If fighting world hunger requires me to eat lamb burgers with foie gras and blueberry jam and bacon-wrapped scallops, then you know what? I’m willing to go that extra mile. There’s people out there that need me.

Kent Rathbun, Mark Haugen, Stephane Motir, Tim Love, and Bobby Flay (top); three ladies just there for the food (bottom)

As I stood in the back room holding an extra glass of red wine while my cohort snapped a photo in the kitchen, Taste of the NFL founder Wayne Kostroski noticed my momentary double-fisting and said, “I like your style.” Stupid me, I thought he was referring to my sport jacket (on sale at Macy’s, thank you), but I realized it was my humanitarian efforts. He’s the James Beard Foundation’s 2010 Humanitarian of the Year winner, so he must know what he’s talking about.

The interesting thing about the “Taste of the NFL” dinner was that it was held during Monday Night Football. So, while the real fans were out eating Buffalo wings and watching Philly trounce the Redskins, the rest of us just ate. This particular meal was attractive because of the collection of chefs. I’ve enjoyed Mesa Grill, so Bobby Flay’s appearance was exciting. (Off topic, but for some reason, I liked the Vegas location much more than the NYC spot.) Tim Love also makes lots of TV appearances and his food looked hearty and interesting. And, as co-host of the event, Drew Nieporent, later said gleefully, fellow chef Kent Rathbun had actually defeated Bobby Flay on an episode of Iron Chef America. Mark Haugen, Chef Director of Taste of the NFL, Stephane Motir of Tribeca Grill, and Gina Gallo of Gallo Family Vineyard fame, were also in attendance.

Cocktail hour proved a success: the flavors were strong, and the quantities were plentiful.

Lobster shooters. The idea of throwing food into the back of your mouth always seemed strange to me. So, I only ate two.

Spicy shrimp on a corn chip... hmm, which chef could have done this?

Foie gras on a lamb burger, proving once again that it can indeed make everything taste better. Taking the lead, if only momentarily, against bacon.

Chef Mark Haugen showing how he and the Vikings do it back in Minneapolis.

Sitting next to one of Flay’s friendly PR agents, we enjoyed a remarkably well-integrated five-course meal. With flavors like jalapeno, bacon, smoked duck, wild boar, and chestnut, things were unlikely to go wrong.

Stone ground grits, with mushrooms, ricotta, and jalapeno pesto: Flay's dish was this author's personal favorite.

If this were bone barrow, it would have been less fattening. (Chipotle bacon-wrapped sea scallop, roasted cauliflower risotto, and meyer lemon butter.)

A rare salad at the James Beard House, with endive, jicama, orange, and pomegranate, and recommended daily allowances of smoked duck and blue cheese.

Wild boar. Well, which is it?

No quenelles may be made without the express written consent of the NFL.

Petits four fit for a linebacker. Well, almost.

How these chefs fit in the kitchen, let alone turn out stuff like this for a big group of people all at the same time, is an achievement in itself. In closing, I’d make some sort of cheesy and painful pun using a football analogy, but then I might have to take some kind of weapon to myself. Shotgun!, for example.

Right up there with my record mile time sits an equally important record in my mind: the number of Buffalo wings consumed in one sitting. That would be 75. I still harbor some degree of bitterness from the closer inspection of my high school friend’s wing remains, as he excused himself to vomit in the T.G.I. Friday’s bathroom. Some of his 100 “eaten” wings still had meat on them, dammit. Not only did I not vomit, but I ate every last piece of meat and skin, thank you. But he paid his price and, well, I had the opportunity to eat several empty Coca-Cola pitchers’ full of Buffalo wings.

You could say that Buffalo wings were the first food I had a passion for, even surpassing pizza and nachos. And let me state off the bat that when I say “Buffalo wing”, I mean actual Buffalo wings, not some pansy, honey-barbecued, phony nonsense or some plain, fried wing. These are “chicken wings”, not “Buffalo wings”.  There is only one real Buffalo wing, and that is the chicken wing with a red, tangy, peppery sauce, composed mainly of vinegar, pepper, garlic, and salt. In other words, the ingredients in a bottle of Frank’s RedHot. Some strict Buffalo Wing Constitutionalists may even reject any non-RedHot wing, given the sauce’s role in the original Buffalo wing produced at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo. I would concede in deference to that holiest of shrines. (Yes, I did make a pilgrimage.) Nevertheless, my own definition leaves room for any tangy red pepper sauce. And did I mention they need to be served with blue cheese dressing, not ranch?

Since Saturday was the date of the Manny Pacquiao / Antonio Margarito fight, it was a perfect occasion for wings. Imagine my dismay, after realizing I had the date of the boxing match wrong by a week, that my first batch of truly homemade Buffalo wings would instead be unveiled during a showing of (500) Days of Summer. (And I agree with the caption at the beginning of the movie: Summer was a bitch.)

I decided to wing it on the wing sauce. I felt confident in doing so because I had made hot sauce from scratch once before (though that entailed letting the sauce ferment), and I thought my experience making a basquaise would help. In terms of ingredients, I must have eaten three or four hundred kinds of hot sauce by now (seriously), so I know the usual combinations. My goal was to saute the peppers until they were very soft (“almost melting”, as Eric Ripert said in the cod basquaise episode of Avec Eric); that way, I figured the sauce would blend nicely. The main thing I wanted to avoid was creating something that looked like a finely chopped salsa. I had made one of these a long time back while following a recipe that didn’t require the peppers to be cooked. Major mistake. And since a RedHot or a Tabasco sauce involves some amount of aging (aging peppers in the case of RedHot, aging the whole sauce in the case of Tabasco), I knew I couldn’t screw around if I was planning to serve the sauce the same day.

Our local grocery store had some “long hot peppers”. For some reason, grocery stores never feel the need to specify the type of hot pepper, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say these were cayennes. And although I’m generally not a huge fan of sweet sauces, I thought a same-day pepper and vinegar sauce would need a little sweetness to offset the acid, so I picked up one red bell pepper and a mango.

Winging it on the wing sauce.

I sauteed two finely sliced cloves of garlic with half a finely diced carrot. I added the carrot because I’ve always liked it in Caribbean habanero sauces, and thought it would help integrate the flavors a bit. After softening the garlic and carrot, I threw in a pound or less of deseeded and finely chopped hot peppers, along with half a red bell pepper. I added enough white wine vinegar not quite to cover the mixture, but to generate a nicely sludgy texture. Salting from the beginning, and throughout, is always the right thing to do, and I did so while everything softened. I added less than half a chopped mango later in the process, on the assumption that the fruit wouldn’t require as much cooking. All throughout, I added white wine vinegar to keep the mixture wet. If I had to guess, I’d say the entire amount was a cup and a half or so. But see the photo for an idea of how much liquid I tried to maintain. Keep salting, but little by little so you don’t overdo it.

Here are the measurements:

• 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/2 carrot, finely diced (or grated)
• Approx. 1 lb. hot red peppers (such as cayenne), finely chopped
• 1/2 red bell pepper, finely diced
• 1/2 mango or less
• White wine vinegar to nearly cover mixture throughout cooking (about 1 1/2 cups in total)
• 1 tbs. butter
• Sugar to taste (about 1 tsp.)

Normally, I don’t add butter to my RedHot when making wings, but I thought this needed it to bond the sauce. Once the mixture was nice and soft, I put it all in a food processor and blended until smooth. Maybe I could have added more mango, because it needed a bit more sweetness. I added a teaspoon or so of sugar. The consistency ended up quite thick, but since it was tangy enough, I didn’t want to add any additional vinegar. Plus, a thick sauce would stick to the wings well.

Hot sauce puree. (Or baby food for that ungodly imp in your life.)

As usual, I put the wings in a 425° oven. Depending on how many wings you’re cooking, your cook time will vary. But I cooked 18 wings and left them in for a good 35 minutes at least before turning them over. The total cook time is about an hour, but make sure they’re browned and crispy.

While the wings were cooking, I made the blue cheese dressing. Our town has a great cheese shop, so I had my pick of lots of blue cheeses. I asked to taste two types, the Gorgonzola and the Maytag. The Maytag was both saltier and crumblier, so that was my choice. I mixed it with sour cream and a little salt, and added a spoonful of mayo to pull it together.

Not the most photogenic food item.

In the end, there was exactly enough sauce for 17 of the 18 wings. (Leftovers, cool.) As to the taste, the critical reviews said it all. And keep in mind that my wife does not throw out complements lightly:

“I just want to suck all the sauce off of those wings.”

I always consider such language positive.

Personally, I thought they could be spicier, and maybe I’d add some other components next time. (More carrot, onion, black pepper, maybe a dried habanero or chipotle.) But all in all, I think they came out quite nice for a first effort. A same-day Buffalo wing sauce is definitely doable.

My first from-scratch Buffalo wings.

Perhaps it should have been obvious that a dinner mostly flown in and prepared by visiting Icelandic chefs would necessarily end with a dessert consisting of an erupting volcano. The freeze-dried skyr and crowberries weren’t so obvious.

Nice place you got here, Mr. Savalas. Big Kelly's Heroes fan.

Personally, I thought the volcano dessert was such a good idea that my suggestion to our table (full disclosure: there was Swedish beer before dinner and an above-average wine pairing throughout) was that Chef Gunnar Karl Gislason and his team ought to try a whole series of desserts based on natural disasters. A mud slide would be easy, but a tsunami or Bubonic plague would take a little creativity. (Bad taste or not, I’d flavor my tsunami with lemongrass.)

Arctic char, the first passenger on Icelandic Air makes an appearance.

Other ingredients that made the trip in suitcases via Icelandair included: herring, capelin roe, arctic char, langoustines (the best I’ve ever eaten), lamb, and wild goose.

Pickled herring and onions: isn't this all they eat up there?

Oh, and I can’t forget about Rudolph and friends.

Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid.

My first experience with smoked reindeer was a good one, I’m happy to say. And if smoked reindeer isn’t unusal enough, the final savory course of the night, the Icelandic lamb, was paired with a reserve selection from Midsummer Cellars, from the personal library of Helgi Tomasson. That would be the Icelandic-born artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, to all you fellow ballet non-aficionados.

Staking out territory for hors d'oeuvres in the JBF courtyard.

The hors d’oeuvres changed slightly from this prepared menu, but otherwise it was essentially the same.  And speaking of hors d’oeuvres, it’s kind of an unspoken rule at the James Beard House that you may trample fellow diners during cocktail hour. Fortunately, people were sane and courteous this evening, and the number of vulture sightings was low. (Also, my wife and I have a strategically identified cocktail hour loitering location, which will remain confidential. And no, it can not be inferred from the above photo.)

Puerto Rican night? Norwegian? Wait, don't tell me.

As alluded to above, every protein in the meal was packed or carried in suitcases from Iceland. Unbelievable, but the kind of unbelievable stuff the James Beard House has come to be known for. Wild goose? Check. Arctic char, and dried dulse? Check.

Big-ass Swedish truffle covered with volcanic ash. It's the only way I take my goose.

More arctic char, this time with... mussel cream?

Here’s a tip I shouldn’t be giving away, if you decide to book a dinner at the James Beard House. (You don’t need to be a member, by the way, but you pay more as a non-member.) Look for the events that are more about the promotion than the “honor of cooking at the James Beard House”. Both can be equally great, but events involving hotels or large restaurant corporations aiming to get new business, or in this case when the chef actually admitted being employed by his country’s tourism board, these events really try to sell you. And, therefore, the quality and quantity of ingredients is often glaringly higher. Was it necessary to take up valuable luggage space with spruce tree needles? No, but it made for the most uniquely served, and scented, langoustine I had ever had. Oh, and that would be ultra-pureed cauliflower in the background, and in the bottom left of the second plate, a dash of “horseradish snow”.

Langoustine Christmas.

The brandade of bacalao and beets even won me over. In actuality, I don’t remember my last experience with bacalao. (My grandmother had made baccala when I was a kid, but for some reason, my cousins and I stuck with homemade pasta over her offer of dried, salted fish.) It was actually quite tasty, and being prepared as a brandade probably didn’t hurt. I think I even finished my beet, square and miniature though it was.

Salted cod and beets have an uphill battle for me, let's be honest.

The lamb was free-range, which the chef described to our table in a romantic story involving the carefree, wandering life of the baby sheep that sounded almost enviable until, well, you’ve probably seen Silence of the Lambs by now. But evidently in Iceland, the lambs are truly free-range, which results in a noticeable gamey quality. Whether I would have normally enjoyed this quality, I’m not sure, but the chef prepared it perfectly, and with the accompanying barley, as well as the dish of super-creamy root vegetables, the course was quite a closer to the savory portion of the meal.

The carefree life of a free-range Icelandic lamb.

I’ll point out that the intermezzo was a dish containing celery, celeriac, cottage cheese, and walnuts. But only because I like using the word “intermezzo”.

Celery and cottage cheese: not your kid's pre-dessert.

The dessert was truly spectacular, and unfortunately a static photo doesn’t do it justice. An ice cream(ish) “volcano”, made with a type of soft cheese called skyr and accompanied by crowberries, contained an empty, hard-chocolate tube within it. Once the dish was served, the chefs made rounds pouring a molten, fruity “lava” into the center. And the “lava” bubbled! We were given the secret: a bit of dry ice at the bottom powered the whole contraption.

More spectacular than a financial crash.

At this point, we were full and completely satisfied. Sounds like the perfect time to bring out some cake! It turns out that vinarterta is a traditional Christmas dessert. (See, I knew there was a Christmas theme going on. Either that, or Icelanders just make the best of their weather and barren landscapes by treating every day like Christmas.) The filling is a prune mixture, and this particular version was light enough to fit down. I think I may try this recipe for Christmas, which not only allows for preparation weeks in advance, but demands it.

Vinarterta: now that's Christmas.

Along with my wife and I, reporters from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and Seattle Times were on hand. It was clear from his reactions to the chef’s offerings that the WSJ reporter was a tad apprehensive about the tastings, and he didn’t mind voicing that in his own recap. Anyway, that’s me in his article’s photo, on the bottom left. My wife must have been leaning back and enjoying her wine.

Four hours of craft beer on a Sunday afternoon, two live bands, a cask tasting hosted by Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, beer cocktails, and endless food from Chef Daniel Humm. All that booze, and nobody even got topless. Had they done so, I could have definitely declared the 3rd Annual NY Craft Beer Week’s closing party the beer event to end all beer events.

The common man's four-star joint.

I will freely admit: I had high hopes. My wife and I ate at Eleven Madison Park the week after Frank Bruni of the NY Times awarded it four stars. As good as it was to earn the stars, the staff was probably floating on air and presumably even better than usual. The service was incredible, the meal was one of our best, and the space that is the high-ceilinged Eleven Madison Park dining room was magnificent. And, so, they’re going to throw a craft beer party in this place? Holy shit.

Fried chicken, cask ale, and foie gras? I've come to the right goddamn place.

If you ever find yourself capable of throwing a party at Eleven Madison Park, I say invite me and go for it. Most likely, the number of attendees was below what they were hoping, but that only meant minuscule lines for food, no lines for beer, and a place to sit outside, if you wanted to hang out and listen to the kick-ass bluegrass. (Inside, it was a competent blues band.)

Hey guys, everybody's up here with Garrett Oliver.

Reps from various NY state breweries were set up throughout the space, with a couple outside, three more inside, and a mixed selection of bottles on ice free for the pouring. Service would have to be declared perfect. Waits were minimal to nonexistent, and both the brewery reps and the Eleven Madison Park staff were friendly and attentive. Two men tended bar, serving classic cocktails with a twist (meaning beer).

Beer cocktails that may or may not ever again see the light of a Sunday afternoon.

We, of course, tried everything. At least once. The beer couldn’t have been better, and the cocktails were as solid as when we had sampled the beerless versions last year.

Porter old fashioned and pale ale swizzle. And more bottles of bitters than an untrained schlub like myself would know what to do with.

Upstairs, the head honcho for brewing at Brooklyn Brewery, Garrett Oliver, gave an informal talk about his foray into beer as a film major (that makes two of us), and told us about the two cask offerings Brooklyn had provided. One was a cask version of their Pennant Ale, a beer I can’t say I had been super-enthusiastic about in the past. From the cask, though, it reminded me of that delicious stuff I’ve been served in British pubs: a real bitter, albeit a mild one. The other, if I were a big stout fan, might have been the one to write home about, the Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, flavored with cocoa nibs. When Oliver described it as “chocolaty”, he meant it literally. I liked the mild carbonation that resulted from the cask conditioning.

Squeeze it all on the plate. There's only infinite more left for the taking.

The food was, well, beer food made by a four-star chef. Since I visited Kansas City this year, let me be an anal bastard and say the beans weren’t cooked enough, but their flavor was great and so was that of everything else. Can you ruin pork belly? I believe so, but it didn’t happen on this day.

Pickled radish and zucchini, costarring with fried chicken and onions.

Now, I’m trying to remember. Why was it again that I don’t eat fried chicken more often? Probably because the mere thought of planning to obtain it, within, say, three hours of your trip to the gym, is coke-head-like behavior and you usually save food like this for when planning is the furthest thing from your mind. I.e., after the night of craft beer rather than during it. The good news is, you can enjoy beer grub like this better before 2:00 AM rolls around, and even more so when you order it outside of a KFC (Kennedy Fried Chicken). (Forgive the tangent: I wish I could remember the comedian who said of this perennial inner-city eatery, “You know why they call it Kennedy Fried Chicken, right? Because when you go there, you get assassinated.”)

The point is, Chef Daniel Humm and staff know how to make fried chicken. The chicken (and onions) were brought out to the servers regularly, but you still need to be impressed at how tender, and crispy, it remained. The surprise, for me, was the pickled radish. There were a variety of pickled vegetables, including carrots and zucchini, but my favorite was the radish. The usual bitterness of the radish was tempered by the sweetness and tartness of the pickling juices, and made a great accompaniment to, well, everything else that was served.

Nothing beats a PB&J macaron for dessert. Except for more foie gras.

Right next to the fried chicken station was a woman serving from a big-ass vat (I believe “big-ass terrine” is the proper terminology) of foie gras. How many big-ass vats made an appearance, I’m not sure, but I believe at least two. As a guest, your only obligation was to name how many pieces of bread with foie gras you wished to have at a time. Clearly, they had me at “foie”. Nevertheless, and though it pains me to say this, I found the foie gras to be the least successful pairing with beer. And believe me, I paired it with beer up the yin yang. Still, this is foie gras we’re talking about, and I could have eaten it with sugar water sucked out of a wax soda bottle and been happy about it. The macarons, incidentally, we’re freakin’ unbelievable. (Though to be honest, my palette only remembers the peanut butter and jelly version.)

Wow.

I wouldn’t have even picked up the lollipop dessert had I not been with a chocolate aficionado. By that, of course, I mean a woman. In this case, my wife. A bite into this white-chocolate (hey, this isn’t even really chocolate…) masterpiece yielded a soft, creamy interior that could easily satisfy even an ice cream fan like yours truly. The fact that it lasted only two bites max, seemed to turn the average unsuspecting consumer into a vulture on acid, immediately hunting down the next available stick. This thing was this good.

A little outdoor bluegrass (and more beer).

I was so focused on beer and food that I failed to recognize what was happening outside. The inside blues band was good, but the outside bluegrass group was perfect. Every foot was tapping. And if it wasn’t, it was because either the owner of the foot had too damn much craft beer, too little of it, or he just shouldn’t have been anywhere near a craft beer party to begin with.

This was a good party. It was a good $125.00 party, but it was a good party. If it should happen again, I will be there, either in body or spirit, but preferably, in both.

Everybody wants to love Eataly. Some of my favorite restaurants are co-owned (and even used to be operated) by Mario Batali. The idea of Eataly, if not the goofy name, is amazing. Food-group-centric restaurants amidst Italian-centric shopping sounds great. A Dogfish Head Italian-themed beer garden, soon to come, is too good to be true. The problem is, regardless of how great the idea is, when I was sitting at the bar at Il Pesce, eating what in general amounted to an excellent dinner, I felt like I was at a food court inside a Bed, Bath & Beyond.

The Il Pesce kitchen: about 10 of Eataly's 50,000 square feet.

To be fair, while in Europe, I went to food markets but not to the malls. So, my point of comparison for Eataly are markets like those in Bologna or Florence, or even a great indoor market like the Mercado de San Miquel in Madrid. Eataly is probably even more similar to this Spanish market than to the ones I saw in Italy, but the layout of Mercado de San Miquel actually made sense. Eataly is basically a hollowed-out cave, with bottles of sauce on shelves wherever there happens to be room, and a standing wine bar located at a key intersection where passing shoppers are constantly squeezing past wine drinkers trying to stand and mingle. (An inconvenience to the shoppers, too, might I add. Check out this lady.)

Eataly feels European in the sense that B&B Ristorante in Las Vegas feels like Babbo. It’s a good approximation (I enjoyed my food), but something is noticeably lost in the translation. The strange layout of the place, the unfinished floors (whether their unfinishedness is intentional is anyone’s guess), and through no fault of the management, the people who work there are just not the same. In Italy, people who work in markets look like they enjoy their jobs, or at least seem to understand why their jobs exist and the value they serve. At Eataly, well, they’re a bunch of New Yorkers working at a place where no one sees it as a career and most see it as an obstacle to their “real” careers. This is not distinct to Eataly, this is true wherever you have young employees working for an hourly rate doing anything remotely requiring customer service. My experience at Eataly was that anyone who was Hispanic had a work ethic (I’m including the two ladies at the bizarre restaurant check-in booth) and anyone else, minus the cooks, were confused, inexperienced, or clock-watching (I’m including all five or more employees at the coffee place).

The amazing thing is, despite my overall lukewarm impression with Eataly’s atmosphere, I might go back for another meal at Il Pesce. Its quality doesn’t seem to jive with its surroundings (the converse of Il Pesce in Eataly is a StarKist salesman in the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo), though its informality does and that’s a good thing. Let me clarify: the informality of the presentations jives with the surroundings, if not all the prices. You just need to know in advance what to order. In this regard, I’ll try to help.

If you see a razor clam special, grab it immediately. An absolute knock-out. These particular clams had so much meat that your expectation is that there’s no possible way they are at all tender. The opposite was true. Simply but deliciously prepared, and I would get them again in a second.

Dare I say, razor clams as good as in Barcelona? I dare.

Curiously enough on the menu was a “smoked fish of the day”. That called for an order, regardless of the day’s fish. For $15.00 a plate, it’s quite a let-down to get salmon. I could go to a decent bagel shop, ask for the thinnest slices, and drizzle on some decent olive oil and be happy. But $15.00 for this, under the bright lights of a department store, borders on insulting.

$15 smoked salmon. Good, but not that good.

I should say something about the olive oil, however. It was drizzled on everything, and always appreciated. I wish I knew the rhyme or reason behind why one oil was picked over the other half-dozen selections, but whatever it was, the chef knew what he was doing.

Fortunately for us, one of those inexperienced people I mentioned earlier comped us an appetizer because he got our order wrong. Instead of oysters, he served us the crudo. And this was fortunate not just because the oysters would have been too much food, but it saved us from having to spend $19 on four pieces of sashimi. This was an insult. Or would have been had we spent it.

If this weren't comped, we would have paid $19. Actually, no we wouldn't have.

The tuna was sushi take-out standard, and though the other fish was better, none of this was on the standard of Esca, where Il Pesce’s chef David Pasternack originates. At Esca, the crudo has repeatedly blown me away. I sense the technique here is up to par, with olive oil and textured salt placed lightly with a subtle hand, but unfortunately they’re on top of pieces of fish that come straight out of a cold refrigerator. If it’s not clear already, pass on the crudo unless you have money to burn.

$5 carrots like this, I can live with.

The yellow and orange baby carrots were as delicious as they were beautiful. Slightly chewy, which is not the texture I necessarily associate with good carrots, but a very worthy side dish to the main course.

Swordfish and bok choy a la plancha. (Only $2 more than the crudo, I might add.)

For our main course, we had ordered the intriguing sounding Sicilian style shark, but since the shark was sold-out, we went with a dish we watched being dished out in front of us on the other side of the bar. (That would be known as the kitchen, a closet-sized space in which four cooks managed not to step on each other’s toes.) The dish was swordfish with bok choy, a good value at $21. This entree was on par with the razor clams. Perfectly cooked, lightly breaded, and drizzled with more oil olive and a little aged balsamic. Some baby bok choy was cooked a la plancha, caramelized in a way I’ve never had before and which strongly encourages me to try this technique at home. All these dishes mentioned were shared by two people, along with a bottle of white wine reasonably priced in the mid-30s.

Overall: mixed. With a stop at Il Pesce, though, Eataly is worth checking out. Though it did remind me of a glorified Bed, Bath & Beyond, this is America, after all. If this is as close as we can get to Italy, and I happen to be near the Flatiron, I’ll take it.

Bio after bio of chef Eric Ripert tells of an elusive “Bon Appetit Dish of the Year”. The ingredients include lobster, tarragon (no surprises so far), and… champagne. It sounded like my kind of dish: something with a veneer of sophistication, but (if I’m lucky) sufficiently dummy-proof.  Of course, it should also taste good, but this was an Eric Ripert dish, so no worries there. The only question was how many hours or days was I going to be standing in the kitchen. And whether I could track down the recipe.

There are some dishes that are special just due to the nature of the ingredients. A dish of lobster with champagne certainly qualifies. Any time you cook a lobster, it’s a special meal, even though it’s far less arduous than people usually assume. The addition of champagne sounded like one of those brilliant touches that only a genius with thousands of hours of experience would be able to grace me with. Since I was reasonably sure the recipe wouldn’t call for producing my own champagne, it sounded like a gimmick I could latch onto. (No offense to the chef; it’s only a gimmick to a non-chef.)

After significant Googling, I achieved success: the Men’s Health website, of all places, had the recipe. Even better than the recipe itself is Men’s Health’s description of it as “seductive cooking”, along with an accompanying photo of a nameless blonde with chocolate smeared on her nose. Clearly, this is what we men fantasize about when thinking about working in a kitchen. A jar of chocolate sauce comes out, and things get out of control.

Speaking of things getting out of control, to keep the cost of the dish from getting there, I substituted Cava for Champagne. If there are any benefits to being married, being able to use Cava instead of Champagne in your “Poached Lobster with Tarragon and Champagne” ought to be one of them. (American caviar instead of Russian is another.) I am doubting that either of us had the capability of noticing the difference, anyway.

In cooking the lobsters, I figured I’d employ Ripert’s method of killing the lobsters in advance of boiling. It’s not like I’m Woody Allen in Annie Hall or anything, chasing and/or running away from lobsters in my kitchen, but I’ve always had mixed feelings about those few seconds a poor lobster has to bathe in the pot alive. Well, that, and the fact that we don’t have a pot big enough to fit a live lobster.

Ripert’s technique, described in his Le Bernardin cookbook, entails sticking the point of a chef’s knife straight down through the center of the horizontal line closest to the head, then quickly chopping forward all the way through the head. This, according to Rippert, instantly kills the lobster (during which of the two cuts, I’m not sure) and the lobster will be dead, despite still twitching enough to fall off my counter and into my recycling bin. But the technique is easier than the first time I tried it, when I didn’t hold the knife straight up and down during the first cut, and I chopped, rather than stabbed straight through. Killing the lobsters in this way allowed me to remove their claws before cooking to fit two lobsters in the pot.

I won’t repeat the recipe since you can read it yourself, but I’ll just mention that I love recipes like this because the gradual progress of the dish really instills in one a respect for the dish’s history. No one, Ripert included, invents a dish like this on the first try, but thanks to him and all the cooks that came before him, you can pull off an incredible dish on your first try.

Whew. Got the lobster stock into the pan without spilling it.

The key element of this entire dish involves cooking the lobster shells with the nage (the aromatic liquid you initially boil, technically poach, the lobster in), along with the expensive French and/or cheap Spanish bubbly wine, until you’re left with a mere 1/2 cup of liquid. That liquid, by the time you’re done, is worth its weight in gold, so until I got it into a pan to finish the sauce, I knew disaster was possible at any moment. Alas, all was well. I gradually stirred in the fat-free sour cream, and then the herbs.

Green onions, tarragon, lime juice and lime zest. Just what I would add to a lobster sauce if I were a four-star chef.

My inspiration for the evening’s meal came from my desire for pasta, a recent dish we had made, and George Costanza’s well-known adage to do the opposite. The dish was drunken spaghetti, in which you may remember is spaghetti cooked in a pot of salter water and red wine, in equal parts, then finished in pan with olive oil, butter, sauteed garlic, a splash of more wine, some chopped parsley, and a handful of Pecorino Romano. And no, I didn’t try to identify the opposite of pasta, just the opposite of red wine. My new invention, made with scotch whiskey and spaghetti… just kidding, but I think I had you there for a second… made with white wine and spaghetti, was a perfect pairing to a lobster with champagne.

Spaghetti for the late summer afternoon wino.

Another thing I loved about this dish is that the lobster is sitting in a bowl, cooked nearly but not quite all the way, just waiting for you to finish it by poaching it in the sauce just prior to the herbs going in. I.e., there’s no last-minute panic that some dishes involve. The spaghetti is done and waiting for you, and you can complete the lobster and serve. The intensity of the lobster liquid is so strong that it easily permeates the sour cream, and the fresh lime and herbs at the end add the perfect tang and freshness.

Poached Lobster with Tarragon and Champagne

Perhaps the most impressive thing about this “romantic” and “seductive” recipe is its claim to serve four people. For some reason, I never would have thought that such couples would have needed to be romanced and seduced; I thought the two couples just sort of met up and got right to it. I guess that’s just how their lobster rolls.

* Yes, an entire blog post leading up to one, painful “lobster rolls” joke. Guess who’s laughing now?

Our first battle was close, or so I thought. The question was: how would I fare in the next home edition of Chopped, also known as Man v. Food. v. Wife? Our cooking skills were about a half-year better, but this time, there was a twist. Food shopping would be done at the local Chinese supermarket. Would that make a difference? Would Karen really try to screw me this time? And for God’s sake, would duck feet and sea cucumber make an appearance?

Not exactly, but close enough.

"Mystery ingredients" in several senses of the term.

Yes, before we left the supermarket, Karen would grace me with: baby octopus (make that “octopi”), king oyster mushrooms, wonton wrappers, and (imagine host Ted Allen’s pitch-perfect enunciation of the last doozy of an ingredient that seems to say, loudly and clearly, “let’s see what you can do with this!”): grass jelly.

Huh?

Even being an in-law in a Chinese family wouldn’t save me this time. What the hell was grass jelly? And Jesus Christ, I think it’s safe to say that once someone has a bag of baby octopi in her shopping basket and then reaches for the grass jelly, there’s just a tad of sadism motivating the choice, don’t you think?

My mystery ingredients for Karen were laughably tame in comparison.

Mystery ingredients for Karen. Yeah, I know. I should have gone with the sea urchin gonads and gummi cola bottles.

Please, let me explain myself. My premise was that chicken, by virtue of being unordinary, would be challenging because she’d have to find something interesting to do with it. (This was a competition, after all, and yours truly was 50% of the judging panel.) I also thought that eggplant was not a typical side item for chicken. Sure, I see now that there are over 400,000 web pages with the phrase “chicken and eggplant”, but I didn’t know that at the time and neither did Karen. (And if she did, that would have been a clear violation of the official rules.) I also thought both orange and beer at the same time would be tricky, though she could always decide to pull the same trick I was thinking of with grass jelly: lose points in the “making the secret ingredient a star” category, but win in the “thank you, at least this is edible” category.

As per the rules of our first competition, we exchanged secret ingredients at the supermarket and then were each permitted to pick up other ingredients for our respective dishes that we didn’t already have at home. Again, would being in the Chinese supermarket have an effect?

That's chili oil and Chinese five spice seasoning in the middle. And those are potatoes. (Looks like someone's doing northern Chinese cuisine.)

The four ingredients on the left were mine. Normally, I’d call what possessed me to pick these things “inspiration”, but I think “grasping at straws” better fits the situation. I wanted something to “bring the flavors together”, as these chef-types are wont to say, and I had an idea that a rich, beefy sauce would go well with both octopus as well as the Chinese lasagna, make that dumplings, I was planning to make.

What was Karen planning? To start with, she browned the chicken. I’m not sure with chicken you need to brown in the pan first before roasting, but her results were good, so who the hell am I to say?

Browned chicken in the Dutch oven on eggplant and onions. Ehem. Notice she didn't have any octopi.

This maneuver allowed her to roast the vegetables and flavor them to some extent with the chicken. The vegetables were finished on the stove top. Looks like she didn’t snap a photo showing the creation of the orange sauce. That was where she sneaked the beer in.

These were good. And I'm glad one of us made vegetables.

So far, so good. On my side of the kitchen, however, I was busy staring at a can of freakin’ grass jelly.

The can of grass jelly opens... and is even less appetizing than a closed can of grass jelly.

What was this stuff, anyway? Well, a better description for the can, if we were in China where they don’t care about things like copyright, they’d call it “Grass Jell-O”. I was satisfied with the “grass” description, because that was exactly what it was, but “jelly” implied sweet to me, and this was more like something you’d say there’s always room for in one of the four compartments of your stomach, were you a cow.

Time to do something with this grass jelly stuff. So, ready for this? Here goes nothing: red wine, beef broth, butter, flour, grass jelly, and hoisin sauce. Oh, what the hell, let’s put in a little more hoisin… Not too sweet, it can use a bit more… [And Jason's saute pan officially gets out of control. Isn't anybody moderating this?]

Not my most beautiful work, admittedly. Blame hoisin sauce, not me.

I don’t know what it is about hoisin sauce (or was it the beef broth masking it?), but the sweetness engulfing my sauce completely appeared out of nowhere. Hey, I just happen to have the perfect solution for this. Grass jelly! Those lumps you see are not flour, but bits of grass jelly. I figured sauteing would melt it down, and I was right. I should add at this point that I don’t think anyone in the Eastern Hemisphere is, was, or will ever use grass jelly in such a way. Little did I know at the time that it’s usually used in desserts or drinks, with much sweetness added. Hey, at least I got the sweetness part.

The dumpling filling was the easy part.

Now I know why they're called "king oyster" mushrooms. Because when you cut them up, they look exactly like scallops.

I have to say, sauteing the king oyster mushrooms was one experience I’ll definitely be repeating. These things blew me away. I had eaten them before, but never Colicchio-style, as I now refer to it. Meaning: essentially pan-roasted over high-heat. The flavor was intense, and purely mushroom, not dirty or strong in any negative way. To them, I added garlic (of course), scallions, salt, pepper, and chili oil. In fact, the chili oil was what I used to saute them, and flavored them nicely without causing my competitor to run for the milk and/or tongue bandages.

I’m glad I went with the “boring” dumpling idea, because I had enough problems without trying to gauge how long to cook a grass jelly and octopus lasagna.

Initially, this was going to be lasagna. Score one for the left brain.

And no, I wasn’t planning on baking these, they were just hanging out on the pan until the octopus was nice and rubbery.

As per our officials rules, I was allowed to look up cooking preparations for particular ingredients, and I needed Google for those baby octopi. Unfortunately, I can’t blame Google for my combining techniques from two different search results. (At least, I think I read this on two different pages.) The first recommendation was to boil the baby octopi until tender in salted water, about 20 minutes. This is exactly where I should have stopped and everything would have been fine. But I had delusions of roasted octopus grandeur, so in addition, I would finish them by broiling with some chili oil for another few minutes per side. This might have actually worked, had I been watching them and not attempting to finish two sauces at the same time.

Perfectly roasted. If only I hadn't boiled them already.

It turned out that parts of them came out nice and crispy, presumably the parts that didn’t cook properly in the piece-of-crap Cuisinart toaster oven we have. (Yes, there is a cooking appliance that the company is apparently incapable of producing.) But before I start sounding like I’m just throwing sauces and toaster ovens under the bus to distract from my overcooked octopus, let me distract you by moving on to the next sauce.

Let me take the photo of this yogurt sauce so I can get back to my beer already.

Greek yogurt made its appearance in my brain somewhere at the point when I was considering lasagna, and adding the Chinese five spice to it would be my own Asian-Greek-Italian inspired béchamel sauce. I added some salt and a squeeze of lemon for some additional tartness, and it was pretty safe for human consumption. Actually, it was pretty tasty, though I have to say the Chinese five spice mixture was on the strange side. (Did I mention that I also had never cooked with this? I brought this one on myself.) The ingredients in the mixture are: anise, cinnamon, star anise, cloves, ginger, and… mmm… sulfiting agents.

So now, for the great reveal.

Baby octopi; king oyster mushroom, chili, and scallion dumpings; red wine-beef-hoisin-grass-jelly sauce; and Chinese five spice yogurt sauce.

Sure, my plating skills could use work, but this ridiculously complicated half-a-meal was actually 75% pretty good. If you discount the overcooked parts of the octopi, there were some good flavors here. Karen even gave me points for the yogurt sauce. (And no, in case you’re wondering, we’re not so geeky that we actually tally up points.)

And as for the orange-beer chicken and eggplant:

Orange chicken. (This is my website, so I don't have to sell you on it if I don't want to.)

To be fair, and since my wife is in another country right now, the chicken was slightly overcooked. But not entirely, and the flavor of both the nicely roasted skin and the orange sauce (which, as you’ve noted in the photo above, she spiked with Tropicana) not only came out very nicely, but really worked with her vegetable. I can’t say I tasted the beer in the vegetables, but it’s not like I went grass jelly crazy myself. (In fact, one improvement to my grass jelly sauce might have been to eliminate the grass jelly.)

All in all, we had a fun evening, if experimental to the tenth degree, and this time almost succeeded in making food consumable by only two human beings. I’m giving the win to Karen this time, and because I am a gracious winner, will do my very best to not give her four insane ingredients next time as pay-back. Well, that, and because I have to eat what she makes, too.

A half-day fishing trip aboard a Freeport party boat is close enough to NYC that every New Yorker should do it once a summer.

If this boat ride doesn't relax you, you need another beer.

If you have a car, or don’t mind a 5-minute cab ride from the LIRR station, you’ll be in Freeport, Long Island within 30-40 minutes, or by train from Manhattan, in an hour and a half. (It’s ten minutes closer than Jones Beach.) And if you’re like my wife, whose only childhood memories of large bodies of water were filling and emptying buckets of floodwater from her basement in Queens, then Captain Lou’s Fleet (map) is a good choice for you. Inept at fishing or not, the Captain Lou crew will take care of you.

On the Saturday we went, two of Captain Lou’s boats were leaving at 1:00 PM for a four-hour trip. The choice of the day was fluke or sea bass & porgies. We arrogantly opted for the latter based on taste (have eaten sea bass, though not porgies) and on the assumption that sea bass might put up more of a fight. It’s a breezy, relaxing ride from the dock out to the bay, and then to the ocean. I felt that the $37 per-person fee (which included rods and bait) was worth it immediately. The ocean air, the seaside homes, the awesome motor and sailboats that I’d never in a billion years want to waste my life working on, and the blue sea itself were simply beautiful.  I’ve always thought that spending life in New York City is a perfectly fine choice, but getting out to see the natural word is essential for a whole laundry list of reasons, not the least of which being one’s mental health.

One thing the crew can’t do anything about is prevent sea sickness, and unfortunately Karen got hit with it right in sync with the anchor’s first splash. Fortunately, she snapped out of it just in time to hook a keepable sea bass and beat me in our own unofficial pool.

Porgy and Bess. I mean... porgie and bass.

Sea bass in New York State need to be a minimum of 12-inches, and it looked like she just made that, maybe by a couple inches. We wouldn’t win the boat’s official pool ($5 a person), with Karen’s fish or with my puny sea bass which I had to release. I did end up reeling in my first porgie, though. I was actually all ready to throw it back in, not too impressed with the size, but one of the crew said it was indeed a keeper.

The boat trip concluded back at the dock on Woodcleft Avenue. This street in Freeport is known as “The Nautical Mile”, a semi-depressed but walkable, waterside street of restaurants and bars, most open, some bankrupt. I wouldn’t say it’s a destination in itself, but with the fishing, you have an opportunity for a drink or a meal. Fortunately, right opposite the Captain Lou dock is a restaurant and bar called Blue 42, proudly advertising their fisherman’s special: they’ll cook your fish and serve it to you with fries and a Bud Light for $10.00. That’s an offer I couldn’t refuse. Well, except the part about the Bud Light, which I did refuse. Instead, I opted for a beer. (Sorry, Bud Light fans, but you deserve it.)

$104 fish sandwich

The cook at Blue 42 did a nice job, just barely breading the fish and avoiding my worst fear of drenching it in grease. The fries were slightly coated (not my favorite style), but cooked well, and the tartar sauce was not really tartar sauce, fortunately, but rather a tartar-like sauce with horseradish added.

Let’s face it, our one sandwich for the two of us needed a little help in the seafood department. So, we grabbed a half-dozen oysters.

Doing as the Long Islanders do: eating some gritty blue points.

We added on a nicely dressed chopped salad, with chunks of cucumbers, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese.

Decent salad. And we didn't even have to harvest it ourselves.

You don’t do this stuff to save money, but something about buying a $10 sandwich, hidden costs and all, was not at all a bad way to end a summer day. We sat on the side of the bar looking out the open windows, felt the familiar sea breeze on our faces, and enjoyed the results of our labor.

(Update)

We went back again for more: more fishing and more eating. Here are some highlights.

Four sea bass and a blue. Sounds like lunch to me.

Kumamotos with tobiko this time, and absolutely perfect and delicious. (The chef himself recognized us from last time and comped them. Classy guy, and good cook.)

That great chopped salad, tender and crisp calamari, and (as a former Boston resident) well-above-average clam chowder. (Thickening with potato is key!)

There's gotta be a whole sea bass in there.

The bluefish was porcini-dusted. Very nice.

When you just can’t find a third-rate, Bolivian/Scottish karaoke joint, Staunton’s is a great alternative. The lady tending bar is very friendly, to be sure, and for all I know, so is the person responsible for the bowl of semi-flavorless heavy cream and side order of mashed potatoes (more formally known as World’s Worst Shepherd’s Pie Ever). Nice people may or may not be able to cook and serve food.

Always on the look-out for strange and unusual restaurants to try, I biked by this place in Oakland Gardens, Queens, located where no one has an interest in building a subway station.  There did seem to be a friendly collection of characters here, which I guess is to be expected if you choose to barricade yourself in a local bar for four or five centuries. There was no sign, as far as I could tell, that any sort of news, air, or light had ever penetrated the walls of Staunton’s for some time. But not to get overly harsh, it was perfectly clean, and said characters did rip it up to the most technologically inept karaoke  buffoon/DJ I’ve ever come across. (Watching him hunt and peck his way across a keyboard to download special requests from the Internet was especially amusing.)

So, if you want a good place to sing obscure 60s songs with fellow tattooed 50-something former bikers and groupies, this is your place. Just do yourself a favor and eat before entering.

A few squid ruining a perfectly good bowl of cream.

I should disclose that I am no Peruvian food aficionado. However, I think that because I’ve at least had one good experience with the cuisine, I am justified in directing blame for my Staunton’s meal on Staunton’s chef rather than on the entire nation of Peru. The best way of describing the bowl of cream sauce put in front of me would be: elementary school cafeteria New England-style seafood chowder made at a school so far outside of new New England that insulting fish in this way is your way of disproving natural selection and considered fundamental to your Creationism curriculum. But natural selection deserves none of the blame for what was in that bowl. Nature had no way of knowing that this is what man would do to fish.

If only the Irish part of the meal were as good.

Like a decent apple pie with no apples.

Sure, the mashed potatoes looked fine. And if I had ordered mashed potatoes, maybe I wouldn’t be complaining. Really what I’m annoyed about is that I forgot to snap a photo of the half-eaten Shepherd’s Pie so you could share my sense of wonder at how those few, poor peas and three spoon-fulls of ground beef somehow managed not to be crushed by that massive weight of potato. Yes, the potatoes were nicely browned. No, the meat was not. I don’t think the meat even had flavor on the day it was made. You might say the world’s worst Shepherd’s Pie is the one completely lacking in flavor. You’d be wrong. It’s the one not only lacking in flavor, but lacking in mass of flavorless substance. A dish that leaves you wishing you simply had more to complain about.

If you are about to die from a severe black bean deficiency and when you look over your shoulder, all you see is a sign for Staunton’s, go for it. Eat your beans and be gone. I liked those beans.

I have a strong suspicion that many of the world’s foie gras critics are a lot like I was back in my anti-Brussels sprouts days.

"I'm hungry. Do you think we'll get to eat today?"

Were the lowly Brussels sprout force-fed several times a day, you can bet I would have used the fact against my mother on Brussels sprouts nights.

“Don’t make me do it! Think of the poor, innocent Brussels sprouts!”

And, just like the foie gras critics, my ultimate goal would be to use this moral crowbar to get a maternalistic ban on a whole category of foods. In their case, meat. In my case, vegetables.

But let’s not minimize the moral position of the foie gras critics. If they were against foie gras merely on the basis of taste, that would be several notches up from where they are currently. In the typically dishonest fashion of animal rights activists, their true goal is concealed or understated until later. Their ultimate goal is to ban the production and sale of all meat. Yet even though they’re (supposedly) shocked and appalled by the slaughter of innocent animals, what they want you to think they’re shocked and appalled by is simply the method of feeding one particular breed of animal. It is a crowbar, and they intend to use it. (It’s as if these people read Animal Farm, the stuff about tyranny went over their heads, and all they got out of it was that animals talk and have feelings.)

Whether you like foie gras or not, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with what it is and the process used to make it. Every foodie – make that: every adult who understands that animals lost their claim to the concept of “rights” the moment they were invited to the First Continental Congress and they responded by laying eggs, mooing, and/or eating their young – everyone needs to understand that the attack on foie gras production, and on your potential enjoyment of it, is a control freak’s giddy employment of your own ignorance and emotional anthropomorphism against you. Goose and duck liver today, leather tomorrow. Steak, pork, fish, and chicken the day after that.

There’s enough information out there now to help an honest person to make a decision about foie gras. This Village Voice article is one starting point. This Anthony Bordain clip is another. An article in Edible Hudson Valley is also worth reading. Just understanding why foie gras can be produced in the first place is an important point to learn. (For example, the next time a critic tells you the enlarged goose liver is “diseased”, you’ll know that producers just exploit the goose’s naturally occurring pre-migration state.) This stuff is especially important because the general public do not consider themselves to be foie gras aficionados, another thing the critics know well. There will likely not be protests in the streets against foie gras bans. Therefore, it’s up to all those who care about food to be informed and to speak up.

Cruising around in the land of Cyrano.

While vacationing in France this year, I had the opportunity to visit a goose foie gras farm. My wife and some friends saw the geese, learned more about the production process, and witnessed the gavage (force-feeding) first-hand. We also got to eat and bring back a ridiculous amount of the stuff. (Would you believe me if I told you dinner after the tour consisted of foie gras two ways, duck ham, escargot, and frogs’ legs? Well, I’ll gladly provide proof a bit later.)

It was an opportunity for a group of us to show an iota of interest in where our food comes from. And yes, the idea of an animal being force-fed, as tasty as the resulting product might be, raised an eyebrow. How bad was it, anyway?

Canoeing down the peaceful Dordogne river (post-paddle-splashing war).

The Dordogne region is the foie gras capital of France, located in the southwest part of the country. We stayed in a village named Beynac-et-Cazenac, wisely recommended by Rick Steves. Beynac is a fairy-tale village, with the Château de Beynac standing prominently at the top of a hill, the medieval castle occupied by the French during the Hundred Years’ War. Just across the Dordogne river is Castelnaud, England’s fortress during the war.

Seemingly endless hills follow you as you canoe lazily down the river, and as if that isn’t enough, actual cro-magnon cave paintings are available for touring nearby, before or after a lunch of foie gras sandwiches. The mere existence of these sandwiches, a few slices of foie gras on a fresh baguette, is a revealing glimpse into the unique French ability to appreciate such delicacies and their insistence in making them a part of their everyday lives. Did I mention that Dordogne was also the home of the Périgord truffle? It all almost makes you want to preserve your senses, if only the wine also weren’t so tempting.

I'm waiting for the force-feeding (by the waiter, after the goose farm tour).

Elevage du Bouyssou is a farm near Sarlat, and can also be found in the Rick Steves France guide. We arrived after what would have been a pleasant drive through cute French towns, had it not been necessary to test the limits of our rental car and retrace our tracks several times trying to find the damn place. Fortunately, (a) we were the only four people planning to take the tour that day, and (b) the friendlier-than-necessary tour guide (the farmer’s wife) was actually patient enough to direct us to the farm by cell phone. (I was blissfully ignorant at the time of what the iPhone bill would look like.)

If I were a PETA lunatic, I guess I'd be calling this place Auschwitz.

The thing that hit me as I walked on the farm was that nothing was hitting me. It was a farm. White asparagus on one side, geese at an early stage of growth on the other. It was “just” a farm, but it was also a farm that was part of a tradition going back hundreds of years, if not thousands if you count the Ancient Egyptians. What I consider a delicacy, this farming family considered a livelihood. It’s kind of amazing that simply stepping on the farm, you realize that (apart from the fact that Customs is going to grill your ass when you get back on American soil), like all other of man’s best creations, it all starts from an intelligent selection of raw materials from nature, and an application of an intelligent, goal-directed process by man. In fact, the farm itself is an amazing symbol not of “living with nature”, but of tweaking it, arranging it, modifying it, obeying it in order to command it. This foie gras stuff doesn’t grow in cans.

Free-range prisoners

I learned that if you’re a goose, mommy needs to teach you how to fly, otherwise your warden/farmer will have no need to clip your wings. In fact, he’ll even let you walk around the yard to your heart’s content, giving you quite a leisurely life (not counting the force-feeding and slaughter part).

Whoa! We get to eat all that?

At feeding time, the geese lined up in a fenced-off, wire mesh-bottomed path inside the building. There was no screaming, mind you, nor even any complaining as far as I could tell. Admittedly, though, aside from a few, select four-letter words, I don’t speak fowl. (You didn’t actually think you were getting out of this blog post without a “fowl” joke?)

Prepping the corn for dinner.

Their food consists of dried corn that has been soaked in plain, old metal buckets overnight. The soaking helps in digestion. (I had the impression that this soaked corn was all they ate, though this Wikipedia article claims it’s a combination of wet and dry corn.)

Super-duper gavaginator.

These days, a buzzing electric pump brings the corn up through a tube and into a gas pump nozzle-like device which is inserted into the goose’s mouth.

The gavage.

The feeder grabs the next goose in line by the neck, and pulls it over. This is when you do hear some complaining by the geese, as well as right after the feeding. I guess it’s possible they might remember previous experiences and are reacting to that, but since the quacking – excuse me, honking – is timed to the moment hand grabs and lets go of the goose, it looks like getting grabbed is what annoys the goose the most.

Just another day at the office.

Here’s the amazing part. With the aid of the electric pump, the whole feeding process takes a whole seven seconds or so. Even so, it is a tad disconcerting at first to see the long gas nozzlish tube get shoved down the goose’s throat. First of all, as someone who’s subjected himself neither to literal nor figurative sword swallowing, you wonder how the hell the bird is able to deep-throat that thing without gagging. Second, you can clearly observe the end of the nozzle rubbing against the inside of the goose’s throat. Why isn’t the goose seriously flipping out?

There are scientific answers to both of these questions. The answer to the first is that the esophagus and trachea come together in the mouth of the goose, not down in the throat like in human beings. In other words, there is no gag reflex involved. The answer to the second question is that the inside of the goose’s throat is made to eat the kinds of stuff that geese tend to eat. I.e., less on the “tender as foie gras” side and more on the “scaly as a fish” side. Another way of putting it is: they’re fucking birds!

As quoted by Hudson Valley Foie Gras (who use ducks rather than geese for their foie gras):

“Unlike that of mammals, the throat of waterfowl is lined with tissue similar to the palm of our hand, permitting them to eat live, wriggling fish, spines and all, without harm, or to accept the feeding tube….The windpipe of waterfowl opens at the center of the tongue, not in the throat, so ducks have no need of a protective gag reflex and can breathe normally during feeding.”

(Dr. Lawrence W. Bartholf, 2005 President, New York Veterinary Medical Association)

In this case, a couple videos are worth a thousand words:

And here is a longer one, showing three geese being fed:

Yes, it’s a little rough for us city folk, but this is what it is to raise livestock. As the farmer’s wife said to us, “Of course they don’t like it.” It turns out that when you raise animals (or kids) sometimes you need to be a little pushy to get them to do what you need them to do. And I’m ok with that.

Feeding tools for the home goose farmer.

If you don’t have the Euros for a fancy Gavagomatic, there’s always the manual devices. Evidently, these will take closer to three-quarters of a minute or so to get all the corn down. Either way, the results are the same…

Somebody wake me up. I think I see a foie gras store.

The tour was eye-opening, in the sense that I have a better understanding for how that unbelievably delicious food product gets on my plate. I have greater knowledge, and now a greater respect, for the person whose work brings the product into being. And walking the streets of the small Dordogne towns, I can see why the residents have an endless respect for the product. There are foie gras stores, for Christ’s sake. It is part of their history and their culture.

Selling nothing but foie gras is so passé. So this guy also sells truffles.

I discovered that nothing really puts you in the mood for foie gras more than, well, seeing it all day long, talking about it, learning about it, and tirelessly calculating how much of the stuff you can actually eat on one vacation. Fortunately, after the farm tour, our hotel restaurant was kindly able to satisfy us. I knew when I mentioned my post-farm tour dinner earlier, you would expect evidence of said divine experience. Well, here it goes:

Royale with cheese for lunch. Seared foie gras for dinner.

If you're not going to eat frogs' legs and snails while in France, stay the #$@! home.

Only one thing had been missing from the meal: foie gras terrine. Problem solved. But don't forget about the duck ham.

People claim that when you pass through Dordogne, your palette can grow tired of foie gras, if only temporarily due to extreme overload. They could have something there. I will have to make several flights back to test the theory. In the meantime, can you pass the pâté?