A 15-year old butcher block sits proudly on the north side of the Joseph Abrams kitchen. During peak ours of the night, when the sauciers cannot be bothered to reduce remains to velvety caramel gravy and the sous chefs themselves are encumbered with diner's complaints of tepid prime ribs and underdone shanks of lamb, Joseph would peel back both sleeves, freshen his kitchen towel, and dig himself a fox hole based on this great mass of tree. Uninterrupted and confident that his sous chefs could keep everyone in line, he could concentrate on completing any task, great or small, that held his kitchen behind.
This night, Joseph's corner shrank from a thick, knotty corner of his own design, to an aluminum-legged kitchen stool, uneven from years of being knocked over, leaned and stepped on. From this vantage point, Joseph perched like an observant canary, somewhat indifferent, but interested enough.
This table, under Helen, had become a triage of dead, skinless, and headless rabbit carcasses. Joseph's challenging chef de cuisine herself had brought out a crimson cutting board of plastic from her kitchen sack and onto the weathered surface of Joseph's table. Helen's fingers walked along the ebony handles protruding from her open roll of knives. Little black tombstones, each of them, it was not even two steps from the end for her fingers to draw the traditional chef's knife.
"You can watch if you like, Joseph. I could learn you something new about dressing rabbits." Helen said without looking up from her workspace. "Most people would start from the haunches and work their way back towards the neck. I suppose that's where I'd start as well, but in the interest of expediency…" Yanking the left-most rabbit, rested it delicately – studiously even – and began to work.
"I first learned to dress a rabbit at the Institute, but learned this technique in Spain." Helen surgically segmented the front and hind legs of the rabbit and tossed them aside. "It's terribly efficient for large groups, but somewhat unconventional, maybe. I tend to like it more for speed, but…" she leaned in and pressed the weight of her arm from shoulder to wrist, flattening the meat just enough to assist her as the knife's blade snaked and snapped the rabbit in two. "It's a tad uncouth."
Both rose eyes darted in Joseph's direction. "I can do the rest of these in two minutes. The balance I saw in the fridge, I could do in thirty." The knife sunbeamed in the kitchen light and collapsed underneath the ribs, flashing white upon exit. "What do you say, Joe?" Helen held a perfect breast of rabbit for him to see before placing it upon a foot's worth of saran.
The sous chefs normally would take an hour to dress their rabbits, being careful not to bruise the meat for tenderness sake. This first rabbit had taken no longer than thirty seconds for her to dress, but each subsequent preparation appeared no less than an exhale as the rhythmic circles of Helen's knife tangoed. Within those thirty minutes, what was once a crowded shelf of fridge had been relieved of its population.
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