Behind the French Menu

Lapin and Lièvre – Rabbits and Hares. Rabbit and Hares in French Cuisine.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Farmed European Rabbit

www.flickr.com/photos/bortescristian/8110009748/

Rabbit

Rabbit and hare have always been popular in French cuisine and will be on many French restaurant menus. Rabbit is tasty, inexpensive, and an easy to cook food, and until some sixty-plus years ago, rabbit was also a British and North American staple. During WWII, British families raised rabbits for food in their back gardens.

The rabbit on your French menu will have been farm-bred for the cooking pot. There are many types of rabbits in Europe, but those that are raised for food will have developed from the wild European rabbit. Rabbits are classified with chicken for their ease of preparation in the kitchen and will be on many bistro menus as a comfort food.

Stuffed rabbit saddle with spinach,

Sauteed artichokes, carrots, and ragout of rabbit kidney.

(The saddle is the meatiest part of a rabbit or hare).

Photograph courtesy of Ross Bruniges

www.flickr.com/photos/thecssdiv/7631525996/

Farmed rabbit, will be on the menu all year round, and over the Easter weekend rabbit is a traditional French family dish. Wild rabbit, Lapin de Garenne, will be on some menus during the hunting season.

Rabbit on French menus:

Ballotine de Lapin et Morilles – Boned rabbit stuffed with wild morel mushrooms.

Lapin à la Kriek – Rabbit cooked in a Belgian, cherry-flavored, beer. Kriek is the Flemish name for a popular sour red cherry.

Saddle of rabbit at Per Se, New York.

Photograph courtesy of Tom Mascardo

www.flickr.com/photos/mascardo1/2602389527/

Lapin En Hure – Rabbit cooked with herbs and vegetables and served de-boned in aspic. The way this dish is served depends on the chef. Small portions may be offered as an entrée; a larger serving may come with a sauce ravigote as the main course. Sauce Ravigote is a thick vinaigrette sauce made with mustard, eggs, olive oil, and herbs.

Lapin en Paquets - Rabbit in packets, a popular Provençal dish where the rabbit is cooked in small pieces wrapped in bacon, flavored with garlic and served with tomatoes and sweet peppers.

Braised rabbit with gnocchi

Photograph courtesy of Tom Ipri

www.flickr.com/photos/tomspix/5988021334/

Râble de Lapin Farci de Figues – Roast saddle of rabbit stuffed with figs. The saddle is the center of the back and the meatiest part of a rabbit or hare.

Salade de Foies de Lapin’s Grillés, Vinaigrette à la Framboise – A salad of grilled rabbit liver served with a raspberry vinaigrette.

Rabbit does not taste like chicken; it has a stronger taste with very tender meat. Rabbit has more protein than chicken, beef, veal a or pork, and less cholesterol than chicken, turkey, beef or pork

Lapin Charentais des Mille Vents, Label Rouge – This is one of the six highest quality, farm-raised rabbits in France. This rabbit and five others hold the Label Rouge, the red label, for consistent quality and a high standard of animal husbandry. This farm-raised rabbit comes from the part of Poitou-Charentes now included in the super-region of Nouvelle Aquitaine.

Rabbits have been farm-raised for food since the 15th century and only came to be considered as a pet in the 19th century and those are different breeds.

According to Dictionary. Com, the word rabbit, came to English from old-French. That indicates that it came to England from 1066 and onwards. From 1066 with the invasion of William the Conqueror, most of the British court spoke French, and for 400 years, most British queens were French imports. Many of the words used in the English kitchen today came from Norman French. For more about the French influence in the English kitchen, click here.

Rabbit in the languages of France's neighbors:

(Catalan - conill de bosc), (Dutch - konijn ).(German - wildkaninchen), (Italian - coniglio), (Spanish - conejo),

Lièvre – Hare.

Farmed hare.

Photograph courtesy of Les Gibiers du Lander

Lièvre – An adult hare.

France farm raises most of their hares, and they will be on menus all year round. Hare has a slightly different taste to rabbit and a different texture.

Levraut - A young hare.

In English, a young hare is a leveret.

Hare on French menus:

Civet de Lièvre, Trompettes de la Mort et Céleri Rave – A traditional stew prepared with the black horn of plenty mushrooms and celeriac. The French usually prepare celeriac, with its light taste of celery as a slightly rough puree that, in a restaurant’s low lighting, you may mistake for hand mashed potatoes.

Lièvre à la Royale – Hare in the Royal manner, the most famous of all French recipes for hare; it is a dish that often has to be ordered days in advance. Here the hare is marinated for two or three days with thyme, cognac, and red wine and then cooked with pork, foie gras, red wine, onions, garlic, shallots, and truffles if available. Traditionally this dish was made with wild hare, but this dish is available all year round, and wild hare are only caught in a limited hunting season.

Sometimes this dish is mistranslated on a French menu into English as Jugged Hare. Jugged hare is a traditional English dish and they are not the same? Jugged hare is wild hare marinated for a few days in red wine, garlic, and herbs and then served fried with salt pork prepared in its wine marinade. Alas, jugged hare misses the cognac, foie gras, shallots, and truffles that are part of lièvre à la royale. They are clearly not the same.

Lièvre à la Royale

Photograph courtesy of AFTouch-Cuisine

Filet de Lièvre, Salsifis. Amandes Fumées, Purée de Pommes de Terre aux Betteraves – A cut from a hare’s saddle served with salsify, the oyster plant, smoked almonds, and pureed potatoes flavored with beetroot.

Lièvre de Chasse – Wild hare; hare caught in the wild. It is not easy to catch a wild hare, they can run at up to 50 km an hour (31 miles an hour), and that makes them stringy and tough. Wild hare requires a great deal of preparation.

While enjoying an excellent dish of farm-raised hare, I listened to a discussion with knowledgeable lovers of the great outdoors. Despite the meal that they were so obviously enjoying, they insisted that hares are impossible to farm raise. They said that hares are too flighty and will die after one day in captivity or else will not breed; they insisted that the hare on our menu was wild. When you hear these arguments put them in touch with the French Fédération des Éleveurs de Lièvres, the French Hare Breeders Federation. They will let them visit one of their member’s farms, which are open to the public.

Hare in the languages of France’s neighbors:

(Catalan - llebre), (Dutch - haas), (German - echten hasen ), (Italian - lepre, lepre comune), (Spanish - liebre).

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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

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Sanglier - Wild Boar on French Menus?

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

A wild boar.

Photograph courtesy of Col Ford and Natasha de Vere

www.flickr.com/photos/col_and_tasha/7434634804/

Sanglier – A wild boar;

Laie - A wild boar sow is a

Marcassin - A young wild boar.

In the USA, wild boar are also called razorbacks, Russian boars, and wild hogs.

French diners love wild boar, and restaurants want to satisfy their customers. With great ingenuity, the French have produced a solution, and for nine or ten months a year, all the wild boar meat comes from farmed wild boar. Wild boars are enclosed in vast forested areas where they are fed, fattened, and produce the next generations. These wild boars are being farmed even though they do not know it. The farm-raised wild boar is far better fed, far healthier and the meat is tenderer than the really wild, wild boars; the herds are also inspected. The wild boar on many French menus, outside of the hunting season, will not have been very wild but they will be very tasty!

On select restaurant menus and in butchers’ shops and supermarkets you may find wild boar chops, steaks, sausages and more on sale 12 months of the year.

Farmed wild boar in the enclosed part of a forest.

Photograph courtesy of Jan

www.flickr.com/photos/jhecking/6105854027/

Wild Boar on French menus:

Daube de Sanglier – Wild boar stew. Daubs are traditional stews from Provence that are now on menus all over France.

Filet Mignon de Sanglier Sauce aux Airelles, Purée de Céleri et Chou rouge. A cut from a wild boar fillet served with a European cranberry sauce and accompanied by celery puree and red cabbage.

Les Côtes de Sanglier Grillées – Grilled wild boar chops.

Wild boar steaks

Photograph courtesy of Gunnar Magnusson

www.flickr.com/photos/matupplevelser/4643767335/

Le Dos de Sanglier de Chasse Française - A thick cut from the back of a truly wild boar from a French hunt; for game this cut is considered the choicest cut. The words sanglier de chasse mean from wild boar from a hunt.

Pavé de Sanglier Grand Veneur - A thick cut from a wild boar; the hunter's cut. The sauce Grand Veneur is a traditional red wine and berry sauce served with wild game.

Saucisse de Sanglier – Wild boar sausage.

Terrine de Sanglier aux Châtaignes – Wild boar and chestnut pate.

Outside of large towns, there are some specialized restaurants that are only open during the hunting seasons. Additionally, French cities and towns, there are also restaurants where the whole menu or part of the menu will be dedicated to real wild game in the hunting season.

The health of wild animals reaching the public.

The health of gibier, wild game, caught by hunters, in France, is tightly controlled and all wild boars, farmed or really wild, must by law have a small part of each animal’s meat sent for examination before being sold. Hunting season menus will note menu de chasse, the menu from the chase, the hunt, or the animal's name followed by the word sauvage. A menu offering sanglier, wild boar or faisan, pheasant, cerf, venison, or other game without a caveat the restaurant will be serving farm-raised animals and birds.

Watch out when you are driving in the French countryside.

Photograph courtesy of La Compagnie des Reclames.fr

Hunting is a popular French hobby and it is well supervised; each French department is responsible for setting the dates. Endangered species may not be hunted at all. Wild boars are far from an endangered species in France and, in fact, that they are a fast growing and very serious pest in many of the farming communities of France and so the hunting season for wild boars has been extended.

Wild boar are tasty but.............

Outside of the hunting season, French farmers are forbidden to cull wild boar populations. The farmers’ fields of corn, maize, and other field crops have assisted the wild boar population to increase exponentially. The growth of the wild boar population in France is indeed a serious agricultural problem. Wild boar are also coming into towns and villages and are involved in over 30,000 car accidents a year.

Wild boar on farmland at night

Photograph courtesy of Monica Arellano-Ongpin

www.flickr.com/photos/maong/110222607/

Wild boar in the languages of France’s neighbors:

(Catalan - senglar), (Dutch - wild zwijn), (German -wildschwein), (Italian - cinghiale) (Spanish – jabalí, jabalí euroasiático), (Latin - sus scrofa).

Wild boar in other languages:

(Bulgarian - Дива свиня), (Chinese (Mandarin) 野猪 – yězhū), (Corsican - cignale or singhjari)(Danish – vildsvin), (Japanese -イノシシ), (Korean - 멧돼지), (Polish – dzik), (Hebrew – hazir bar - חזירי בר ), (Norwegian – villsvin), (Tagalog - ang baboy-ramo), (Ukrainian - свиня дика), (Russian - дикая свинья).

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