[Sca-cooks] Rabbits in Pastry - Oh my!!

[Susan Laing]

Some of you may remember my endless round of Rabbits & Pastry questions of a
month or two ago - finally posting the information on it all....

This is the recipe from which was created many of the little beasties for
the first Baronial invest of St Florian's in Brisbane, Australia (sorry - no
pictures seem to have been taken)

Tips to remember if doing this recipe-
NB - personal alterations to the recipe below are marked with **

*Definately make up your pastry the day before (I didn't have access to the
ingredients etc until the day of the event and it really is better if the
pasty has time to relax before using).  We used this heavy pastry for all
decorating purposes (ears; heads; feet etc)

*we used bought sheet pastry to encase the bodies - took about 2 & 1/3rd
sheets to snugely tuck in about the rabbit (no heads attached)

*ensure the rabbit carcase is completely defrosted (these weren't quite) I
ended up using a sheet of baking paper under each and advised everyone NOT
to remove it (upon pain of death) as the carcase thaw was making the bottom
layer of pastry squidgy.  They went into the oven on this and it was removed
after baking

*Don't be afraid to use reasonable force when repositioning the rabbit's
fore & hind legs AND remember to use bambo skewere to keep everything in
place (I found that after encasing; adding features & storing in the fridge
for over an hour prior to cooking, the skewer could be removed before
cooking if necessary to conserve space - no position change was noticed from
removal).  I also used poultry shearers to clip off the tail bone as it was
a sharp, boney bit that was causing the pastry to split (we were creating
false pastry tails anyway)

*taking the advise of others on the list, we (my two willing "Bunny
features" assistants & myself) made sure that all the ears were not of the
"Sticking up variety" - this avoided the burn factor in the oven and we had
a lot of fun creating various "ear styles" for each wabbit... (and giving
names such as "flopsy, mopsy etc"

*lastly - when your head cooks says "We'll be able to fit all of them into
the ovens at once" and you've only got two industrial ovens - neither of
which is very wide - laugh loudly & run away... :-p (they had forgotten to
take into account the height of each plus width so they ended up having to
stager the cooking run...)