[Sca-cooks] bunnies

[Pixel, Queen of Cats]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Margaret said:
> > I've just never done canning for war. My sweetie is trying to convince me
> > to can a batch of the rabbit saupiquet to bring. ;-)
>
> What is rabbit saupiquet? I thought at first you had said rabbit
> saurkraut! :-)
>
> Is this dish a period one?
>

Yep. This is the bunnies in sauce that I briefly mentioned back in
May as wanting a vegetable to go with it. It's similar to the hare in
broth recipe that's been posted, actually. I *think* we used Scully's
_Early French Cookery_ for the initial translation, certainly that's where
I got the name from, but at the moment I don't remember if we actually
redacted it or used somebody else's redaction. It's been a tense and
stressful couple of weeks, and my mind is fuzzy. And my notebook is at
home.

I served the test version with peas according to Platina, with cinnamon
and sugar, but being lazy and having only one pot at the event, just threw
the peas in with the bunny.

Basically, bunny in sauce made of onions, a sour liquid beginning with 'v'
that I think was wine vinegar, wine, bread crumbs, grains of paradise,
ginger, maybe cinnamon. Bunny is roasted then fried in lard with the
onions. The sauce is #14 (or is really similar to it) from Du Fait de
Cuisine:

14. To make sauce piquant to put on conies, according to the quantity of
it which one is making take onions and chop them fine, and take fair pork
lard and melt it and saut your onions, and so that they do not burn in
sauting put a little broth in; and then put in a great deal of white wine
according to the quantity of sauce piquant which you want to make for the
said conies; and take your spices, good ginger, grains of paradise, a
little pepper which is not at all too much, and saffron to give it
color; and season it with vinegar in such proportion that it is neither
too much poignant nor too little; with salt also.

We cooked it more like a stew, in one pot, for east of transport and
reheating. It freezes and reheats excellently. And the bunny was, well,
really really good. Similar to that profound yet subtle and quiet way that
dropping a very heavy cast-iron dutch oven on one's foot elicits a pause
and a very quiet "ow".

Margaret FitzWilliam