Recipe: Rabbit Barida: "
This past July I had the opportunity to teach a class on cold dishes from the medieval Arab world at a gathering of medieval history enthusiasts up in Maine. The class went very smoothly, much better than I had imagined. (If you're reading this and you were in the class, thank you for making it such a pleasant experience.) I liked the idea of teaching this class because it gave me an opportunity to cook from my favorite cookbook in the whole wide world, medieval or modern. I served some samples in the class; this was one of them. I've also served it at one of our Sunday open houses, mostly to give me a chance to serve it.
Rabbit is kind of an unusual meat in the modern West. I think that might be changing, though. My local Greek market was selling them frozen – not unusual to find them frozen in an ethnic market. Recently I got a phone call from my husband from a large chain grocery store near our house that shall remain nameless. (They remain nameless because they once sold me a rotten duck.) This store was selling rabbit fresh, and lots of it. I'm pretty pleased by this, since rabbit meat is tasty and relatively lean. I will spare you the health benefits listed by al-Warrāq, as they might cause this website to be barred by safe search.
Anyway, I didn't make a lot of changes to this recipe. I try not to when I'm re-creating a medieval recipe. That said, there were some changes that I just had to make. I couldn't chop the rabbit easily and it would make the rabbit more difficult to serve during the class if I had, so I treated it more like a pulled rabbit. The rabbit was roasted on our Big Green Egg – there is no suggestion in the recipe that the rabbit should have been roasted in this manner in period, but we know that they were using a similar tool to roast meat in period and there is no indication that it should not have been used in this case. We rubbed the rabbit with our Greek-style rub, because it works well with rabbit. The vinegar I used was red wine vinegar. The soy sauce is a stand-in for murrī, which was made in almost the same way. Someone else has made murrī following a period recipe and it apparently tastes like soy sauce, and the recipe is similar to soy sauce, so it makes a good substitute. I couldn't get the two different types of asafetida so I used what I had. I couldn't get rue so I used rosemary – very different flavors, but much less likely to cause a harmful reaction. I ran out of caraway seeds and so left them out when I served this to my class. The "different spices" I used were based on personal preference.The sauce went over decently, but out of all of the meat dishes I served this one was the least popular. It was probably the least familiar to modern Western palates, and the sweet and sour flavor wasn't necessarily to everyone's taste. (It also had to compete with a beef bārida that was incredibly popular, so that probably has a lot to do with it.)
Rabbit Bārida (serves 2 – 3 as a main course; approx. cost per serving not available)1 rabbit, roasted, carved and cooled. We roasted the rabbit on our Big Green Egg and we think this is the best way of doing it, but there is absolutely no reason you couldn't do this in your oven at home. Roast at 375 ̊until done; if you're using the Egg cook over indirect heat.)
¾ ounce ground cumin½ ounce ground coriander
1 gram asafetida3 grams caraway seeds
12 grams olive oil15 grams sugar
2 whole onions, peeledEquipment:
- Bowl
- Whisk
- Carve the rabbit and arrange it on a platter.
- Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl. Mix well and allow to sit. I probably let it sit about an hour before I served it the first time. For the class, I let it sit an hour and then removed the onions; the sauce continued to sit for a good 48 hours.
- Just before serving, remove the onions from the sauce. Pour the sauce over the meat and serve.
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