Rabbit is the UK’s most populous edible animal, so why is it so hard to find?
I like to think I’m straightforward about food. I’ve never been on a diet. I’m not picky. I like all the things other people seem to hate (liver). The only food I cannot stand is raw celery. But, of course, I live in the 21st century, too, and this does take its effect on a person’s habits. One day, you find yourself grazing on little else but crisps and toasted cheese, and feel perfectly content about it; the next, you spend hours trailing the streets in search of ingredients for some mad recipe you’ve never cooked before, and probably never will again once you’ve scratched the itch. It’s lunatic, but there it is.
Near where I live is an Italian restaurant called Trullo. I love this restaurant, but it is small, reasonably priced and deeply cherished by locals, and I can never get a table there, not even when I cry in front of the maitre D’. Frustrated again the other night, I suddenly thought: sod it, I’ll make their famous rabbit ragu myself – I own the cookbook, written by its chef, Tim Siadatan, and hitherto shamefully unused – and next time I walk by, I’ll have no need to press my beseeching nose all snottily against their window. The recipe seemed straightforward, though I couldn’t think that I’d ever been required to boil black peppercorns to soften them up before. I had almost everything I needed already – apart, that is, from a tub of mascarpone and some rabbit legs. Here, then, was Friday-night freedom.
There are now tiny pockets of Britain where mascarpone is seemingly more easily come by than salted butter
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