Rabbit was a great food for country people for many years. Tomás O’Crohan in The Islandman tells us of the many rabbits they caught on the Blasket islands when he was young: ‘When we had all come to the boat and put the game together, we had eight dozen rabbits – a dozen a-piece.’ Maurice o’Sullivan in Twenty years A-Growing writes of the same island and rabbit stew: ‘We sat down to dinner, a savoury dinner it was – a fine stew of rabbits and plenty of soup.’ Young rabbits can be roasted – as with the body of the hare – and wrapped in bacon. Recipe from The Pleasures of the Table: Rediscovering Theodora Fitzgibbon.