First Time Foie Gras Torchon

School is really coming down on me but luckily, I am on spring break. That means...plenty of cooking, eating and just having fun. I recently picked up some Foie Gras cubes from the Wine Library in Springfield NJ and decided to have some fun with it. I love this place because they usually have some rare items, particularly
D'Artagnan items, caviar, cheeses and of course, wine.

Anyways, I got a copy of The French Laundry Cookbook and adapted the recipe to suit my needs. Here is what I used:

(Per 500 grams of Foie Gras)
500g Hudson Valley Foie Gras Cubes
10g Salt
5g white / brown sugar mix (more white than brown)
1g crushed black pepper
1 shot of Lagavulin 16 single malt

Thomas Keller's "The French Laundry" is more than a cookbook: it is a very well written text that is surprisingly intoxicating with information and his story. That story lead to my curiosity of foie gras preparation. Being a college student, I decided to go for the cubes from Hudson Valley.

I let the bag come to room temperature and when ready, put the foie into a bowl and soaked it in milk as the cookbook suggested. 

This step draws out the extra blood lingering within the organ

The milk allows for a simple diffusion of the blood into the milk, leaving behind only the fatty liver. I left this in the milk for 12 hours, turning at about 6 hours. Once this step was complete, I laid the foie out on paper towels to dry them a bit.

After the drying process, I took a bowl and combined the foie, sugar/salt mixture and the single malt.

The hard part (for me) was mashing the pieces into one big clump so that the mixture would roll easily into a log. All that was done was putting the pieces on a cutting board, cutting them up and then remolding. Was the texture like play doh? Personally, the mixture felt more like trying to mold semi-soft butter. Molding it was easier with a spatula. To further compress the mixture, I took out some plastic wrap, added the mixture and twisted the ends....tight....really tight. To keep them there, I used scotch tape and refrigerated the log over night. 

The next day, everything was unwrapped by snipping off the taped ends of the wrap. I put it on parchment to further compress the mixture. It ends up looking like this:

I placed the mixture onto two cut pieces of cheesecloth and started rolling. The motion I used to roll was by rolling the log forward and then pulling it back a bit :

 

 

I got too excited after it formed and didn't take a pic of it as it was heated in the water bath. I do have this picture, which is the foie cooling in an ice bath, re wrapped and tied. 

Note: when the foie comes out of the heat bath, it feels loose to the touch. More cheesecloth is wrapped around the whole thing and retied. The twine must be wrapped toward the center for each end. This ensures tightness of the log and some will even leak out of the grating.

Couple days later after unwrapping from cheesecloth. Not terrible in terms of how well it all stuck together.

After cutting with a hot knife, the pieces looked fine. Just covered them in some cereal, yogurt bits, plated with strawberry jam and honey. (FYI my plating needs work)

And there you have it. My first attempt at Foie Gras Torchon. I'll be trying it again as well as a terrine next time.