(kulinarno)
There are some things that you don’t appreciate until you’re threatened with having them taken away. One of them is foie gras, the controversial goose-liver paste that was illegal in California from 2012 until just a few weeks ago. Telling Californians that they couldn’t have the paste made them defiant, apparently, and defiance leads to foie gras ice cream sandwiches.
Yes, that is a real thing at San Francisco’s Humphrey Slocombe, which offers ice cream flavors like prosciutto and salt and pepper alongside foie gras. Sales rose significantly, and the parlor never took the tiny sandwich off the menu until the day that the ban went into effect. People were putting foie gras on unexpected foods back then, and have resumed the goose liver madness.
The state can appeal a federal judge’s decision to overturn the law, but for now, restaurants are putting foie gras back on the menu, and customers are excited to try the forbidden goose. Foie gras is controversial because of the methods used to produce it, which include force-feeding geese through a tube before slaughter in order to cause fatty liver disease in the birds.
One restaurant in Los Angeles claims that the fatty paste pairs well with sweet food, and puts a dab of it on cinnamon brioche French toast. Dishes that use only a tiny amount of it have been working well as restaurant suppliers establish sources again: experts didn’t expect the ban to be overturned, so there weren’t crates of the stuff in refrigerated trucks lined up at the border.
How Forbidding Foie Gras Increased the Appetite for It [New York Times]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist