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Parkside: Andrey Durbach's Haro
Street kitchen serves up a foie gras parfait that
seems richer than butter and yet lighter than
air.
Image credit: Shannon
Mendes |
A Liver
Runs Through It
The sinful appeal of foie gras
By Jamie Maw. Photographs by
Shannon Mendes
THE DUCKS HAVE ASSEMBLED a powerful lobby, with
compelling arguments to get our hands off their livers.
A high liver myself, I understand. For foie gras de
canard is like no other product of nature—albeit
manipulated by man. It is a series of pleasure paradoxes:
ethereally meaty, gossamer rich, crusty and then smooth
as a lothario. There are few things I would rather eat,
and few things my doctor would rather I not.
But the production of foie gras de canard
and its related by-products has caused a firestorm of
controversy. Italy and Israel have banned it. California
has passed legislation to wind down production. And
the City of Chicago, following some hysterical mud-slinging
(gleefully covered in the local and even national media)
between celebrity chef Charlie Trotter, who eradicated
foie gras from his kitchens two years ago, and his pro-foie
foes, banned its sale. Contrarily, the French, who produce
more foie gras (duck and goose both) than any other
country—some 80 percent of the world’s supply—have
decreed it a “National Heritage” product.
The controversy centres on two acts of perceived cruelty:
the gavage, or forced feeding, of the animals, often
via a mechanized tube that delivers a high-energy mixture
of corn meal, water and additives to stimulate the ballooning
of the liver to as much as 10 times its normal size,
often more than half a kilo. The second point of contention
is the crowding of ducks in air-conditioned sheds that
simulate autumn, when the birds naturally overfeed in
preparation for migration. These gavage sheds, in which
the ducks are often penned, can promote bruising, laceration
and organ ruptures, say animal advocates, although recent
anecdotal evidence suggests that pre-slaughter mortality
rates have dropped significantly, to as little as three
percent for one Québécois producer.
Québec is the only province that mass produces
foie gras, and there it’s more popular than ever,
with some 8,500 duck livers (as well as other related
products—see the glossary on page 111)—leaving
the province’s farms each week. In British Columbia,
only “ethically raised” duck livers, such
as those raised by Polderside Farms in the Fraser Valley,
make it to market; most of their production winds up
in Oyama Sausage Company’s pâtés
and terrines at Granville Island, which carries some
of the best foie gras you’ll ever eat.
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Foie gras has
joined Chilean sea bass, swordfish and Caspian
caviar amongst the verboten for the Prius set.
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The best foie gras I ever ate was not
in a restaurant, but in my front yard, overlooking the
sea. It was my business partner’s birthday, the
sort of milestone that demands rich ingredients, earthy
wines and windy speeches. His wife had a magnificent
lobe of foie Fedexed from France. I cooked it in its
own fat in two hot iron pans, finishing it with a splash
of good port, a top knot of salt and a compote of sour
cherries. Another guest brought a magnum of iced d’Yquem:
the sea air and fatty liver and sweet-dry wine spoke
of naughty reward. At that time—a decade ago—I
was certainly no expert on the production of foie gras.
If it was the devil’s work I was completely oblivious.
Now, though, I’ve learnt a little, and much as
I love the stuff I’ve become an infrequent eater
of it, especially after it became ubiquitous, even in
inexpert hands (it deserves better). I regret that it
lost its purity, became a plaything—even a cynical
hamburger fixing. In Philadelphia, a restaurateur tried
to cash in by offering a $100 cheesesteak—complete
with the requisite truffles and foie.
Whereas in France foie gras is a wintertime celebratory
food (much is consumed between Christmas and New Year’s),
in North America it has become commodified, an item
for Robb Report devotees to add to their iconic lists,
lists that speak to excess cash flow seeking social
validation. But not to sound a snot, for even if Maybach
aspirants are bereft of good taste, let’s assume
that they know what tastes good. Most people, especially
those with more than a passing interest in food, eat
foie gras because it’s delicious and because its
texture is like no other.
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