Essay: Hasenpfeffer...My History With an Elusive Dish

The text of this essay can also be found on my facebook page here.

Hasenpfeffer.  

Noun.  A traditional German stew made from marinated rabbit or hare.  Hase is German for rabbit, and Pfeffer is German for pepper, though it does refers to small pieces of meat and not a spicy taste.

I was about 4 years old when I first heard of this dish, and my fascination lasted for 33 years until I tasted it for the first time in January, 2011.

The story begins on a random Saturday morning in 1978 or so.  I was a very young child, and I was watching the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show on Channel 4, which was the CBS affiliate in East Texas (broadcasting out of Dallas, though I lived in Larue).  A Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam cartoon came on.  Being 4 years old, and it being a cartoon, I was enthralled.

The plot of the cartoon went something like this:  Yosemite Sam was a cook to the king.  The king was kind of spoiled and was screaming for this dish:  Hasenpfeffer.  Sam goes back to the kitchens, wondering what the heck Hasenpfeffer is.  He gets back to the kitchen, and Bugs knocks on the back door.  Bugs wants something…a cup of carrots or something like that, and Sam slams the door on him.  Going back to his cookbook, Sam find a recipe for Hasenpfeffer….and the first ingredient is….RABBIT.  Hijinks ensue, in the typical slapstick carrion fashion.  It ends with Sam in the dungeons, and Bugs the new cook.  Bugs presents a dish to the king, saying it's Hasenpfeffer.  The dish that Bugs presents is …. a big carrot.  The king was ecstatic.  Turns out that he didn't know what Hasenpfeffer was, either.

It was a bit of a morality play in the end….with the point being that it's better to ask for clarification than to make things overly complicated.  I adored this cartoon.  I remember it coming on a few additional times through my childhood.   It was -- and continues to be -- one of my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Even at 4, though, I wondered, "What the dickens is Hasenpfeffer, really?"  I assumed that the cartoon was correct and that it was a rabbit dish.  What else was in it, though?  

I've always been curious, wanting to know the "why" and the "how" and the "what."   However, I was also 4 years old.  I didn't know about "cookbooks"and such, and there was no internet to look things up.  Even if there were, I wouldn't have known what to do with them…I couldn't spell Hasenpfeffer.  Heck, I could hardly say it.  

But I loved that cartoon.

i would, from time to time, think about the cartoon and wonder curiously about Hasenpfeffer.  It would only cross my mind rarely, though, and never at a time when I could find out more about it.  

Time passed.

Flash forward about 27 years to the 2005 Tony Awards show and the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

The Tony Awards are prizes given for plays and musicals on Broadway.  The shows that are up for the biggest awards get a chance to show a scene from the show.  That year, one of the nominees for Best Musical was "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee."  The show is about an elementary school spelling bee.  No more, no less.

They played a scene from the show, having Al Sharpton (the former presidential candidate) be a guest speller.   He was asked to spell "dengue," and Mr. Sharpton then asked for the word to be used in a sentence.  The sentence was something like, "Little Billy was asked to describe the symptoms of his dengue, and he said it was like there was a race out of his tushie and everybody won."

I laughed for several minutes straight, re-erupting every time I started to calm down.  This is not something I do very often, so I had to find out more about this show.  I eventually came across a recording of a live show.  I listened.  Oddly, one of the words spelled in the musical was "Hasenpfeffer."

The first time I listened to this, I was taken aback.  Then came the definition….a spiced rabbit stew.  I mentally filed this away for future reference, knowing I was one step closer to finding out more about this dish.

Flash forward again, this time to January 9, 2011, in Portland, Maine.  A winter farmer's market started up, and this was the first weekend.  I walked into the building where it was held (a former Catholic church) and started looking around.  

There isn't much growing in Maine in January.  I had expected the farmer's market to be heavy on meats, and I was correct.  I perused the listings of one of the merchants and saw the word "rabbit."  Immediately, my mind went back to the cartoon, augmented by the sound of the word being spelled in the musical, and figured this was my chance.  I was going to buy a rabbit and find a recipe for Hasenpfeffer.  I was going to make it, and I was going to eat it.  i paid for my (thankfully deceased, skinned, and beheaded) critter, brought it home, and put it in my freezer.  

My next stop was my laptop, where I did a search for a recipe.  It was remarkably easy to find one.  My course was set.  I defrosted my varmint and began.

I began by cutting up the rabbit.  I had never done this, though I had disassembled chickens before.  The way I figured it, most animals have roughly similar anatomy, so I could start there and see what other bits of meat I could find once I had removed the legs and such.  I was correct, though there were more "other bits" than I would have expected. 

As I was cutting up the rabbit, I started to smell something -- something rather sour.  I couldn't think where this odor was coming from.  I was a little surprised to find out that it was coming from this little two-pound critter I had disassembled.  

I have eaten rabbit before, and also venison, dove, squirrel, and I had hear them described as "gamey" without knowing what people were talking about.  Now, I knew exactly what they were talking about.  It wasn't a sharp stink, but it was definitely an unpleasant smell.

According to the recipe I had, the rabbit was to be marinated for 1-2 days in a cup of red wine, half a cup of water, and a quarter of a cup of vinegar.  Vinegar, of course, smells (and tastes) very sour.  As I put the rabbit into a large plastic bag and poured in the marinade, I immediately though this would be a tangy dish.  Double checking the recipe and seeing that it was to be finished with sour cream, my suspicions grew stronger.

Flash forward a day and a half.  I took out the rabbit pieces from the marinade and began cooking.  The recipe called for some aromatics to be softened in a pot, then the rabbit browned.  Both were easily accomplished with a minimum of fuss.  The marinade was then to be added to the pot with everything else and simmered for an hour, cooking slowly to make the rabbit pieces nice and tender.

As the pot slowly simmered, the sour smell of the vinegar in the marinade permeated my house.  I began to anticipate a delicious, biting, jaw-clenchingly tart and tasty experience.

I put in the sour cream to finish the dish, and put some food on my plate:  the Hasenpfeffer, some fresh wheat bread that I had cooked, and a green salad.  I sat down and put the first forkful into my mouth.

I was shocked.  The sour-smelling meat that had marinated for a day and a half in a vinegar solution and then finished with sour cream was not sour or tangy at all!  It was unctuous and mild and hearty, all at the same time.  Some bits were almost the fabled "melt in your mouth" tender.  I am quite a competent cook, and I was impressed with myself.  With the fresh bread, it was -- as the cartoon suggested, though somewhat obliquely -- a dish fit for a king.

In the end, there were no leftovers, and I have Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam to thank for it.

Recipe: Killer Carrot Cake

RECIPE:  KILLER CARROT CAKE

This is much more than the standard "spice cake with a little carrot in it" recipe.  This is one of the moistest and tastiest carrot cakes you'll come across.  There's a couple of "technical notes" and optional prep steps, depending on what you're starting with.

Part 1:  Cake batter

4 eggs
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups cake flower
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cinnamon sticks OR 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
8 cloves OR 1/4 tsp ground cloves
8 allspice berries OR 1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg (fresh is better than pre-ground)
5 large carrots, grated OR 4 cups of grated carrots
1 cup pecans, toasted (optional)
1/2 cup dried cranberries, cherries, or raisins

Part 2:  Cream cheese frosting

1 stick (8 oz) butter, softened at room temperature
2 packages (16 oz total) cream cheese, softened at room temperature
1 1/2 -- 2 cups powdered sugar (depending on taste)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Optional prep steps:

If you are starting with whole carrots, peel them and then grate them using either your food processor or cheese grater.  (I prefer the cheese grater, myself.)

If starting with whole spices, you'll need to grind them down to a powder.  You can do this with a mortar and pestle or a "coffee grinder" style grinder.  The nutmeg will be grated using a microplane or rasp-stylegrater -- about 12 "scrapes" will be plenty.

If you're using pecans, toast them by putting them into a skillet over medium-high eat.  Toss them every 30 seconds or so until you can just start to smell them.  Immediately remove the pan from the hot burner. Nuts will go from "toasted" to "burned and inedible" pretty quickly if you're not careful.

To make the cake:

Oil and flour two 9-inch cake pans.  Preheat the oven to 350 F.

With a mixer (stand or hand), beat the eggs until homogenous and frothy.  They don't need to increase in volume.  Leaving the beaters on, slowly drizzle in the oil and melted butter.  Go slowly; you're trying to emulsify everything so that it looks smooth.  This is a similar method if you were making mayo or Hollandaise sauce.  So long as you drizzle in the oil and butter slowly, you will end up with a nice smooth result.

TECH NOTE:  All these ingredients are made up of mostly two things:  oil and water.   Now, oil and water mix like...well, oil and water.  In order to make a smooth mixture of the two, you need another type of substance called an "emulsifier."  This makes the oil and water play nice and make a nice smooth blend.  I won't go into lots of detail about this, but egg yolks have lots of emulsifiers in them.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and spices together.  This can be done either by sifting them all together, pulsing them together in a food processor, or by putting them into a bowl and whisk them together for a few seconds.

Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and stir them until it just comes together.  Note:  This will be a very thick batter -- almost like a cookie dough.  Don't worry about that just yet.    Add the carrots and any nuts and/or dried fruit to the mixture, and fold them in carefully.  If you over-stir the batter, you run the risk of developing glutens and making the cake tough.

Equally divide the batter between the two cake pans.  Put the cake pans into the oven and bake for 15 minutes.  Rotate the cake pans (i.e., swap their places with each other).  Cook for another 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

Cool the cakes in the pans for 10 minutes.  De-pan them, and allow them to cool completely before frosting.

To make the frosting:

Beat the butter and cream cheese together until smooth.  Turn off the beaters and add the powdered sugar to the mixture.  Beat on low speed until mostly incorporated, then crank up the speed until smooth.  add the vanilla and beat together.

TECH NOTE:  Powdered sugar is more than just finely ground sugar.  There is also a little corn starch in there to help keep it from clumping together.

When the cake is cool, move one layer to a cake plate and put about 1/2 cup of the frosting on top of it.  Smooth it down and then put the other layer on top of it.  From here, put about 1/2 cup of frosting on top of the other cake, and smooth it down over the sides.  You're trying to make a very thin coating of frosting over the cake (i.e., a "crumb coat".  This will help the finished product look cleaner in the end).

Chill for about an hour, or until the crumb coat is firm.  Take the cake out of the refrigerator and put the rest of the frosting on the top of the cake.  From the top, smooth it down, pushing some of the frosting over the sides.  (Note:  Feel free to remove excess frosting as you go, but it's a lot easier to take off extra frosting than to add more and end up with a nice-looking cake in the end.)  Smooth the sides.  Chill for another hour or so, until set.