Rabbit & Andouille Gumbo

First off, let me be clear: I do not advocate the eating of pets. Domesticated pets are not food. In the area of what to eat, I follow the general rules of polite society as voiced by the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland. She was the one, you remember, who explained to Alice that “it isn't etiquette to cut anyone you've been introduced to."

Rabbits raised for meat are not acquaintances. They are well-care-for livestock until they're humanely-slaughtered deadstock that has been turned into “food” or “meat.” Livestock and their consumers in America are complete strangers to one another, usually. The same is true with rabbits raised for meat. Bunnies destined for the stewpot and hungry diners never meet in the (living) flesh, so to speak. Hence, no rules of propriety are broken.

By the time I get involved, the rabbit that will become my dinner is skinless, headless, footless, devoid of internal organs, and frozen. I buy chicken at the grocery store without ever seeing their beaks or tail feathers;  I buy rabbits from a local farmer without ever touching their fur, looking into their faces, or experiencing those prominent incisors.

As you can see, there is nothing about this rabbit that even vaguely resembles "Thumper" or that creature I met last Friday at the Canfield Fair. This is meat:
  

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The rabbit pictured above is a nice size for 8 or more people to share as an appetizer, which is perfect, because this gumbo will end up as an opening course for a cook-out at a friend's house.

I have been unable to find rabbit in the Youngstown area since I arrived here in 2002. Though sometimes a bit pricey (something I could never understand, given the ability of rabbits to reproduce), I could always find rabbit meat in Seattle grocery stores. That's the main reason why I ordered 5 rabbits (among other things, like capons, broilers, hens and turkeys) when I had the chance. In effect, I ordered this year's fall and coming winter's meat from a farmer last winter, when that farmer was still in the planning stages of what he was going to raise this year.
 
Last Saturday was pick-up day for the first half of my order. The first dish that came to mind—one I've been thinking about for months now—is a “simple” gumbo soup with lots of summer veggies.

Ingredients (please don't let this list intimidate you!)

• 1 rabbit, cut into 7 or 8 pieces
• 4 slices of bacon (I use MSG-free and nitrate-free bacon from Giant Eagle)
• 1 lb. andouille smoked pork sausage (I use Aidells Cajun-Style simply because it's the only brand available locally)
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 4 tablespoons canola oil
• ½ cup all-purpose flour 
• 4 cups of chicken stock
• 2 big handfuls of fresh green beans, cut to bite size
• 2 ears of corn, cobs removed
• 3 medium-sized red bell peppers, diced (seeds and placentas removed)
• 4 medium-sized tomatoes, skins and seeds removed
• 2 cups yellow onion, diced
• 4 stocks celery, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, very finely minced or crushed
• 2 jalapeno peppers, finely diced (seeds and placentas removed)
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or less...or none at all...depending on how much "heat" you and your guests prefer)
• salt, to taste
• 1 teaspoon file powder
• 4 cups of steamed rice (for serving the gumbo over)

Get ready to cook

I believe in prep. Lots of it. Cooking is no fun at all when you need something NOW and it's nowhere nearby, nowhere near ready. So get everything ready, lined up on the counter, before you start. 

Cut up the rabbit

The first thing to do is prep the rabbit by cutting it up. Although I took a photo of a defrosted rabbit in its shrink wrap (above), I forgot to take pictures when I was cutting the meat into pieces before frying. My apologies.

For those of you who would like some instruction on how to part out a rabbit, here's a link to a pretty good video on the subject:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8OO2vAwzQY&feature=related  The main difference between how the woman in the video cuts up her rabbit and the way I cut mine up for this gumbo recipe is that I did not de-bone the tenderloins but instead cut the saddle cross-wise, through the spine, into three pieces.

It makes great sense to take the bone from the tenderloin for something elegant and sophisticated like Rabbit Stroganoff, but what I'm making this week—Rabbit & Andouille Gumbo--is rustic. Basically, it's an everyday soup, and bones MAKE a good soup. This is also, by the way, my own recipe.

Prep the pork

Cut the bacon into 1/2-inch pieces.

Cut the sausage into ½-inch rounds.


Prep the veggies

Prep the tomatoes by boiling them whole for a minute or two, then cooling them in ice water, so that the skins slip off easily. Then cut the tomatoes in half, squeeze out the seeds, and dice up the tomatoes flesh. 
(And while the water from the tomatoes is still boiling, blanch any extra corn or string beans for freezing.)

Cut the corn off the cob. Cut up the green beans. (They can hang out in the same bowl, since they will be going swimming together later at the same time.)

Dice the bell peppers, onions and celery. Set 1/3 of each of these veggies aside in a separate bowl. (The smaller portion of these diced vegetables are added to the gumbo towards the end of the cooking process. They will add bright "fresh" flavor notes on top of the mellow "stewed" flavor of the final dish.)

Finely dice the jalapenos.

Get the garlic ready.

VOILA!  The hardest part--the vegetable prep--is done!

Brown-off the meats

Put the bacon pieces in a large, cold frying pan. Turn the heat to low and fry the bacon slowly, rendering as much of the fat out of the bacon as possible. When the pieces are brown and crispy, remove them from the oil and set them aside.

Turn up the heat to medium and brown the rabbit pieces on both sides. When they are browned (but still raw), remove them and set them side.

Last, fry the sausage rounds until they, too, are browned.

Sweat (some of) the veggies

With the sausage still in the frying pan, add 2/3rds of the onions, celery, bell peppers (save the last 1/3 for later), as well as the jalapenos and garlic. Fry until the onion is translucent and the celery and peppers are soft. (If you're good at multi-tasking, you can also start the roux in the dutch oven, see below, on the neighboring burner.)

When everything is soft and lightly browned, use some of the chicken stock (about ½ cup or so) to de-glaze the pan. Scrape up all those good bits of browned and almost-burnt rabbit and sausage and veggies.  Then turn off the heat.

Make the roux!

In a large dutch oven, make a roux using the oil and the butter. The oil will help the butter from burning, but you will still need to attend to the roux and watch it closely. If you have never made a roux, check out this video, which is the best one I've found so far: http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Make-a-Roux-148685554

The roux will take a lot of baby-sitting and a lot of patience, as you keep the concoction of butter fat, oil and flour from burning while waiting for the color to turn to a medium brown. The darker you allow the roux to get, the richer the flavor (until, of course, you cross over that tragic line between "caramelized" and "carbonized").
 

Assemble the soup and spice it up (but hold off on the salt and file powder for now!)

When the roux is nicely brown, begin adding the stock a bit at a time, using a whisk to keep things from lumping up. Once all the stock is blended into the roux, add the tomatoes and the bay leaves, thyme, black pepper and cayenne pepper.

Add the sauteed vegetable-sausage mixture to the broth, along with the duck pieces, the bacon, the corn, and the string beans, and bring everything to a boil. 

Now, let the gumbo do its "thing" for a while.

Once the soup is boiling, turn the heat to low and let the soup simmer for 45 minutes uncovered. This is when the magic happens and your house fills with the smells that keep restless dogs at home.

Give the pot a stir from time to time. (And get the steamed rice ready!)

Finishing touches

The rabbit should be cooked through and tender after 45 minutes of simmering. Simmer the pot for another 15 minutes after adding the remaining 1/3 of the onions, peppers and celery as well as the salt (to taste).

Add the file powder at the very end, a minute or so before you turn off the heat.

Serve in bowls over steamed rice.

Enjoy!