[Sca-cooks] Bunny vs. bunny

[Stefan li Rous]

Greetings Adelisa,

I'd love to get your recipes and your paper.

Perhaps it might make a good Florilegium article?

I tried to email you, but your message didn't seem to have your  
address, or at least the message from Madhavi, since that is where I  
saw it.

Thanks,
   Stefan
PS: Folks you don't have to wait for a request from me, to send me a  
possibility for the Florilegium. I can't always read all mail list  
messages, at least not on time.

From: sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org [mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at lists.ansteorra.org 
] On Behalf Of Christiane
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 1:17 PM
To: Cooks
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Bunny vs. bunny

Well, I made two rabbit dishes as a compare and contrast for an A&S  
competition this past weekend. One was the qanura of rabbit from the  
Anonymous Andalusian, the other was a traditional Sicilian dish,  
rabbit in a sweet and sour sauce.

For the qanura, I redacted it thusly:

1 3 pound rabbit, cut roughly into quarters
1 cup red wine vinegar
10 ounces or so of finely chopped walnuts
7 or so small cloves of garlic
boiling, salted water (enough to immerse the rabbit parts)

I boiled the rabbit parts, skimming off the froth. When the rabbit  
parts were no longer pink, I took them out of the pot and browned them  
in olive oil. I ground up the cloves of garlic with the walnuts  
(mashing them in a ceramic bowl with the back of a wooden spoon),  
poured the garlic/walnut mixture into the vinegar, and poured the  
vinegar mixture into the pan. I cooked it for about half an hour,  
adding about a cup of broth from the boiling pot, ladling it in a  
little at a time. When the vinegar sharpness had cooked off, I  
essentially called it done.

The traditional Sicilian recipe I pulled off of inmamaskitchen.com,  
adding capers and pine nuts to it (which other recipes called for, but  
this one didn't for some reason). I used this recipe because it called  
for marinading the rabbit parts in red wine, garlic, cloves, and  
pepper, and I'm up for marinading meat in red wine whenever I can. ;-)

At any rate, I was trying to show that the traditional Sicilian dish  
had antecedents in period medieval Islamic cooking (in the continued  
use of vinegar-based sauces in Sicilian cuisine, though the Sicilian  
differs from the Andalusian in the use of sugar). Both dishes got  
fairly high ratings from the judges ? one even said that I had made  
rabbit taste good, which apparently is not easy to do. ;-) Another  
judge said I should have done a better job of explaining the  
connection between the two dishes, and that's a fair criticism, as I  
was not happy with the way the paper came out because I rushed it. The  
same judge also said I should have used ground walnuts instead of  
finely chopped, and that's another fair criticism, as again I was  
rushing and didn't want to drag out the food processor nor do I have a  
mortar big enough to handle 10 ounces of nuts. Another lesson for next  
time.

But a Lady of the Rose did tell me she LOVED the Andalusian dish, and  
when I found her with a notebook trying to jot down my redaction, I  
just handed her the paper. It's on my computer after all. I was just  
happy she loved it so much.

If anyone wants both recipes and the paper, let me know. I can e-mail  
them to you.

YIS,
Adelisa Salernitana
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marksharris
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****