Dinner Diary - Curried Rabbit Baked in a Pumpkin

Yeah, this is about to get weird...

Rabbit is one of the great under-used meats. Its plentiful, and killed as a pest species to protect vegetable crops all over the UK. Its low in fat, high in protein, and its ridiculously delicious. In some cities (I'm looking at you, Cambridge) its peculiarly expensive, but in others (yaay for Ely!) its very cheap. This one was one of two I got for a fiver, and from the looks of him its an older male. A few years ago you used to see rows of rabbits hanging in front of game butchers in the better market places in British cities, but thats a thing of the past now. The advantage of that was you could pick out your bunny for the purpose you had in mind. Gamey old buck for a stew, younger doe for frying or roasting. These days its a bit more pot-luck, but a trained nose will usually find the right bunny.

I often cook rabbit by making up a curry paste, rubbing it inside and out, and marinading it overnight before stuffing it with nuts and raisins, wrapping it tight, and baking that slowly. I thought I'd try something different this time, so I made up a curry paste by dropping everything (onions, lemon juice and zest, chili, ginger, garlic, some oil and lots of spices - coriander, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, fennel, clove, pepper, salt, mace, cayenne) into a food processor before rubbing it all over the (jointed) rabbit. I left that to marinade all day.

Later on in the afternoon I cut open the pumpkin (and yes, this is a Haloween pumpkin, they're quite delicious!) in the garden and scooped its guts (fibres and seeds) out to throw to my hens, who love them. Then I filled it up with the rabbit (with the marinade still all over it), handfulls of nuts and raisins, some more spice (garam masala), curry leaves, lots of salt (because pumpkin eats salt), some coconut milk to go about half way up, more lemon juice, and to top it off some mushrooms (I used wild parasol mushrooms, because thats what I had). 

Then the lid went on and I roasted the whole thing at about 170C for three hours or so, until it was done, and then left it in a warm (100C) oven until we were hungry. And it was, I must say, spectacular.

So we had a couple of bits of rabbit each and and a scoop of mushroomy, coconuty curry sauce with fruit and nuts in it, with rice and a nice big slice of the pumpkin. 

I don't as a rule cost my dinners, because if you're cooking from scratch its never expensive. A pumkin costs you a quid at the supermarkets, the rabbit was £2.50, the mushrooms were wild so they're free, the fruit and nuts? I dunno, but less than a quid. And a few spices and dried coconut milk? Not 50p. I'll turn the remnants into a curry soup for tomorrow night, so its going to be at least four portions, for about four quid. 

So if you want an absolute  show-stopper of a dinner, I really would recommend this.