Ducasse Class

Escabèche de maquereaux and confit de lapin with pappardelle à la sauge? Had I overestimated my abilities when I’d signed up for a second-level Cuisine de Bistrot class at the new Alain Ducasse cooking school? Faced with two choices, beginner or experienced, I’d chosen the latter, but I had a few doubts when I arrived at the school and glanced at the recipes. My fellow students seemed to share my reservations—the six of us, four men and two women, nervously sipped our coffees and made desultory small talk as we watched our tall young chef-instructor set up the kitchen for our lesson.

When I’d visited the school shortly after it opened in May 2009, Alain Ducasse, the multi-starred chef who runs a school for professional chefs as well as renowned restaurants and bistrots in France, London, New York and Tokyo, explained what prompted him to open this school for “amateurs passionnés“: “I have an obsession to transmit my knowledge both to other professionals and to amateurs. Everything I know I want to pass along. This is the biggest project I’ve ever taken on.” He’d searched a long time for the right place: large enough, with plenty of natural light, a good location, parking and Métro access. “I wanted a lot,” he said with a laugh.

He found it, and what he did with it is stunning. The plain facade on the rue de Ranelagh gives no hint of the beautifully designed Ecole de Cuisine within. Our colorful, super-equipped kitchen classroom was one of four (named Piment, Cèpe, Olive and Truffe) arranged around a garden courtyard. The classrooms have glass walls—I passed one where a pint-sized chef was carefully constructing a croque-monsieur (Les Mini-Pouces children’s classes are geared for 6- to 12-year-olds); in another room I spotted a pastry class where three women were peeling oranges and melting chocolate. Shelves are lined with tempting kitchenware and food products sold in the boutique, and there’s also a large conference room for corporate events and a wine room for oenology classes.

Once the kitchen was arranged to his liking, our instructor, Franck Loquet, stood at the stove and invited us to take our places opposite him, at work stations equipped with cutting board, knife, recipe folder and apron. Loquet worked for 12 years in several Michelin-starred restaurants before joining the Ducasse teaching team a year ago. Among the students, Bruno was a restaurant owner and home cook; Dmitri, a Russian medical student, was taking a break from his studies in London to pursue a whole roster of classes at the school; Leonardo was a jovial, food-loving Italian journalist; Morgan was a cooking novice whose partner had given him the class as a gift; and Miranda, a college student from New York, was not only a beginner but spoke no French—she was accompanied by Tomas, an interpreter who did a superb simultaneous translation without disrupting the class.

We began with the pappardelle, made with a mixture of white and buckwheat flours. Classes here are strictly hands-on, as Morgan discovered when he was assigned the job of separating eggs, something he’d never done before. All during the class Loquet did an excellent job of demonstrating and explaining, and all of us were involved in every recipe.

The confit de lapin involved first making a base de jus de lapin (rabbit broth), which in turn called for fond blanc de volaille (poultry stock), so one recipe was really three — or four, counting the pappardelle. It was the busiest four hours I’ve ever spent in a kitchen.

While browning rabbit pieces for the jus, Loquet explained that the white smoke rising from the pan was water escaping as vapor; the browning showed that the protein was caramelizing. “This scraping is very important,” he said, brandishing his spatula to show us the brown bits stuck to it. “All the good flavor is here.” Once we’d taken turns browning the rabbit, Loquet shocked us by dumping most of a pound of butter into the skillet. He smiled. “The butter protein will also caramelize, adding color and lots of flavor.” (He later skimmed off most of the fat.) His thumb over the neck of the bottle, he splashed in some white wine, then ladled in some broth and let it cook very slowly — “petit frémissement, petit, petit!“

By the time Loquet handed us each our own silvery raw mackerel and showed us the filleting technique, we were relaxed and having fun. He demonstrated how to remove the tiny pin bones with big kitchen tweezers and to trim any ragged edges to “harmoniser la forme“. Dmitri filleted his fish like a pro, and was teased that he must be studying surgery. I struggled until Loquet showed me how the filleting knife bends to the shape of the bone if you apply pressure. Then I got an approving nod. Bruno was not so lucky. Eyeing his massacred filet, Loquet asked, “Did someone eat that one already?”

We each sautéed our own filets, then watched Loquet compose the escabèche marinade. While that simmered, we got out our filleting knives again, this time to remove every bit of white pith from orange and lemon peel and to cut the peel into tiny, perfect squares. Such painstaking work gave me a new appreciation of what goes on in the kitchens of starred restaurants.

Small wild fennel bulbs, sliced lengthwise on a mandoline, went into ice water, where they curled up into a delicious and decorative garnish for the escabèche.

Back to the rabbit, we browned epaules de lapin in olive oil. Loquet added peeled tomatoes to the skillet along with shallots, peppercorns, black olives, white wine and more broth, then the rabbit went into one of the gleaming wall ovens.

All this time our pappardelle dough had been resting. We took turns rolling and cutting it with the pasta attachment to the standing mixer, then draped it on towels to dry. Meanwhile, Loquet’s assistant, who’d been cleaning the kitchen as fast as we were messing it up, poured us all a very welcome glass of wine, and we watched as Loquet finished up the two recipes.

Reducing some of the escabèche marinade until it became syrupy, he whisked in a bit of olive oil to make a vinaigrette, then spooned it over the fennel-topped filets. He cooked the pappardelle in broth to which he’d added butter and sage leaves, topped the cooked pasta with the rabbit and sauce, and scattered the dish with olives and chopped green onions.

Happy to sit down, we enjoyed the fruits of our labor: the escabèche was tart and refreshing, with a nice texture contrast between crunchy fennel and silky mackerel; the rabbit was rich and complex, and the pappardelle outstanding. Loquet ate with us while giving us more tips—the fish could be prepared and marinated the day before serving, the rabbit recipe could also be made with beef, pork, lamb or poultry. In the end, the Level 2 designation, while allowing us to work on more complicated recipes than Level 1, had not prevented the beginners from enjoying and learning from the class. Lingering at the table, we savored another coffee before gathering our recipes and saying a reluctant au revoir.

A few weeks later I tested my newly acquired skills in my California kitchen. Using several substitutions (local white fish instead of mackerel, cultivated fennel rather than wild) and shortcuts (pre-filleted fish and commercial broth), I produced a delicious escabèche. The flavor was complex and the presentation professional: curly fennel atop the fish, an artful drizzle of vinaigrette, a scattering of those little squares of citrus peel. And I would never have attempted anything like it if I hadn’t taken the class.

64 rue du Ranelagh, 16th. 01.44.90.91.00. Half-day classes from €165, full day from €280. Classes are in French; with advance notice interpreting can be arranged at the student’s expense. website

Originally published in the November 2009 issue of France Today.