Andorra: Cunillo, Trinxat and Creme de Catalan.
An Andorran tomato roasted rabbit and onion dish with mashed potato, cabbage and leeks.
Y’all, I had high hopes for this one and, to be honest, I was really disappointed. Andorra is a beautiful little European country nestled in the mountains between Spain and France. If you google photos you’ll see that it is an absolutely gorgeous country and being surrounded by countries that are such culinary giants, I assumed the food would be incredible. Now, the problem could certainly be my culinary skills (I’m still learning here y’all!), but the food seemed very bland and didn’t balance well.
I was also really excited about cooking this meal because it was my first time cooking rabbit! What I’ve found since making this meal is that the trick to cooking rabbit is low and slow, otherwise it turns out tough (like mine did). The rabbit was cooked in a tomato based vinegar and wine sauce and I just felt like it really didn’t have much flavor and also called for wayyyyy too much onion. If I were to make this again I’d add more salt, decrease the heat and onions and increase the cooking time. But hey, at least I tried it and the rabbit was edible haha!
The trinxat also seemed to be lacking in flavor- it’s a cabbage, leek and potato mash with some bacon and garlic mixed in. Next time I’d add more bacon and salt. Again, edible and not terrible, but I definitely wouldn’t order it out.
Lastly, I made Crema de Catalan, which was very similar to creme brûlée. This was my favorite part of the meal and was so delicious! It was perfectly creamy and lightly sweet, with a delicious crunchy top. This recipe called for broiling to achieve the crunchy top and did I feel that this wasn’t very effective- mine came out more bubbly than I’d hoped and slightly burnt, but on the bright side it prompted me to buy a kitchen torch, which has been very fun to play with!
All that to say, maybe I need to give Andorra another shot! I definitely think there’s potential in all of these dishes, I just need to work on my technique and fine tuning the recipe.