cookcabulary - food words starting with f

listen to how foie gras is pronounced

foie gras (FWAH GRAH) Currently occupying what might be the food world’s most contentious love/hate relationship, foie gras (literally translated as “fat liver”) represents the height of gastronomic pleasure or a reprehensible act of cruelty, depending on your point of view.

While the term classically applies to goose liver, ducks also get in on the act. The bird’s exercise is restricted, and it’s force-fed by a feeding tube, producing a liver enlarged up to 10 times its normal size. Animal rights groups such as PETA condemn the activity. Gourmands, who admire its delicate taste and satiny texture, counter with claims that the birds’ esophageal structure makes force-feeding painless and say the animals are practically giddy as they waddle up to the feeding tube.

Foie gras production is now prohibited in 17 countries, including the United Kingdom, Italy and Israel. Legislation in California will ban production there by 2012. Movements to outlaw it are making inroads in New York, and Chicago’s recent ban erupted in colorful controversy.

Whatever your views, the practice is nothing new. The French are the world’s biggest consumers of foie gras, which dates back to ancient Egypt and was well known in classical Rome. The tradition was kept alive by Jews, whose dietary laws prohibited the lard their central and western European neighbors used in cooking. By the Middle Ages, gentile gastronomes were going to Jewish neighborhoods on liver-shopping expeditions. Pope Pius V was apparently a fan.

Wherever you live, you’ll pay dearly for a taste—prices can run you up to a hundred bucks a pound.

read all 2 comments posted by other people. Share yours now

The term was originally used in ranch country as a legal description of areas where herds could be grazed without fences. While beef, bison and other meat may show up in the store as “free-range,” the USDA sets free-range standards only for poultry. These standards require only that birds have some access to the outdoors. On some farms, they’re given access to grasslands and unlimited exercise. But in large-scale operations (including organic ones), they may be kept in the coop for the first five weeks of their lives, by which time feeding routines are firmly established. Since they’re often slaughtered at seven weeks, the birds never develop the habit of stepping out the door.

If you do find an artisan farmer whose chickens actually roam around eating what chickens were intended to eat (grass, grubs and insects), the meat can be remarkably different from that of their cooped up cousins. It may be higher in healthy Omega-3 fatty acids and can be so much tastier than your run-of-the-mill roaster that you may swear you’re eating a different animal. Finding pastured poultry may take some pecking around. Farmer’s markets are a great place to get to know local producers and find out what your dinner had for dinner.

There are no comments posted. Share yours now