We were at Eton College yesterday, and given lunch in the Masters’ Common Room (no not as flash as it sounds; it is normal catering fare, albeit the upper end). The upshot was that we didn’t need a big meal last night, so our planned dinner was delayed to today.
Back on Saturday we went to Norwich to see my aged mother and, as we often do, stopped at Elveden Estate Shop on the way home, which I’ve written about before (see for instance here). And wow, did we get some bargains!
First of all we snaffled a couple of gammon hocks. Yes, they’re cheap (under £4 each), but these were huge and there is a surprising amount of tasty meat on them if you’re prepared to do a bit of work.
Noreen then spotted a couple of ends of sausages. So we got three wild boar and three venison (large) sausages basically at half price because it was the end of the day.
We then grabbed the last pack of wild rabbit. A whole, jointed wild rabbit for about £3 has to be worth having. And this is what we ate tonight.
Add to that we bought a bunch of fresh “rainbow” carrots, three plate-sized field mushrooms, some local apples and some huge vine tomatoes.

Anyway this is really about the rabbit.
And before we go any further, no rabbits aren’t cute and cuddly. They can be a real pest and anyway the rabbit is only Nature’s way of turning grass into fox food.
So I give you a recipe I invented some years ago but haven’t done for a while …
Autumn Rabbit
There isn’t a lot of meat on a wild rabbit so one rabbit will feed two greedy or three normal people.  So adjust the following as needed. Yes you can use farmed rabbit, but it doesn’t have the same game-y flavour.
You will need:
a butchered and jointed wild rabbit
a large onion, roughly chopped
cloves of garlic (to taste)
2 windfall apples, trimmed and roughly chopped
2 good handfuls of fresh wild blackberries
half wine glass of gin or calvados
some fresh sage leaves
olive oil
knob of butter
salt & pepper
This is what you do:
Wash the rabbit and blackberries
Prepare the onion, garlic and apples and put in a large cast iron casserole with some olive oil and the butter.
Sweat/fry this for a few minutes, until the onion is beginning to go translucent.
Now add the rabbit pieces and brown them on both sides.
Throw in the blackberries, gin and sage leaves; season with pepper and a little salt and allow the casserole to come to a boil.
Put the lid on the casserole and transfer to the oven at about 170C (with fan) for about an hour.
You will now have a casserole of purple rabbit which you can serve with roasted rainbow carrots, jacket potatoes and a robust red wine.
It couldn’t be a lot simpler or very much tastier!
Oh yes, and those sausages were cooked on Sunday evening in an Italian-style tomato sauce and served with linguine on a plate-sized, grilled, field mushroom. And wow was that good too!