Fois gras

[Headers]

This afternoon I was called to my neighbours house to watch her as she prepared fois gras.
She had acquired two whopping great duck carcasses with their livers extracted. The ducks were huge and so were the livers which she split into lobes and placed in le parfait jars after they had been dusted with salt and black pepper.She has never deveined as she thinks it ruins the liver.
She then put a handful of black pepper corns into each jar and poured in a very tiny amount of eau de vie. Popped the lids on and put them in the boiler for an hour.
She was wondering how much they would reduce in the jars but we won’t know until tomorrow as she doesn’t look at them until they are completely cold.
These birds were very expensive but even I could see the quality. She was then going to use every other bit of the birds for duck fat, magret confit, cuisse confit, even the gizzards were whoppers. I asked her what she would do with the heads and she said she would eat them!
We are invited for lunch on Christmas Day so I’m looking forward to trying the result.

[tagh]

Yum, sounds good.

[Quiksilver]

That brings back happy memories of helping my Gersoise friend Georgette with the annual duck-fest. The whole family would set off on a jaunt into Les Landes to pick up around 30 birds, with or without foies. Just like your neighbour, Headers, nothing was wasted.
There is a lot of shrinkage but it renders a deep layer of golden fat which is almost as highly prized as the foie itself...
I still do confit and a few jars of foie gras but just buy the bits I need nowadays. The hours and hours spent scraping bones to make rillettes are long gone!
Hope you have a lovely lunch