Terrine de Foie Gras

Foie gras (fattened liver, usually of a goose or a duck) is not an unfamiliar food to me. Both Shyam and I enjoyed foie gras pate before (store-bought) as well as nice seared melt-in-your-mouth slices of foie gras in restaurants. But that was awhile ago, and somehow foie gras fell off my radar for quite some time. Until now. My current affair with foie gras started after we attended a cooking class at TAG. It was a Saturday right before Valentine's day, and theme of the class was cooking with chocolate and appropriate wine pairings (click here for flyer). One of the dishes was Vichyssoise served warm with seared foie gras and bitter-sweet chocolate shavings. Needless to say, I was excited to recreate the dish at home. Vichyssoise doesn't require any exotic ingredients: leeks, onions, potatoes, cream, and you're all set. Foie gras, on the other hand, is a much more difficult proposition. After unsuccessfully trying to obtain this magic ingredient, Shyam called the restaurant and asked the chef where we could get it (and at a reasonable price), after mentioning all the places we have already tried. Chef Sam was nice enough to offer us to add what we needed to restaurant's order and we'd pick up the item when it arrives, two days later. The day before I was set to cook up a feast for Valentine's dinner (that's right, some women do enjoy spending that day in the kitchen!) I was in possession of a 2 lb fattened duck liver. Yay! I only needed a bit of it for Vichyssoise dish, but I couldn't pass an opportunity to be able to cook some more later with such a wonderful ingredient. After the soup, I used foie gras to make an exciting take on Peruvian dish tacu tacu (read about it here). But time was running out - unfortunately foie gras won't stay fresh long. One option was to freeze it, but that supposedly destroys some of the flavors. So I decided to preserve the remaining liver by making a foie gras pate.

It is surprisingly hard to find a recipe and instructions for foie gras pate online. Searching for it brings up a lot of results, but all of them are for imitation foie gras pate, none use the real thing. I turned to cookbooks (Internet still doesn't have it all!). Bouchon by Thomas Keller caught my attention, and that is what I will describe here. Once again, I will not reprint the exact recipe here, for exact recipe and instructions buy this book or borrow from library.

The whole process takes four days. First day is a piece of cake, second day is easy too, third and fourth are much more involved. Let's begin.

Day 1 - cleaning

If you are starting with whole liver, you will need to clean it. Book goes into fine detail on how to clean the lobes of the liver from veins. Since I have already done that and already cut the liver to some degree in chunks when cooking previously, I did not need to perform these steps. I added foie gras to a glass container, arranged it evenly.

Then cover with milk. Milk is supposed to draw out any blood remaining in the liver. I do not have further information or details on necessity of this steps, but I trust Thomas Keller's word on it.

Liver is supposed to soak at least overnight and up to 24 hrs. Cover, refrigerate and forget about it until tomorrow.

Day 2 - curing

Take pieces of liver out of the milk, rinse and pat dry. Let stand at room temperature for about an hour, covered with wet towel. It is best to let it warm up because next step will involve some molding. Consistency-wise, fois gras is very much like butter (after all, gras means fat). Stick of butter in the fridge is hard, let that same stick of butter sit at room temperature and it becomes pliable.

To cure the foie gras you'll need salt, curing salt, sugar and freshly ground white pepper.

Once foie gras warmed up a bit, put it into a container and force it into an even one-inch layer. Something that I didn't do because I just didn't know, but an advice I can give you now - because you will need to cure one side, then take out the whole layer and flip it, line the container with some plastic wrap, then add the pieces and mold into an even layer, when time will come to flip it, it will be much easier to lift the whole thing by lifting the wraps edges.

Add half of the curing mixture and distribute evenly.

Rub the curing mixture in. I found it easier to cover the surface with clear plastic and use a pestle to really rub it in.

Next, flip the whole layer of foie gras and repeat with rubbing process with the remaining curing mix. Then cover the surface with plastic wrap, make sure there are no air bubbles (air will cause oxidation), and put into refrigerator for 24 hrs.

Day 3 - poaching

This is where it gets really involved. Remove foie gras from the container and place onto a sheet of wax paper.

Mold foie gras into an even roll, about three inches in diameter, using the paper.

Compact foie gras as much as possible. Next transfer the roll onto a sheet of cheesecloth - cloth should be about two feet long and wide enough to hold the foie gras roll and have some allowance at the sides.

Now, start rolling a very tight roll, compressing foie gras as you roll and twisting the end of the cheesecloth to force it to compact as much as possible. Your roll should become shorter and denser.

Next, using some kitchen string, tie each end, then use some more kitchen string to wrap tight at each end and into the roll to force the roll to be even more compact.

Wrap few more strings around, evenly spaced, and tie them to hold the roll together.

Bring a pot of water, large enough to hold the roll entirely and submerged, to a boil. Prepare similarly sized ice bath. Put the foie gras and poach for 90 seconds, then place into the ice bath.

If roll lost some of its shape (fat will leak as it heats up in the hot water), reshape it (while still in cheesecloth), then wrap tightly in a kitchen towel, tie the ends and hang in the fridge overnight. I had to get a bit creative to hang this thing in my fridge, but I made it work.

Day 4 - finishing

If you are not going to consume your foie gras pate immediately, you will need some duck fat. Duck fat can be bought in stores, but I just render some from duck skins. I happened to have a whole duck in the fridge. I usually cook it in various dishes in pieces, so I buy the whole thing and butcher it according to my needs - duck breasts, legs, wings, neck, tongue (yes!), brains (if any), etc. And there are always some extra trimmings, that's how I have pieces of duck skin.

To get fat rendered, you can just put the skin on a fry pan. I prefer to do it in the oven. Place skins in a single layer in a baking dish.

Warm the oven to about 275F, and let the skins sit there for 1-2 hrs - fat will render, skins will get very crispy (think of crispy bacon, but instead it is delicious duck skin!)

Once done, take skins out, drain the fat into a bowl. While I will not be using the crispy duck skins further here, save them - store in airtight container for a day or two in the fridge, after that time they will get soggy and may need to be re-crisped, use similar to crispy bacon pieces. Set fat aside.

Take the hanging roll out of the refrigerator, remove kitchen towels and cheesecloth. There maybe some oxidation on the outside of the foie gras, indicated by a slightly grayish hue. That should be scraped off. Then cut the roll into thick slices.

Thomas Keller calls for a usage of tamis (drum sieve). I will use a regular kitchen strainer.

Taking one slice of foie gras at a time, push it through the sieve (this is hard work, Shyam helped a lot!). The purpose of this is two-fold: make texture of foie gras less dense, airy and light, and also catch any veins and such that were missed when initially cleaning the liver.

Recipe also calls for lightly whipping the pate, but I omitted this step. Now foie gras can be placed in dishes, ramekins or a terrine dish (choose whatever you prefer).

I brushed my terrine dish lightly with duck fat.

Then add the pate in the dish.

Then even out the top surface.

If you chose to place pate in ramekins or other small dishes and serve pate right away, you are done. In my case however, amount of pate and size of the dish mean it will be saved for several days before all is completely consumed. To prevent oxidation, pour duck fat over the pate.

I chose to leave some of the light crispy bits from the skin in the fat, you may prefer to strain those.

Most basic way to enjoy foie gras pate is to toast a slice of french bread and spread the pate on top. Enjoy with some good wine!

Until next culinary adventure, good night!