cookcabulary:
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.
related:
What Does Chicago's Repeal of the Foie Gras Ban Mean for Philly?