for this medieval rabbit recipe
you need a rabbit
three onions, some lard
Raisins or currants
Wine, red wine vinegar, sugar, pepper, cinamon
Ginger, salt, and breadcrumbs for thickening if you like
First off you gotta cut
The rabbit So that
It can be used
I’ve taken out the kidneys and the liver
and put them in a bowl, seperatley. You might want to use them,
They can be used as a thickener or put in something else
It doesn’t have to be used in this dish,
Probably better without it as it has a different flavour from the meat
and you can use breadcrumbs for thickening anyway
just separate the saddle
from the top half
There’s a joint in the spinal cord
You gotta find
You should be able to
Cut through it Much more
easily than I have if you have a better knife than this
That’s fine that’s one
Try and separate the spine
From the part with the rib cage
The hind legs, the saddle and the
Fore-quarters
for the first part of this medieval recipe it says
Take connynges or kydde
And smite hem on peccys rawe
And frye hem in white grece
so connynges is rabbit
And white grece is lard
Or bacon fat
Or any kind of white fat basically, so as you can see that’s whats been done here.
The next part
Take raysouns of coraunce and fry hem
so the other thing I’m gonna fry is
Raisins and currants
Basically some dried fruits
In a separate pan. Take oynouns
Perboil hem
And hewe hem small and fry hem.
So the third thing they do,
unusual for modern cooking
Is to take the onion
And parboil it, get it a bit softer
Then cut up into small chunks and fry it
along with the dried fruit
Here you can see this rabbit browning off nicely, you’re not trying
To cook it, just brown it off.
Keep the fat as well, that’s all gonna go in the stew later.
You need a bottle of wine, I bought a very cheap
Supermarket type
Because I’m
More of an ale man really and its just for the cooking
If you’re so inclined
You can have a drink of this while you’re cooking.
Same with the onions as with the rabbit. You’re not trying to cook them fully, you’re just half cooking them.
While this is cooking you should start to prepare
you're
Flavoured spices
Take rede wine and a lytel vynegur
Sugar, with powdour of peper, of ginger,
of canel,
Of salt; and cast thereto, and lat it seeth with a gode quantite of white grese
and serue it forth. What you got here
is
some sugar
some ginger
uh... some ground cinnamon
And some pepper
they wouldn’t have had fresh ginger in england in medieval times but I do
So I’m using fresh instead of ground
here are the mixed currants and raisins and fruit
And so forth
The parboiled onions should be chopped once they’re parboiled.
Basically
Here’s the lard and rabbit fat
That’s leftover. I’ve taken the rabbit out so I can
fry the onions
And the
raisins in it
uh... so if you have a bigger pan you can leave the rabbit in there
To go with the fat and then put the raisin and the onions in with them,
Fry them abit
So while they’re browning you prepare the spices
which should all go
together
in here
In a mixing bowl
Get in there
and uh...
You need a cup and a half of red wine
But I’m using white wine. doesn't really make a difference
It says use red wine vinegar
I’m gonna use balsamic vinegar
you wanna have about
Half a cup, maybe less, balsamic is a lot stronger so I’m just gonna use a little bit
Gonna put some more wine in there. Stir it up with those spices, its like a mulled wine
A nice scent coming off it
and uh...
get on with the browning of the onions. In goes the fruit
Into the fat
Always add more fat
Plenty of fat is always good, because rabbit is a very lean meat
They were brought
To England by the Normans
just for food, they have no other function. They’re not native to these islands.
and they taste very good. They’re a good source of protein but not a good source of
Much else.
All they need is a bit of grass so they’re good
For farming.
Eventually they managed to break out
They were quite timid animals at first. They didn’t do very well in the English countryside, there were a lot of predators in those days.
but as the predators have thinned off (declined in numbers)
Rabbits have become one of the most dominant species in England
And as they’ve become a less popular food,
It’s only done them a lot of favours.
uh... so you can do the British countryside a favour by killing and eating
as many rabbits as you can because they don’t belong there
and they’re delicious.
So you can find out what your ancestors knew
Only too well.
Now you can um...
put all the onions and the currants in with the rabbit
As you can see I’ve separated the ribcage from the fore-legs. i'm probably gonna
once its stewed a bit I can probably peel off some of that meat and just take those ribs out because
You don’t really want to serve that to anyone. It doesn’t look very good.
so basically
that means put it all..these herbs and spices and
The wine
Over the fried onions, rabbit and
dried fruit
with a lot of white grease meaning lard
And let it seeth, meaning..uh
Just let it stew for awhile (45 mins-1hour)
it should smell a little bit like mulled wine and a game stew mixed together.
And then this
Should provide you with an authentic medieval rabbit stew.
you know its ready when the rabbits gone soft.
Because otherwise it’ll be all gamey.
I’m gonna add a little extra wine because there’s
Not quite enough liquid in this pan. No one complains about too much wine.
When its nearing the end, you
Can add some bread crumbs
That will make it thicker
That’s the traditional way, I guess you could use flour as well but the recipe says breadcrumbs.
1 hour later
This is delicious
The rabbit is delicious
How do you say that in Swedish
Detta är ????
It’s nice
Goes well with an ale
Good medieval food
how do you say that in Old English?