Chaz and the Accidental Rabbit: a scientific romance*

I was told I could cook what I liked for my birthday. So I was thinking duck, and I was thinking vindaloo, and I was thinking that I'd wear my new T-shirt with the capsaicin molecule on it.

Only then I was down at the farmers' market yesterday, and the nice eggs girl had rabbits. So I zoomed home to check, and zoomed back; and now I'm cooking rabbit. And I did dither over currying it, but actually I curry quite often, and I very rarely cook classic French any more; so I'm cooking Blanquette de Lapin au Confit de Poires et Gingembre, out of Paula Wolfert. And I'm wearing my Duck Duck Confit T-shirt, which is at least genre-appropriate if not quite ingredient-precise.

(This will be the first rabbit I've cooked stateside, which is why I had to check with K beforehand. In England I used to pick one up now and then, but in England it was always a cheap meat. Or free, if you happened to know a teenager with an air rifle. Here, not so much. Indeed, per pound this is the most I've paid for meat over here. It may be preciously organic and tenderly raised, but even so. Do bunnies not run wild in California, or do the coyotes get them all?)

*(cookery being an application both of science and of the heart)