Pan-flashed foie gras with dark chocolate sauce

Some pairings are unusual and some successful but this one is both and should make a brilliant start to the New Year! Let your New Year be exciting, successful, daring, memorable and full of surprises and tender love… Tonight, we will make edible lists of what we did not enjoy about last year and swallow them at midnight with Liz, Jamie, and a glass of happy bubbles!

Then I’ll sit down and write my New Year round robin letter and a long happy list of projects and objectives – as I do every year since I first became a mother … and maybe even before that … I am a list-addict and New Year Eve is yet another time for indulging in compulsive writing!

Our Christmas eve starter

Pan fried foie gras with dark chocolate sauce

Ingredients list for the sauce:

• Dark chocolate 150g
• Milk 100ml
• Butter 25gr

Break the chocolate and add it to the melting butter in a saucepan.

Stir and add the milk over low heat.

Chocolate melts at 37∘ and should never get over 50∘. So keep it nice and slow.

Let it cool and keep at room temperature until serving. The left over can be stored in a jar in the fridge and used over ice cream or waffles.

Ingredients list:

• One fresh “lobe” of foie gras, de-nerved
• A large frying pan
• Some sea salt flakes

Most fresh foie gras are sold under plastic film and have had the small nerves taken out already. But if yours has not, just follow the thin red nerves with a pairing knife and remove. Trying to break the fillet as little as possible.

Cut reasonably thick slices of foie ; the thickness of a small lady’s finger.

Heat the pan with no fat at all and fry on both sides as soon as the surface is hot enough. It only takes a couple of minutes both sides.

Serve immediately with a generous drizzle of the warm chocolate sauce and some thick slices of brioche (or any milk and butter based bread).

I had an interesting starter of foie gras terrine with a sliver of black chocolate at Sketch recently which gave me the inspiration for this New Year dish! We all loved this and it will remain a firm favourite for any festive menu from now on. I served the foie with a delicious Jurançon – a wine favoured by Henry the Fourth of France who was a natural “Bon vivant” and henceforth a very popular king. Who would not be, on this program?

“ Si Dieu me prête vie, je ferai qu’il n’y aura point de laboureur en mon royaume qui n’ait les moyens d’avoir le dimanche une poule dans son pot!” Said he.
(If God keeps me, I will make sure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday!)