33 exquisite foie gras recipes for Christmas dinner

Prepared in a terrine, it has a beautiful marbled appearance and a sumptuous monochrome of pastel shades evolving from light pink to golden ocher. On the palate, it has a slightly firm texture which disintegrates with the heat of the tongue to create a round and smooth flavor of great elegance.
Simply pan-fried, foie gras opens up other pleasures with cooking that plays on the opposition. The caramelization of the “skin” responds to the softness of the flesh, a fruitful union and a chatty encounter that gives rise to gluttony. Be careful though! “Foie gras” like “wine” remain generic and all-purpose names that cover a multitude of things. In wines, there are exceptional vintages, good wines and piquettes. With foie gras, it’s the same thing. To see things more clearly, a family of great duck breeders from the South-West and one of the best connoisseurs in France explain to us the secrets of a Grand Cru foie gras.

To avoid unpleasant surprises.

In the Pehau family, they have been feeding ducks for five generations in Castel-Sarrazin in Chalosse, this land of plenty which extends from the Landes forest. Jean-Jacques, the father, states the obvious bluntly. “There are no secrets in breeding and force-feeding, only passion and ambition count. »

It all begins with the arrival of a flock of 320 day-old mulard ducks on the farm. Pampered and pampered, they are placed in small heated rooms and are fed with a compound of cereals, vitamins and trace elements. 20 days later, the ducklings are released into the wild, around ten hectares of meadows where they roam around eating grass and corn.
After 16 weeks of living in the open air, the ducks weigh more than 4 kg, an ideal size to start force-feeding. The word makes you shiver, yet at the Pehau house it takes place in comfort, a perfectly ventilated shed with small parks surrounded by wooden barriers which each accommodate twenty-two ducks. The food? Good whole grain corn from the farm, automatically dosed by a machine and softened with a little hot water and duck fat. It’s Thierry the son who gorges. The gesture is flexible and precise, it accompanies the food along the neck and crop. At no time do the ducks appear stressed.
After 17-18 days of this ultra-calorie diet, the animals reach 6.5 kg and have exceptional livers.

Nothing to do with industrial production where everything or almost everything is possible: flocks of several thousand animals, selections of Muscovy ducks that are easier to feed than mulards, battery farms or on clay meadows and force-feeding in cages which do not exceed 11 days… Everything comes together to produce foie gras of all kinds, without vice but without virtue.

Supplier to around fifteen three-star restaurants, Philippe Andignac knows all the secrets of Grand Cru foie gras.
For this great professional, under the Festins de France brand: “A good liver weighs 580 to 650 g, it has a regular shape, has no hematomas and offers a fairly supple feel. The thumb leaves its mark, giving the impression of the consistency of modeling clay. As for color, it does not appear to be a quality criterion, it has little effect on flavor and varies depending on the color of the corn, which ranges from off-white to ocher to yellow.”
Seller of fresh products, Philippe Andignac offers Extra whole foie gras which adapts to different recipes. For cooking pan-fried or grilled slices, he sells traditional livers presented whole. For terrine lovers, skillful workers remove the network of veins to obtain “denervated livers”. With these two presentations, cooking foie gras becomes child’s play.