Goose Livers of the Gods

 by Fred Thomas

RESTLESS. I've been restless. I should be happy: The sun's intensity is magnificent, a wonder of nature -- how can it be so hot, so searing, so eyeball-scorching in November? -- and yet during the past few weeks, I've been at sea, cranky, itching for something different. I've felt like Melville's Ishmael, wanting to knock the hats off the men in a passing funeral, in a 20th century way, like a nasty letter to the suits at Conde Nast for letting Jane Zwiegenthal go as editor of Gourmet and replacing her with a city magazine editor who shakes up the title so it now looks like ... a city book. With the changes witnessed in the first two issues under Ruth Reichel's reign of boredom, Gourmet lost its nose-in-the-air calling, and now is a perfect-bound replica of the dreadful Food & Wine. Just another trendy good-life book, heavy on travel and low-cal, time-deprived recipes.

Magazine and book publishing is overrun with accountants -- editors like the famed Max Perkins are nowhere to be found these days -- whose understanding of publishing is marked in dollars and cents, not literary value. The boys with the amortization tables have replaced the great editors in the publishing hierarchy. All the suits know is this: The formula hard-cover or magazine is nicely predictable to the bottom line. Like anything by John Grisham, the typical foodie magazine adores the dollar over content. Foodie hard-cover books, too, are overrun with sure-selling "based-on-the-TV" series titles -- how low have we stooped in civilized thought that we now read books based on a television show? Publishing in the last year of the 20th century is an enterprise of unvarnished greed, not letters. One more cookbook from Emeril Lagasse will have your correspondent seeking refuge with 86-proof sippin' bourbon with the morning melon.

I found the source of my fidget -- the lack of foodstuffs French since the midsummer move to the delightfully corrupt City of Miami -- while reading the delightful Foie Gras: A Passion by Michael A. Ginor, and The Making Of A Pastry Chef: Recipes And Inspiration From America's Best Pastry Chefs by Andrew MacLauchlan. Both John Wiley & Sons publicatons are against-the-grain books because both joyfully celebrate fat, excess and the acquired palate which the dour health police label as decadent. Let them eat eclairs.

Ginor's book is a serenade to highest refinement of cuisine Francais, the fatted livers of geese and ducks, a delicacy since the Roman Empire. Those geese, the lavish historical section of the book tells us, were fattened on figs, not force-fed the corn and grains we associate foie gras with today. Writes Ginor in an ars apologetica to stave off the P.C. crowd:

Foie gras farms ... provide an easy target for animal rights activists: they are small and lack expensive lobbyists. Their main product is perceived as a luxury good, like fur, and many believe that, after extracting the liver, the rest of the bird is left unused. In reality, a greater portion of the foie gras duck is used than any other bird of human consumption. The breasts become magrets; the legs and wings are used in confits and to make rillettes; the fat is an excellent cooking medium; chefs use the carcasses to prepare stocks; and the tongues, feet, testicles and intestines are sold to Asian markets. Feathers are sold for down. The second issue that animal rights groups focus on is the method of feeding and the effect it has on the bird's liver. Waterfowl are not humans, however, and a practice that could cause us grave harm or death has little effect on a goose or duck. The birds' anatomy is fundamentally different from ours and reflects their natural environment and their twice-annual long-distance migrations. The birds must gorge, while preparing for their migrations, to amass the energy reserves of fat needed for the long flight.

Having dismissed the force-feeding, Ginor tackles the tender issue of the feeding tube itself:

The imagery of inserting a tube into the bird's esophagus can be perceived as cruel. A waterfowl throat, however, is not like the throat of a human. The lining of the duck and goose esophagus is keratinized. This means that it is composed of fibrous protein cells that resemble bristles or fingernails, allowing large pieces of food to pass safely. Because of this anatomical feature, the tube creates no discomfort for the ducks.

This book is lavish in its use of full-page color photographs for each of the 80-odd recipes gleaned from superstar chefs -- Norman Van Aken, Andre Soltner, Roger Verge, Paul Bocuse, Emeril Lagasse, to name a few -- and its tremendous, if not pedantic, historical section, which occupies the first full third of the 340-page book. The color, thick paper stock make this book more at home on the cocktail table than in the kitchen, and at $50 U.S. a copy, one might tremble having such a title on a countertop with livers and eggs nearby. Which doesn't mean that this is not a terrific cookbook. I like this book a lot, and one simple recipe I've tried already -- Curls of Salt-Cured Foie Gras on Toasted Country Bread -- has quelled the crabbiness of your correspondent. A six-month period on mangos, snapper and salsa is not good for general mental health. Indeed, staying away from French food is a singularly bad idea.

Other recipes in the book look divine. Some recipes portray the classic terrines and mousses, while others show innovative uses of the liver: "FoieReos" are cookie-shaped appetizers with shortbread-like cookies and foie gras mousse as the filling. Apple Terrine of Foie Gras with Apple Brioche Charlotte, Fresh Blackberry Sauce and Upland Cress should be reserved for pros who have time, and perhaps amphetamines, on their hands. The end result is a baked apple stuffed with foie gras on one side of the plate, the apple charlotte brushed with duck fat in a pool of berry sauce on the other. And there's a devilishly decadent dish that thumbs one's culinary nose at the P.C.: Millionaire's Salad of wilted greens with foie gras, lobster and papaya.

The Millionaire's Salad is nice, but certainly not complete without an appropriate French pastry. You might turn to The Making Of A Pastry Chef: Recipes And Inspiration From America's Best Pastry Chefs by Andrew MacLauchlan, the executive pastry chef at the much ballyhooed Coyote Grill in Santa Fe, New Mexico. MacLauchlan's book isn't a tenth as complete as The Professional Pastry Chef, the must-have book by Bo Friberg (reviewed in Chocolate Butterflies & Marzipan Pigs in the Scarlet archives), but this is well worth the $23.96 from our Bookstall.

Pastry Chef is written for the weekend sugar-butter-eggs warrior who may be contemplating a career in this overlooked position in the professional kitchen. The book is largely narrative with recipes interspersed, so it not only belongs in the kitchen -- no color photographs to worry about spattering with sugar syrup -- but on the nightstand, as well.

Recipes include the simple -- basic chocolate fudge from the Fannie Farmer cookbook -- to the profound -- pistachio rosewater ice cream sandwich on espresso pizelle with chocolate sauce. And all concerns in between the extremes are mostly crowd pleasers: caramel pots de crËme, pineapple beignets, apple crisp and apple fritters.

Selected books reviewed in The Scarlet Pumpernickel may be purchased at a discount on the Books For Cooks aisle at The Bookstall.

Fred Thomas has been a writer and editor for more than two decades, as a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, as tabloid editor at The Tampa Tribune, as group editor for a chain of Florida magazines, and as founding editor of Southern Homes. Now at home on the beach in South Florida, he specializes in writing about food and architecture. He knows the secret of perfect French fries.