SC - Pigs-Lard production/usage

[Jenne Heise]

At 05:47 AM 12/2/00 -0600, a frantic Anahita wrote:
>Aargh! I can't find my copy of Santich - and it's one of my favorite 
>cookbooks - but i'm prejudiced to Near Eastern and Mediterranean 
>foods. And bacon would be *sooooo* Boar Hunt...
>Please post the recipe. Please, oh, please.
Right!  My apologies for the delay, it's been rather a hectic weekend.
Filled with good food, but hectic... :>

Santich calls the recipe "Cabbage with fennel and apple" - I'd forgotten it
also included fennel.  It's from Libro Della Cocina:

Green Cabbage:  Take the tips of cabbage, and boil them: then remove them,
and fry in oil with sliced onion, and the white part of fennel, and sliced
apple; and add a little stock: and then serve it in bowls, and sprinkle
with spices.  And you can also cook it with salted pork fat, with cheese,
and with poached eggs, and add spices; and offer it to your Lord.

Santich's redaction: Finely shred 1/4 Savoy (green) cabbage, drop into
boiling salted water and boil 1 minute, then drain and rinse.  Finely slice
1 small onion and half a bulb of fennel.  Fry in 2-3 tblsp olive oil until
soft.  Peel, quarter and core a small apple and cut into small cubes.  Add
to onion and fennel with drained cabbage and a little stock or water. Cover
and steam for 5 mins, then remove lid and cook a little longer to evaporate
most of the liquid.  Season with freshly ground pepper and salt to taste.

My version:  I cut the cabbage and apple into strips rather than finely
shredding it, and use slightly more onion than Santich suggests.  For the
salted pork fat version, I fry the cabbage/fennel/apple in bacon fat rather
than olive oil, and add a little thinly sliced bacon.  I don't personally
like the taste of fennel, but it really works in this recipe.  I think I
was also a bit more adventurous with "spices" - I seem to remember a bit of
cinnamon and ginger working well.  (Me, a methodical cook?  Only
occasionally...)

Full reference: Barbara Santich, The Original Mediterranean Cuisine:
Medieval Recipes for Today, 1995, Chicago Review Press.

Good luck with the feast plans,
JdH


Lady Jehanne de Huguenin (Jessica Tiffin)
Seneschal, Shire of Adamastor, South Africa
Sable, three owls rising argent, each maintaining a willow slip vert.