Easter Hot Cross Rabbit Tale of Three Cousins

30 March

Easter Hot Cross Rabbit Tale of Three Cousins

Paekakariki author David McGill had been chewing over converting a lifetime of recipe notes into a food memoir, but lacked a context – until he threw a malt whisky and haggis gathering last Easter. His paternal cousin Dinah Priestley brought along a five-legged rabbit she had constructed and cooked using her hot cross bun recipe. In the course of chatting with her and his maternal cousin Audrey Patchett, we all discovered for the first time that we had been baking bread and buns all our lives. The result was we all feature on the cover of, ‘The Communion of the Easter Bun-Rabbit’, which has 70 original recipes and accompanying anecdotes going back to the author’s Plunket book Farex and bone broth, and much further back to the 1881 Chicago bread-making book used by our maternal great-grandfather William Waddel, city baker and mayor of Auckland, including blood bread and Zephyrinas.

This eclectic collection ranges from food writers such as David Burton’s family favourite Chicken Attica and English food writer Kathie Webber’s roast goose to authentic Russian cabbage pie, Aunty Beryl’s Yorkshire pudding, Aussie actor Kenneth J. Warren’s Tom Ugly’s Rice, the author’s marmalade and his mother’s incomparable Louise cakes. There are 50 images following the author breaking bread from Auckland schooldays of cream buns and Genoa cake, Wellington student days of shoulder chops with playwright Roger Hall to an Arab meal in Bethlehem, Vietnamese crab in London, mushrooms in Bologna, Callaloo soup and rude Calypso in Jamaica, back home for a chapter in search of the perfect meat pie. Without the tongue-wagging induced by his ancestral tipple, he might still be looking for a context.

‘The Communion of the Easter Bun-Rabbit’ by David McGill, Silver Owl Press $36-99

Here is Dinah Priestley’s famous five-legged bun-rabbit recipe, but you do the shaping:

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God I cant remember what I do to make those buns but it’s probably something like this

1) Into 300 mls warm water put 4 tsp sugar and 4 tsp granulated yeast.
Stir and leave to rise for 15 mins.

2) Take a large bowl and combine in it with 4 cups flour
2 Tbsp milk powder
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 and half tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 and half tsp ginger
1 tsp mixed spice.
8 oz of currants and raisins
75 grams of mixed peel

3) Melt 60 grams butter
Add a beaten egg to this and then add the yeast mixture.
Pour this liquid into the dry ingredients bowl.

4) Knead for 10 minutes. Then rise the dough for 1 and half hours with a
gladwrap covering. Keep in warmish place.

5) Knock down and knead again for one minute. Make into rolls or fanciful creature. Allow to rise on tray for 10 minutes.

6) Cook in hot oven 220C for 15 minutes. Glaze while still hot with 1 tbsp water, 1 tbsp Honey, 1 tbsp Golden Syrup boiled together. Apply with brush while buns still hot.

ENDS

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