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Exploring vegan, vegetarian and sustainable cooking

Foie gras poutine

Source: Au Pied de Cochon, the Album (also available online from the Food Network Canada); French fries from Fine Cooking #71 (also at FineCooking.com)

A year ago today, Keith and I celebrated our first anniversary at the restaurant Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal, which is definitely one of the most unique restaurants in the city, and whose unique cuisine sets it apart on the world stage. Our menu choices that night were foie gras cromesquis (I would go again just for these) as a starter, the tarragon bison tongue and duck carpaccio as appetizers, and the cured foie gras and boudin tart and foie gras poutine as main courses.

For our second anniversary, we decided to create a little of Pied de Cochon at home. The recipe for many of the restaurant’s signature dishes have been published in their Album. Poutine and foie gras are a beautiful combination. And with Quebec’s thriving foie gras industry, and the Atwater Market just around the corner, I have easy access to fresh whole foie gras.

Cutting a whole foie gras
Cutting a whole foie gras

The recipe calls for using canned poutine sauce (widely available in grocery stores in Quebec… and I assume in most Canadian grocery stores nowadays). However, I decided I would be making this dish entirely from scratch. I started by making a velouté sauce from homemade chicken stock, as described here. (Note: don’t try this with store-bought stock. Because of the amount it reduces, you’ll end up with something that is way too salty.) I would suggest reducing the amount of roux this velouté recipe calls for, as the final product was much too thick. And give yourself a handful of hours to reduce it to the proper concentration.

For the French fries, we made oven fries from a Fine Cooking recipe that I’ve made many times. These oven fries come out crisp and beautiful every time, without the mess and hassle of deep frying.

The end product was absolutely delicious and not terribly complicated. Not something I could afford (health-wise) to eat often, but definitely a nice treat for special occasions.

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