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.
