Listing memories
Suddenly I miss the grandmother I never knew. She died before I was three. This is a result of family gathering together, I guess. I’ll get back to my culinary collection next week. It will be quite different to the bits you’ve seen already. When I left home, you see, I discovered similar traditions to my own in terms of enjoying home cooked food, but with quite, quite different recipes. Next week, I promise. And I have other things in store of the rest of this week, not least more about Sharyn’s country christening.
Instead of giving you something from my grandmother’s notebook, today I’d like to do something a little different. As part of a paper I did last year, I compared the recipes she cooked against the recipes in key nineteenth century British cookbooks. My grandmother’s cuisine lacked Sephardi elements and lacked some of the continental cooking, but otherwise there was a significant amount of overlap. I’ve been wondering, since then, who remembers my grandmother’s dishes (or their own versions thereof).
The whole list is far too long for here, but I thought maybe you might like to see a section of it (the As to Cs). Please tell me if it looks familiar, and if you have any family recipes for any of them and you’re happy to share, then please email or post them in the comments.
Almond biscuits
Almond Icing
Almond Pudding
American Shortcake
Ammonia biscuits
Anchovy Eggs
Angel’s food
Apple cake
Apple crumble
Apple Salad
Apple Snow
Apples in Syrup
Apples on sticks
Apricot Sauce
Asparagus Sauce
Austrian apple pie
Bachelors bullions
Baked Eggs & Tomatoes
Banana & nut Salad
Banana Cheese Toast
Banana Cream Pie
Banana Savoury Rolls
Banana Souffle
Berry Sponge
Biscuits
Biscuits
Black Top Pudding
Boiled fruit cake
Bombay Toast
Brandy Butter
Butter biscuits
Butter scotch
Butterscotch Sauce
Caramel Custard
Carmal Sauce (Ice Cream)
Carrot cheesecakes
Carrot pudding
Carrot Soup
Casserole Rabbit
Celery & Marmite
Champagne biscuits
Cheese Souffle
Cheese Straws
Cheese Toast
Cherry ice cream
Cherry rocks
Chocolate Bake
Chocolate Crackles
Chocolate Eclairs & Cream Buns
Chocolate Icing
Chocolate Sauce (ice Cream)
Chocolate Souffle
Chocolate Walnut Sandwich
Chocolate-Walnut roll
Christmas Pudding
Cinnamon Sultana Sponge
Cocoa-nut biscuits
Cocoanut ice
Coffee Sponge
Condensed milk tart
Cornflour cake
Cream cakes
Cream Tea Cake
Cream-de-Menthe Sauce
Crispy biscuits
Crusted Apples
Crystallised cherries
Cumquat preserve
Curried Lobster
Curried Veal
April 20th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Casserole Rabbit (Fenek Biz-Zalza)
1 Rabbit (with its liver and heart if you can source it, but optional).2 onions and 2 carrots, sliced. 4 cloves of crushed garlic.
1 and half cups of passata or a can of pulped tomatoes. 1 tablespoons of tomato paste. 2 teaspoons of sugar. Enough chicken stock to raise the level of water to allow the rabbit to simmer. Salt and pepper to season. Fresh or frozen peas to add at the end. Wine for marinating. Olive oil and butter.
—
Marinate the rabbit pieces in wine for a few hours to help tenderise the meat. Remove from the wine and pat dry. Dust with flour and saute until golden brown in a tablespoon of olive oil. Remove from pan and add onions, garlic, carrots. Return the rabbit. Add the tomato paste and cook it out slightly. Add the sugar and a knob of butter to temper the acidity of the sauce. Add the passata and enough stock to just cover the rabbit. You can add a swish of wine to taste. Simmer covered for approx an hour or until tender. Then add the peas and the offal if you like it (!) 15 minutes before the end of cooking time. Season with salt and pepper as needed.
In Malta, the traditional way to eat this dish is to separate the pieces of rabbit away from the casseroled sauce. The rabbit is served as a main course with boiled/roasted vegetables. The sauce with the small pieces of rabbit flesh that have come away is served as a spaghetti sauce, sometimes even as an entree to the same meal.
2 meals from the same dish, how we won the war
April 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Thank you so much for the recipe. It means I can taste the memory of the dish in my mind. Lovely.