Well I'll be honest. Dinner wasn't a huge success. We were being adventurous this year and some of it wasn't so good.
To begin with, the bunny was a little funky. We eat a lot of rabbit and it's usually delicious, but parts of this one were strange. There were several yummy morsels, though, so it was hardly a total loss. Dijon mustard and chopped fresh rosemary marinade, grilled to perfection. Still, some of it was off.
The pheasant sausage was frozen. Next year, I have to remember to remind my butcher about IEAPD a few days in advance, because he'd be more than happy to prepare some extra stuff fresh with a little notice. He's not a PETA fan. Frozen pheasant sausage is still really good, but not as quite as good as fresh.
The lamb mergues was, uh, spicy. V-E-R-Y spicy. Very tasty, but too spicy for wine, and dinner at our house is almost always accompanied by wine. So the lamb mergues (which contains harissa) was just a bit too spicy.
And then there was the venison sausage. A true delight. This one has a very odd combination of ingredients, including sumac, ginseng and goldenseal (which is one of the worst-tasting things on the face of the earth) but this batch was perfectly balanced and absolutely delicious. And it went beautifully with the wine (a 1998 Châteauneuf du Pape).
I think next year we'll stick with slightly more traditional, beefier cuts, like venison or buffalo loin. Our previous IEAPD menus are here and here (and yes, I've long since gotten over the bunny thing).
