Foie gras four ways

The French have a different relationship with duck than we do. You can find it on just about every menu here, and one can pick up vacuum-packed sliced duck breast at any supermarket the way we might buy a package of salami. This is fortunate for me because I looooovvve duck, and I resent having to limit my canard consumption to Chinese restaurants and special occasions back in the States.

Although I was certain of my fondness for duck flesh when I arrived in Paris, my feelings for foie gras were a little hazier. I'd only had it a couple of times at upscale restaurants, and it typically arrived at my table so tarted up with fruits, booze and crostini that the kitchen could have swapped in a slab of Fancy Feast and I wouldn't have known the difference.

But just like duck meat, foie gras is a fairly common ingredient here. It's not exactly cheap - the liver pictured above sells for about $40 - but it's altogether more pervasive and accessible, and less likely to be served in overly frou-frou ways. So it was only natural that we would spend a few days learning the ins and outs of foie gras: how to select it, when and how to devein it, and what to pair it with. The only thing we didn't discuss was the raging maelstrom of debate going on in America surrounding the ethics of its production. And I'm not going to discuss it now either. Instead I'm going to show you what we learned.

We all gathered around a cutting board at the start of class and looked at the two livers that our instructor had laid out before us.
"Which one would you choose?" he asked.
We peered at both of them and shrugged our shoulders. One was bigger, with looser flesh and a more golden color; the other was smaller and pink.
"The answer is neither."

Both livers had a few pink spots, which turned out to be hematomas. Chef explained that their presence indicates that the animals weren't raised well and were probably kept in tiny quarters. He said foie gras should have a golden, uniform color, which indicates that the animal ate a corn-based diet, and that a smaller, firmer liver will release less fat.

The first dish we worked on was foie gras terrine. We learned how to gently remove the layers of veins without destroying the flesh by using the back of a spoon.




We marinated the liver in white port, cognac and spices overnight. Then we packed it into a terrine mold, baked it in a water bath and then inverted the dish over a rack to drain off the excess fat that appeared during cooking.






We then strained this fat through a cloth-lined sieve and poured it back onto the top of the foie gras. At this stage, you can keep a terrine for about a week in the fridge because the fat creates an airtight seal around the edges and protects the liver beneath. Here's what it will look like when you unmold it:


If you did a good job of packing the terrine mold tightly with the pieces of foie gras, the result will be very uniform, firm slices that don't fall apart and go wonderfully with a toasted slice of Poilane bread and a sprinkle of fleur de sel:


We also made a second terrine in which the liver was poached in a Medoc syrup that had been spiced with cinnamon and star anise. It turned a scary shade of magenta:


When you press the foie into its mold, you want to be sure to pack it in extremely tightly. Our teacher found some small pieces of wood that had been cut expressly for this purpose:


Anybody that's addicted to collecting useless kitchen gadgets can now add a handcut wooden foie gras mold press to their Christmas list!

In another lesson, we simply sliced the foie gras into inch-thick medallions, scored and seasoned them, and then seared them in a hot pan. We served these atop a delicious curried lentil cream sauce (that sentence sounds vaguely Hannibal Lechter, doesn't it?):





To round out our foie gras education, we sauteed an entire lobe over high heat to give it a nice caramelly color, and then basted it in its own rendered fat. I got to do the basting, and let me tell you, I enjoyed it immensely even though all I did was stand at the range spooning dark brown oil over a giant, bloated duck liver for twenty minutes. The final product was velvety soft and smooth, and I am once again ashamed to say that we ate chunks of it with our fingers while standing around the stove. I am also a little ashamed to say that I totally forgot to be morally outraged on Foie Gras Day, probably because I was too busy channeling Caligula and gorging myself on many euros worth of foie gras. Perhaps gout will be my punishment.

Charlie Trotter, please don't hate me.