Fois gras is a French tradition for Christmas and the holidays, and while I’ve certainly eaten my fair share, I’ve never really prepared it, other than a quick sauté. A local venue, Maison Bernardi, offered a class in preparing it, so a friend and I decided why not?
The school is a nice space, with a cheerful fire blazing on a huge television screen and the kitchen where we spent most of our time was spotless. We were all given a lobe of fois gras and told how to find and remove all the veins. I always thought it was one of those fiddly operations, requiring tweezers and surgical precision. Not the case. You separate the lobe into 2 parts, root around for the veins, and then pull them out. Kind of like deveining shrimp without the ick factor.
Once we’d gotten all the veins out, and Chef’s approval, the pieces were mixed together, weighed, and seasoned. It’s a traditional mix of salt and pepper, Port and Cognac. Chef mixed them carefully, and then weighed out portions for all of us to work with.
We learned how to make a roulade (or torchon), by shaping the fois gras into a log, and rolling it up in a long sheet of plastic wrap. Funnily, the hardest part of this was tying the knots tight enough on the ends, so it would be a nice compact log. A sharp knife poked holes where there were gaps and then the log was wrapped in another length of plastic wrap and tied.
After that, it was a trip to the sous vide, what the French call shrink wrapping (and also cooking in a water bath), where each log was sealed in its own packet. The torchons were cooked in a water bath (sous vide) at 55°C for 45 minutes.
Chef then showed us his accompaniment—an onion and pomegranate chutney. Sliced onion and pomegranate seeds are cooked down with cardamom, fennel and rose powder until the onions were beautifully caramelized. I might opt for pomegranate molasses out of laziness (seeding pomegranates is not one of my favorite kitchen tasks). We didn’t get a chance to taste it in the class but got some to take home.
What we did get was a torchon to taste between two of us, while the ones we made were cooking. Served with Pain d’Épices, toast, some Corsican fig jam and a glass of white wine—a very delicious holiday lunch!
And now there’s a torchon curing in my fridge, waiting for an excuse to break it open. Happy New Year!
