Springtime rabbit

Rabbit is a very good food. It's white meat and very lean. Yes, it's a little like chicken, but a little different too. One of the classic French ways to prepare rabbit is with (Dijon) mustard. That's what we did yesterday.

In France, rabbits are available year round, fresh, in the supermarkets and at the outdoor markets. They are farm-raised, not wild. The flavor is mild — not gamey. Rabbit can be roasted, grilled, or stewed. In the past, we've made Thai-style rabbit curries and Moroccan-style rabbit tajines, and rabbit couscous — not to mention shredded rabbit rillettes with duck fat.

Rabbit cooked on the barbecue grill

After marinating the cut up rabbit for nearly three hours, we grilled it. The marinade was a couple of heaping tablespoons of Dijon mustard, a quarter cup each of white vinegar and olive oil, a chopped shallot and a chopped garlic clove, some dried thyme, pinches of powdered cloves and allspice, and some salt and black pepper. It was a kind of vinaigrette, in fact.

The rabbit in its marinade before we grilled it

During the grilling, Walt basted the rabbit pieces with the leftover marinade a couple of times. When the pieces were slightly browned, he closed the lid of the grill and let the meat cook as if it were in the oven. The rabbit was cooked through and not dried out.

With the grilled rabbit, we had a roasted spaghetti squash from last fall's garden, and a dish of collard greens from this spring's harvest.

The spaghetti squash was seasoned simply with butter, salt, and pepper. Spaghetti squash is not as sweet as, say, butternut squash flesh, and it went well with the greens, which were cooked in chicken broth and flavored with some hot red pepper flakes.