[Sca-cooks] Venison, not necessarily deer meat?

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I had written:
> And according to what i have read, hares and rabbits can be cooked in
> the same ways. So those of us who are not hunters - which i suspect is
> the majority - and must rely on what we can purchase, we may
> substitute one for the other in recipes.

Antonia wrote:
> Cooked in the same ways, yes, but they are poor substitutes for each
> other. The flesh of the rabbit is light in colour and mild in taste, a
> bit like chicken. The hare is dark and strong, a bit like venison.

Well, despite Antonia's protests, some medieval recipes specify one and say the other can be prepared the same way. Here is one example:

>From the 13th c. cookbook, Fadälat al-Jiwan fi tayyibat al-ta 'am wa-l-alwan, by Ibn Razin al-Tujibi of Murcia in al-Andaluz

Since the cookbook has not been translated into English, i have started with the Spanish translation by Fernando de la Granja Santamaria

[216] Recipe for Narjisiyya (my translation)

Catch a hare, wash it, clean it, cut it limb from limb and put it in a glazed earthenware dish, pour in water, salt, oil, pepper, coriander seed, cumin and macerated almori; dye it with saffron and put it to cook over the fire. When cooked, add a spoonful of good vinegar and bring it to the oven. When golden and left dry take it out, leave it to cool and eat it.

If you want you can prepare this dish, the same way, with rabbit.
--- end translation ---

I know Suey translated this, but there were some places where i differ from her translation. The name of the dish, for example. Because "j" has a similar sound in Arabic and English, but a very different one in Spanish, "j" is problematic when translating from Arabic to Spanish to English. I have returned the "j" to the Arabic name of this dish.
-- 
Urtatim [that's err-tah-TEEM]
the persona formerly known as Anahita