Easter Rabbit Stew
April 26th, 2011
I’m not sure when we decided to make a yearly tradition out of stewing the Easter Bunny, but it’s been a few years at least. My husband has a wonderful sense of humor, and we both love the light, slightly fragrant taste of simmered rabbit. This year, I beat the lines at Ottomanelli’s (which later ran down the block) by stopping by early on Saturday morning to purchase my rabbit. For regular use, we buy frozen rabbits in Chinatown for a few dollars. But for the holiday, I like to splurge on a fresh kill.
There’s a long history of eating rabbit, and you’ll find many receipts for rabbit stews, fricassees, etc. As far as I can tell, rabbit was, and is still, a popular dish in France and some parts of Italy. Here, in her 1847 Lady’s Receipt-book, Philadelphia author Eliza Leslie offers directions for French Stew of Rabbits.
That sounds delicious, but I made no attempt to be historical while cooking Easter dinner. At least not technically so. Instead, I tossed together an informal spring stew, based on years of cooking rabbit — the same way many women in the 19th century cooked by instinct and experience. (My mother used to take me to a rabbit farm, where you could pet your dinner before taking it home in a bloody bag.) Here, with illustrations is my “receipt” for rabbit stew.
RABBIT STEW
1 rabbit, whole or cut up
4 small potatoes, diced
2 turnips, peeled and diced
2 parsnips, peeled and diced
4 carrots, peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 or 3 onions, chopped
a few cloves of garlic, minced
bay leaf
herbs to taste
1 or 2 cans of crushed tomatoes
Splash of wine
I began by chopping up the vegetables. I put everything EXCEPT the onion and garlic into my crock pot, and tossed them with some rosemary and thyme. I also threw in a large bay leaf.
Then I melted a hunk of butter (about 2 tablespoons) into a pan and sauteed the onions and garlic until they began to caramelize. I added the rabbit, and let it sizzle for a few minutes, turning it so that it would brown nicely on all sides.
Finally, I turned the rabbit, onions, and garlic into the crock pot, scooping some of the diced vegetables to cover them. I poured in a large can of tomatoes, and would have added a nice splash of wine if I’d had an open bottle; I prefer a Bordeaux for rabbit stew. If your tomatoes don’t provide enough liquid (you need at least a few cups) and you don’t use wine, you can also add a little water.
Set your crock pot on low to cook for 6 to 8 hours, or high if you want it to be done sooner, 4 to 6 hours. Of course, you can also cook it over the stove, simmering in a covered pan for about 2 hours. The slower you cook it, the tastier it will be. It also gets better the next day. Reheat over the stove.
Once it’s cooked, you can scoop out the rabbit and flaked the flesh off the bones to be added back into the stew. Or you could be lazy, like me, and just leave the rabbit in tact, pulling off hunks of meat as you serve.
Enjoy!
Winterthur: Indoors
April 23rd, 2011
Here, finally, are the pictures I took inside Winterthur on the general house tour. Some are a little blurry, as I kept my flash turned off (if all the other tourists knew how much damage they’re doing to the historic surfaces when they flash their cameras, they’d have done the same — and their pictures would have been blurry too).
The house, which was home to a few generations of the DuPont family during the 19th and early 20th centuries, has 175 rooms on 9 floors. Henry Francis DuPont, the last to live there, was a collector of American antique furniture. He filled the house with his collection, eventually moving out to a smaller building nearby so that he could open the house as a museum.
It’s an amazing tour — room after room (we only saw a small portion of the house on the excellently delivered hour-long tour) chock-a-block with fine antiques of every period from the 17th century through the mid-19th. Since it’s mostly a collection of antiques, some of the pieces don’t really make sense. For example, they have at least one secretary or escritoire in every single room. Sometimes two or three. No one writes that many letters. But they were sure beautiful to look at. There are also far more corner cupboards than any sane person would ever own, filled with dishes that weren’t purchased to hold food. An entire pantry was devoted to the display of porcelain candlesticks.
The few nods to social history date to the roaring 20s, when the DuPont family were living in the house and entertaining their fortunate guests amidst all the antiques. What a place to play hide and seek! The faux tea sandwiches and petit-fours were a nice touch.
Winterthur: Outdoors
April 18th, 2011
This weekend, I traveled by rail to my natal place — namely northern Delaware. Saturday was spent in various family gatherings. On Sunday, my parents drove us to Winterthur: once a DuPont family estate, now a world-famous museum of American decorative arts, surrounded by an enormous naturalistic garden.
Today, I’m going to share some of the photographs I took during our tram ride and walk through the gardens.
Next up: the interior.
The Exhibit is Open
April 14th, 2011
And I do hope you’ll come and see. It’s rather incredible, if I do say so myself (all I did was some writing and fabricating, so it’s no violation of modesty for me to layer on the invective in favor of the amazing collection that is on display). Where else can you gaze at one-of-a-kind Civil War medical portraits, not seen since the 19th century? The photos on display are from The Burns Archive, and include hauntingly beautiful album prints by Civil War Army surgeon R. B. Bontecou, a few by Mathew Brady, and many others. The entire exhibit is captioned with quotes from Walt Whitman’s memoir of Civil War nursing, Specimen Days.
The exhibit tips its hat to Dr. Stanley Burns’s latest book, Shooting Soldiers, which has been released just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and features many of the Bonetcou images. There’s also a small annex devoted to New York’s Seventh Regiment National Guard and The Siege of Washington, by John Lockwood and Charles Lockwood, also recently released.
Image courtesy of The Burns Archive
But don’t take it from me. Here’s what our local public radio station, WNYC, had to say.
And here are the details on how you can see these photographs in person — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that should not be missed by anyone interested in photography, history, or the Civil War:
Exhibit Dates: April 14, through August 1, 2011
Location: Merchant’s House Museum (29 East Fourth Street, NYC)
Title: New York’s Civil War Soldiers
Open: Thursday-Monday (closed Tuesday & Wednesday), noon to 5 p.m.
Price: Included with regular admission, $10, $5 Students & Seniors (a real bargain, as you get to see the rest of the Museum as well)
Bonus: Say you know “Eva” and get a strange look from the person working the door…
Sherlock Revisted
April 13th, 2011
It’s been more than a decade since my last serious foray into the adventures of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed detective. In my far-distant (at least it feels that way) youth, I was quite the enthusiast for anything and everything related to Sherlock Holmes. I read and re-read the stories, even attempting to employ Holmes’s methods, though I was usually stymied by the homogenizing effects of modernity.
I secretly enjoy listening to reruns of the Sherlock Holmes radio programmes (particularly the American version sponsored by Clipper Craft Clothiers or Roma Wines). But I could never quite bring myself to watch the movies or TV shoes. The old ones portray Watson as so elderly, pompous, and unattractive. The latest attempt was much too stylized for my taste — at least based on the posters that were plastered across the City when it came out. If they’d cast Adrien Brody as Holmes, I might have been tempted. Not that I am such a fan (I rarely like living actors), but he really would have been perfect.
My great love will always be Doyle’s stories, with the original Paget illustrations. What a world they created! If newspapers today published such things, I might consider subscribing. Are you listening, New York Times?
I just downloaded the collected Sherlock Holmes stories to my digital book. They’re all available for free from Google Books. What, you may be asking, has reawakened my ardor for the great detective? A friend and comrade in the New York Nineteenth Century Society is planning a weekend Bartitsu (the lost martial art practiced by Holmes) seminar in late July. I’ve signed on to help organize an evening lecture and reception at The Waystation in Brooklyn. You can read more about Bartitsu on my friend’s web site.
And of course, I will post details soon about how you can register to learn Bartitsu (or purchase a raffle ticket to win a free seat at the seminar) as well as information about the evening event — which will include a lecture, film screenings, and a costume contest!
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