[Sca-cooks] Bunny vs. bunny

[Christiane]

I realized that I hadn't hit "reply all" so only Cariadoc saw my reply ...

Cariadoc asked:
>>Why quarters? The original says "small pieces," which sounds smaller than that.

While I found it fairly easy to break the backbone and get the front legs and chest apart, the back legs were harder to for me separate. Really, it turned out to be five pieces; two front legs, two back legs and haunches, middle part with ribs. I did what worked for me; my large knife is heavy enough to act somewhat as a cleaver, but not entirely effective. And rabbits don't have a lot of meat on them, I noticed.

>>>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.


Cariadoc commented:
>>That's how the Sicilian recipe does it, but doesn't fit the description of the Andalusion one, where you are simply starting with dilute vinegar
>>(vinegar and water). I'm not sure how much difference (if any) that makes, but it does make me concerned about modifying the one recipe
>>under the influence of the other. On the other hand, I didn't notice any other examples of that.

I did forget to say that I diluted the vinegar/walnut mixture with about an equal amount of water before pouring it into the pan; as it was simmering away, though, I thought adding the "broth" would be a nice touch, since it was just sitting there on the stove and just would have been dumped out. It was an impulse and I just went with it.

The Sicilian one, you don't boil the rabbit first, so there is no broth to add to the pan. I just used vinegar and water for that one. For the Andalusian one, I didn't flour the pieces before sauteeing them, as I did in the Sicilian one; I didn't add sugar, as I did in the Sicilian one. Nor did I marinate the Andalusian rabbit pieces. But the goal was to show the parallels between the two recipes - rabbit, a sauce of vinegar, with nuts - and Sicily being held by the Muslims for more than 200 years, there seems to be this lingering taste for Muslim-influenced recipes. The pine nuts/raisins combo is very Muslim/Mediterranean, and in Sicily, it's always with sugared vinegar. I haven't explored a lot of "traditional" Andalusian cuisine, though, so I don't know if they like vinegared sauces with their meats, with pine nuts and raisins, as much the Sicilians still do.

Oddly, the only "traditional" Sicilian meat dishes that use walnuts instead of pine nuts are all pork ones. Pork ragouts, with tomato concentrate, vinegar, and again, raisins. Not period and definitely not Muslim. :-)

Adelisa