Rabbit Challa Pampa Style

History

This is a whole domestic rabbit — the recipe says 'conejo casero,' a farmed rabbit and not the Andean cuy — opened out flat, its backbone loosened with three blows of a mortar pestle, fried in pork lard under a stone weight until golden, then baked for three hours buried in a stuffing of minced poultry, mushrooms and garlic between sheets of fresh tocino, in a dish whose lid is luted shut with paste so no steam escapes. It is served cold, a detail that fits its name. Margarita Córdova of La Paz calls it 'á la Challa Pampa,' and the book's own footnote glosses Challa Pampa as a pleasant spot near La Paz, sheltered by a rock and fed by a spring of clear water, where paceños go to picnic on the grass. A cold, sealed, slow-baked rabbit is exactly the kind of dish one carries out to eat there.

The seasoning is restrained and, tellingly, optional: salt always, and 'if you like' a little ground ají and cumin. Ají — the native Andean chili — belongs in a Bolivian kitchen of this period, and here it is offered rather than required, the rabbit's flavor carried more by lard, tocino, nutmeg and the poultry-and-mushroom stuffing than by heat. Rabbit itself has a long documented place in Bolivian valley cooking: a colonial-era 'lambreado de conejo' from Cochabamba is remembered as the ancestor of today's falso conejo, and ají de conejo — real rabbit stewed with ají — is still counted a traditional dish of the Bolivian valleys.

Beyond that setting the specific dish is thinly documented. 'Conejo á la Challa Pampa' appears here under Margarita Córdova's name and does not turn up as a named preparation elsewhere, and the picnic ground she names is attested only by the cookbook's own footnote — it is not the lakeside town of the same spelling on Isla del Sol, which is a different place. What the recipe records with confidence is a method and an occasion: a rabbit cooked to travel and eaten cold on a paceño outing, from one La Paz household in 1890.

Ingredients

• 1 rabbit
• salt
• a little ají (Andean/South American chili pepper)
• ground cumin
• grasa de chancho (pork lard)
• minced poultry (picadillo de ave)
• setas (mushrooms)
• 1 clove garlic
• tocino (cured pork fatback), fresh
• pepper
• grated nutmeg

Instructions

1. Prepare the rabbit (cleaned, left whole with skin on) and open it out fully.
2. Lay it face down and give three blows down the spine with a mortar pestle to stretch it.
3. Season with salt and, if desired, a little ground ají and cumin.
4. Fry in grasa de chancho (pork lard) over a lively fire, weighting the back with a stone so it flattens; turn two or three times until golden, then drain off all fat.
5. Make a stuffing of minced poultry, mushrooms, and a ground clove of garlic.
6. Line the bottom and sides of a baking dish with thin slices of fresh tocino; spread half the stuffing over it.
7. Set the rabbit on top and dust with pepper and grated nutmeg.
8. Fill the dish with the rest of the mince and cover with another thin slice of tocino.
9. Put on the lid, seal the edges with paste to trap the steam, and bake three hours.
10. Serve cold.