Sweet Little Bunny

Eating rabbit can be problematic for people. To many, it's an adorable woodland creature deified in Disney movies and Looney Toons cartoons, and very often kept as a (copiously poop producing) pet. To others, it's a rodent, and as such probably carries disease and shouldn't be touched, let alone eaten.

My problem with rabbit... is that it's insanely hard to bone. Or is that de-bone? (And you would've thought boning is the least difficult thing for us...) Granted, it was my first time, so it was messy, bloody, and a bit frustrating. But I eventually got my half-rabbit into nice, boneless chunks, leaving the legs intact, because really, without a visual identifier to know that your dinner is rabbit, you might think it was veal or turkey.

Which brings us to the choice of cooking style. As our first bunny, figuring out what the hell to do with it was half the battle. Roasting or braising it seemed so missionary... so vanilla. With the weather having turned from the "Paris in the Springtime" of musical fame to nearly bone-chilling wind and rain, a blanquette seemed in order. No, that's not a pun. A blanquette is a stew in a creamy white sauce, generally made with veal, and excellent for warming up when something nasty blows in from the North Atlantic.

Not actually being big on blanquette - for something that looks so rich, it's often very bland - we opted for a little sweetness, in the form of vanilla. (Just when we were trying to avoid "vanilla...") It may sound odd, but after having a Tahitian-inspired shark steak in vanilla sauce recently, it seemed like a brilliant idea.

And boy, was it. After stewing with onions and sand carrots on top of the stove and then in the oven in cast iron, the rabbit meat and legs were tender and moist... The vanilla blanquette sauce (made with butter, milk, and egg yolk) was poured in the pot and mixed in about 10 minutes before serving. Regretfully, the sauce curdled a tiny bit during the few minutes of broiling (to brown the legs), but it didn't affect the finger-lickin'-goodness of the taste.


Going with the sweet theme, we had cardoon 'n prune salad on the side. Sliced cardoon blanched in saltwater and lemon juice was mixed with an orange vinaigrette, basil, and slivers of prune. Served chilled and topped with a bit of orange zest. The whole looks-like-celery-but-tastes-like-artichoke trick of the cardoon went hand-in-lucky-severed-paw with the mindfuck of vanilla flavored rabbit.

It was like a Miracle Fruit party, without the Miracle Fruit.

Creamy... But Where's the Meat?

We took a couple of days off to appreciate some professionals in action, celebrating Alannah's first Franciversary with a rare Michelin-starred bistro lunch. Needless to say, we were too damn filled to the hilt by Alain Ducasse (or whomever his stunt cook is) to make dinner... Then we shifted gears and went to the best damn crêperie in Paris for dinner last night.

After hitting up an event at a wine bar near the Latin Quarter, I was hoping to have tonight off, too, being that a new, California-authentic sushi bar (which is to say about 500x more Japanese than a standard Parisian sushi joint) just opened in our neighborhood. I was exhausted, starving, and in dire need of something raw and fleshy. Unfortunately, the little prickteases apparently close at 7PM, which is about 2.5 hours shy of peak dinner time in Paris.


This left us to improvise at home. Alannah offered to do most of the cooking while I did some prep... She cobbled together some spaghetti, a gorgeous garlic Emmenthal cream sauce, and the last of our delectable market mushrooms into an amazingly rich but none too overbearing dish.

Not to be outdone, I hit up some of our other artisan food fair ingredients and whipped together an acacia honey and walnut oil vinaigrette, to top a salad of mâche, walnuts, and crumbles of soft, ripe brebis cheese from a family farm that deals exclusively in sheep's milk.


Note to self: When crumbling ripe brebis in the future, wear gloves or use a fork. My fingertips still smell like those of a man who got some "extra mileage" at the Spearmint Rhino.

Oddly enough, this is the first vegetarian meal I can recall having in months. It was probably last in November – when Alannah was eating out Italy and leaving me to fend for myself – when I'd have monastic meals of rice, tofu, and a simple miso soup. For me, making a mess in the kitchen just isn't fun if there isn't someone else to feed.

Taking Her Delicate Flower

Mesclun is, quite literally, a fancy French way of saying "mixed greens." But when we say "mesclun greens," you pretty much know exactly what's going to be on the plate, as opposed to "mixed greens," which could damn well be anything. Anyway, I say mesclun, you say mixed, tomato, tom-ah-to, arugula, lettuce... let's call the whole thing elitist and base a presidential election around it.

Anyway, mesclun greens get even more fancy and elitist when you add edible flowers to the mix, which our local green market was more than happy to provide. Run some red radishes through a mandolin and you're getting some über-elite salad.

A salad with this much inherent flavor deserves a light, unobtrusive vinaigrette. Mix a healthy portion of extra virgin olive oil with tiny portions fresh lemon juice, rice vinegar, and cider vinegar, add salt and fresh-ground black pepper. Drizzle it over the greens 'til it looks moist and glistening, like it's ready and waiting for you to pierce it with your fork...