Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Facts of life about rabbits
Thinking that some people might be a bit squeamish about eating rabbits, either because they are closely related to rats, because they are cuddly or because they look rather like animals on the plate - unlike, say, a hamburger - I thought I should offer some corrective thoughts on the first point. I had thought that rabbits were closely related to rats, all being part of a large gang called rodents. I now find that this is entirely wrong. Best advice now is that around 70 million years ago (that is to say when the dinosaurs were still knocking about) there was a gang called the glires. Distinguished by their interesting front teeth, the interesting way in which the lower jaw was hung off the back of the head and the fact that their females had two wombs each, a wheeze which must have a lot to do with rate at which they bang out their offspring. Two production lines rather than one. Some time after that the glires split into lagomorphs (mainly rabbits and hares) and rodents (a varied bunch but including lots of rats and mice). With the former having rather different front teeth and a two pass digestive system, that is to say the food goes through the system twice before it is properly digested, than the latter. Other animals have rather better arrangements in this last regard. So rabbits and rats have not been closely related for a very long time. So there.
One last rabbitoid. They were more or less wiped out in northern Europe by the last ice age and the Romans, once they had found out about them in Spain, kindly thought to colonise the rest of the known world with them.
Yesterday was the day for calves liver. Which arrives at Cheam in a white plastic bucket, the sort of thing you might buy paint or tile cement in. Yesterday was the day of a new bucket containing an entire liver. From which it might follow that the liver was relatively fresh, thus accounting for its splendid texture and flavour. Alternatively, it might have been the cooking; that is to say fried in back to basics rape seed oil from Mr S. (I am not very keen on the smell of hot olive oil) along with some smoked streaky bacon. Served with mashed potato and summer cabbage - this last perhaps from Spain it not being very summery around here any more.
Shortly before I arrived, the butcher had been boning a loin of pork. Not sure why one would want to do such a thing with both loins and chops being very well with the bones in, but there we were: a two foot length of half backbone and rib. Free to regular customer on this occasion, unlike when I paid all of 99p for a rather inferior bone on 7th September. Much the same drill with cooking though. Boil up with celery and onion. Take the pound or more of meat off the bone. Discard bones. Liquidise the balance. But, for a change, cut down the lentils from 300 grams to 8 ounces. Bring to the boil, turn off the heat and leave to stand overnight. Warm back up to serve and results spot on. Served with thinly sliced, day old, white bread.
Having slightly fewer lentils meant that the soup cooled in a rather different way after bringing it the boil. When the soup comes to the boil it is covered in froth and is rather inclined to boil over if not watched. Take off the heat and the soup is just the right consistency for the froth to set as the soup cools. So, in the morning, the soup was covered in rather attractive layer of soft but solid froth. A sort of porcine pumice if you like. I should have taken a picture and shared.
To close, I should give the Google people a puff. The search function has been working much better on the blog the last few times I have tried and since I had a moan about it. No oddly missing hits. Can't be bothered to do the serious testing required to find out whether the search engine has changed or whether my searching has changed. Or whether it is just some fluke.
# posted by Jim @ 10:47 AM 
