I decided to get outside my comfort zone and cook rabbit for dinner. Rabbit is not something that one finds or eats often in the United States. Sometimes you will find it on the menu in a traditional French restaurant.

I had seen the rabbit in the displays at the Marché Victor Hugo often when I was shopping. It is found in the poultry stands. I had often thought about trying it but had not in the lasts visits here.

After doing some reading on rabbit and researching recipes on how to cook rabbit, I decided to move out of my comfort zone and try cooking it.

I found a simple baked rabbit recipe that I had had most of the ingredients already so headed to the market to buy the rabbit. I was not sure exactly how to ask for a portion of rabbit as I knew I would not be able to eat a whole rabbit. It was made easy for me as my usual poultry stand as it had morceau de lapin (piece of rabbit). I asked for two rabbit legs and thighs of rabbit (not sure that thigh is used for rabbit). I thought those would be the easiest to figure out how to cook.

The recipe called for mustard, rosemary, thyme and honey. I had the first three ingredients in at the apartment. I had bought the mustard for lunch and had bought rosemary and thyme when I was here before and it was still in the cupboard. I had to buy honey as there was some in the cupboard but I had not bought it and it did not see good at this point. I am not sure honey goes bad but it just did not look good. I went to the Epicerie (spice shop that I buy salt and other fresh herbs from) for the honey. I guess I could have just bought commercial honey but decided local honey would be good. I bought Fleurs de Pyrénées artisanal honey.

When it was time to cook dinner, I prepared the rabbit for cooking. I sprinkled the rabbit with the rosemary and thyme with some salt and pepper. I then coated each of the rabbit legs with the mustard. I had the traditional French mustard that had mustard grains in it and thought that would give some texture and probably a little more flavor. The last was to pour the honey over the rabbit. I put it in the oven to bake for an hour.

I was a little worried as one of the articles I had read when searching recipes said that rabbit can dry out if cooked at too high a temperature or for too long. I still have not quite mastered the oven so was not sure if I was going to overcook the rabbit. The oven has different setting which I think are convection, regular bake, broil but it has a couple of others which I am not sure what they are. Also, of course, the temperature is Celsius.

When I thought the rabbit was done, I pulled it out of the oven and let it rest. Again, the article said letting the rabbit rest was crucial. In the end, the rabbit was very good. The rest of dinner was rosemary potatoes, green beans and salad.

This is the finished product. The meat was flavorful, tender and moist. The rabbit flavor was not overwhelming but was good. The two legs were enough meat for me for a meal.

The rest of the day was good. As I stated earlier, I had to go to the market and the store for rabbit and honey. The morning weather was beautiful spring so it was fun to get out and walk around the city.

In the afternoon, the weather changed and it became a standard blustery March spring day – not cold but windy with a sudden downpour. Luckily, I was in the apartment for the downpour.

Since the weather up to today was warm and nice, I had not had a chocolate chaud (hot chocolate) yet as it was too warm. Since it was cooler and the atmosphere felt like hot chocolate, I wandered over to Cocoa Fages for the hot chocolate. It is one of my favorite places for hot chocolate. It is an artisanal chocolate shop where you can watch the chocolates actually being made. Unfortunately, the staff was winding down for the day so was cleaning up but the hot chocolate was still good.

The post picture is just one of those random scenes that happen in Toulouse. I was walking over to the market and saw a group of people in Asian attire. Somewhat dressed as warriors – not sure why or what they were doing but they were just sauntering down the street.