Who loves bunnies?

I don’t mean to put you off your own dinner (or maybe I do), but thanks to some dodgy newspaper articles about a man in Sydney who loved rabbits a little too much, the theme of “rabbits” has become a bit of a running joke amongst my friends and I.

So my mates were pissing themselves laughing when I told them what I was planning for dinner.

158. Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGregor’s Salad (One & Two)
159. Pea Soup (Fast Food)

I bought the rabbit yesterday at Prahran Market (it's not available in supermarkets), and marinated the pieces this morning, in a mixture of yogurt, oil, vinegar, thyme and mustard. I cooked them in the evening when I came home from work. You have to brown them in a pan, and then cook them in a 200C oven for 25 minutes.

The salad is mixed lettuce, radish and baby carrots and the warm rabbit portions, tossed through an emulsified dressing of vinegar, oil and mustard.


Emulsified Dressing

While the rabbit was in the oven, I washed and sliced the vegetables, made the dressing, and made a pea soup.

The pea soup is simple as anything – 450g frozen peas in 500ml stock, simmered until tender and then blended.


Soup in blender


Pea Soup – served with pecorino cheese (we’re out of parmesan) and olive oil


Peter Rabbit in Mr MacGregor's Garden

As we were eating the pea soup, we were convinced that I’d made it before. I was pretty sure that I hadn’t, as it wasn’t crossed off on my list… but I couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d already eaten it. So after dinner I had a flip through my blog, and I indeed, have made a pea soup before, but not this pea soup. The previous soup I’d made was a Nigella-suggestion, not a recipe, of leftover mushy peas thinned out with stock to make a soup.

The salad was fabulous; I loved the way the flavour of the marinade really soaked into the rabbit. And with all the vegetables in the meal, we felt super-healthy and virtuous. I loved the salad so much that I would definitely make it again soon, and repeatedly, but perhaps with chicken instead of rabbit. It's not that I didn’t like the rabbit, (like I said, I loved it... a lot), but it’s just a lot of bother to go out and score it all the time.

Who loves bunnies? I love bunnies!