Rabbit Tastes Just Like Chicken

Actually, today's rabbit dish was chicken: the butchery department had no rabbits available.

Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera today, because we got to use the 36" paella pan. Then I got to clean the 36" paella pan. In between, Chef Alain did all the fun parts.

We're learning more about him each day and one thing: he likes to "demonstrate" (i.e. take over) the most challenging and entertaining techniques. Like the entire process of actually making the paella, once Andrea had parboiled and chopped the sausages and made the saffron stock and measured and washed the rice, and once Sylvia had chopped the bell peppers, tomatoes, green onions, garlic, parsley, and lemon, and once I defrosted and deveined the shrimp, cut up the two chickens, and sliced the calamari: then Chef was ready to take over the process, and he did.

I'll just have to make it again, at home, over the weekend. I'm "babysitting" my son's paella pan — the one I gave him for Christmas, the year he went to Spain — because he doesn't have room for it in his miniscule Manhattan apartment. So a major investment in saffron, and I'm all set.

We had a rice milk beverage made by Rudy and Julian, mimicking the Spanish horchata made with tiger nuts ("chufa"). Sarah created a wonderfully refreshing gazpacho, in the blended style, something I could eat every day. (Chef Alain said "It's Spanish V-8.") Andrea noted that gazpacho gets better over a couple of days, as the flavors meld, so it's another great long weekend recipe project that also fits perfectly into the "eating healthier" motif now in vogue in my kitchen. Andy made a roasted rabbit — really a chicken -- with allioli sauce made from ground hazelnuts and almonds, and we had another chicken dish, this one a stew with bell peppers ("piperade").

After class, I went to talk to Chef Judy about the best way to make and decorate a large number of cupcakes. She encouraged me to make buttercream roses: "It's a hundred, not a thousand!" The gauntlet has been thrown.