beaten egg, then dredge it in the flour again and place back on the rack, while you do each piece. You might find the flour seems to wear off or disappear a bit - just shake over some more, that's where the crusty bits come from.

Now obviously, you could deep fry this, but I don't have an electric fryer, I didn't have enough oil to put in a wok, so I just heated about 1 cm vegetable oil in my sauteuse (deep sided frying pan) and when sizzling, added the rabbit in batches, turning them when golden brown and deliciously crusted. They're not cooking through at this point, you're just making them look gorgeous, so they are done when they look appetising to you.

We ate this with a squeeze of lemon and some chips, some aioli (garlic mayonnaise - our current addiction) and a tomato-chilli salsa, which i made from some left-over roasted tomatoes, plus 1 fresh, some chill, worcester sauce and a squirt of ketchup for luck. It would be good with some spicy potatoes a la patatas bravas, like the Spanish, or I fancy the way the Greeks do their chips, with a light scattering of Kefalotiri cheese, if you can find it.

Never did a bunny meet such a good end.