Jim and I went to Laurence's house last night to make foie gras - otherwise known as over-sized duck liver with cirrhosis.Basically, Laurance first took Patrick to a specialty shop to pick up the duck liver. Apparently, you can't kill a duck at any old time, duck liver is seasonal, so we should start seeing it in the local grocery stores shortly. Since there's really not much to the recipe, it's all about the quality of the duck liver. The stuff is not cheap - it runs about 30 euros for one 600g liver. Although the original liver was expensive, Patrick found about 1/10th the amount of finished foie gras in the same store for about 110 euros.
So the first step after purchase is to remove the veins from the liver - since that will give a bad taste and texture in the end. They can be hard to find, so this is probably the most labor intensive step. After that we take a bottle of white wine, a 1/4 teaspoon of salt (specifically made for foie gras), and a 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, and marinate the liver for 24 hours in the refrigerator (flipping once after 12 hours). The next step is to bake the mixture in a terrine with a bain-marie for 40 minutes in 150 C oven, let it stand to room temperature, and then cure in the refrigerator for 2 days. After that it keeps for a about a week.
We actually didn't wait that long to see how long it keeps. Knowing that Patrick would be unable to eat an entire terrine of foie gras by himself, we opted for a tasting at work to celebrate the end of Model Office. Thomas brought in some great bottles of wine, Patrick ran home at 4PM and picked up the finished foie gras and pre-ordered bread from the local bakery - and it was an instant party. Of course, being the veg I couldn't taste it, but the reviews were very favorable, and the old catering trick of knowing if something was good . . . there wasn't any left.
