Butchering Rabbit

Interesting activities I did at school this past week:

• Grilled salmon
  
• Stuffed animals into themselves
• veal rolls (flattened lamb with a mixture containing lamb rolled up to neat package), very tasty
  
• stuffed chicken (chicken stuffed with a chicken mousse), also very tasty
• Turned mushrooms and carrots (no success with either veg)
  
• Made coffee éclairs
• Butchered a rabbit

At 8:30 in the morning my cuisine class began butchering one rabbit each. The room was markedly silent. The surgery had begun for each of us.

The skin was already removed from the rabbits for us, but everything, including eyes remained + a little bit of white bunny fur on mine. I didn't have an issue with butchering the rabbit but a few did with reason. A skinned rabbit does resemble a small stretched out dog and of course it very clearly resembles a rabbit.

The rabbit is fairly straightforward in taking apart, at least the large cuts are. You have to make slices into the body until you are about to hit the bone such as the vertebrae and then you finish the separation with a twist of your hands so you are actually manually separating and breaking the back bones with your hands. It's a twist of the hands, a crunch sound and the body is separated into parts. You have to do this because the bones splinter if you use a knife and this is dangerous for the customer to eat. We were warned never to give dogs rabbit bones because the bones will cut up a dogs intestines.

Once the body is cut up into parts, the detailed work begins and it's just hard. I would need a lot of practice to make really clean cuts and know exactly where to make the first cuts because some of the parts are so very small.

A few highlights from this experience:

• Removing the lungs:
• This wasn't too bad but it was necessary to get to the heart. The lungs are soft, whitish with red veins running through.
  
• Removing the heart:
• The heart is so small for the size of the animal. It was hard to get my knife into the body cavity so I had to tug a bit which felt a little sad.
  
• Anecdote from a friend's experience: My friend was pulling out the heart and the rabbit jerked and moved. He was so freaked out. I would have been too.
  
• Cutting up the liver:
• Easy to remove and cut up. However, I looked over at my friend's cutting board and when she cut into her rabbit's liver...it began peeing on her! Bright yellow pee. One of the nastiest images burned into my memory ever. Now quite funny.
  

Again, the butchering was not that bad but when I got to the head of the rabbit, the eyes just keep staring at me. I tried to work quickly to finish up so I didnt have to see the head anymore. I am grateful for the experience and now have more than 3/4s of the rabbit in my fridge, along with the chicken mousse and the veal rolls...

Note: These are replatings! so not as nice looking as when the food was made (primarily because some of the components have sauce on them now that shouldn't due to transport to my house i.e. everything goes into a big container including the sauce).

Rabbit with its liver & kidneys on rosemary skewers + sautéed potatoes


The full plating for school for this was huge. You place one of every piece of the rabbit on the plate include the full saddle.

Veal rolls with turned carrots and pearl onions


I would definitely make this again. To totally demean the dish, it is, in fact, the best tasting meatloaf in the world without tasting at all like meatloaf.

Suprême of chicken with sautéed mushrooms


This dish is not too difficult make and the mousse inside is really good. I had extra mousse so I used two other methods of cooking the mousse--one: in a ceramic ramekin in a water bath in the oven; two: rolled as a sausage in plastic wrap (yes, plastic! but food grade) simmered in chicken stock. once the little sausage can hold its shape, you poke the plastic and the stock flavors the mousse as it finishes cooking. Yum!