At first, I thought it was just me. Lots of places — Italian, French, ‘nouveau Vermont,’ whatever — seemed to suddenly have a rabbit dish on the menu. Braised rabbit. Fried rabbit. Oatmeal-crusted rabbit with mustard demi-glacé and guajillo-rosemary aïoli (at the Inn at Shelburne Farms, though I didn’t get to try that).
Was rabbit creeping onto menus with stealth…and butter? I asked fellow food writer Alice Levitt if she’d noticed anything. “Juniper has it in hazelnut gastrique with a flaming sprig of juniper. El Cortijo has had a ton of it lately in salads and tacos. I had it at Hen of the Wood in the pasta dish I wrote about this week,” she says.
Happily, the rabbit wave is not an illusion. I’ve had a long kitchen love affair with rabbits (as well as those who hunt them): a longtime boyfriend of mine used to shoot them in the English fields with his air gun, then skin them outside our door. I’d stew them with mustard, garlic, cream and rosemary, then spoon the whole thing over egg noodles. Even if he didn’t tote home dinner, rabbit was easy to find at the grocery store, where the low-fat meat is something of a staple. Here in Vermont, I was thrilled when I met a woman at a party who raised and sold rabbits on the down-low. I got a steady supply from her — that is, until she moved away a few summers ago.
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