The Foie Gras Foe

Honestly, I'm not a picky eater. Okay, my parents might disagree with that statement, but for the most part, I make an effort to at least try everything. However, today at lunch, I was faced with a truly formidable culinary foe: foie gras.

In French cuisine, foie gras is a wonderful delicacy, and most French people that I've encountered absolutely love it. To me, it is just... disgusting. Like caviar. How do people eat caviar?? I, for one, am completely nauseated by the thought of eating--not to mention enjoying--tiny jelly fish eggs. It is the same with foie gras--fattened liver is just not something that I can wrap my head around eating.

This is the fourth or fifth time foie gras has been on the menu at my host family's home. It is, however, the first time that I actually ate any, having previously politely denied the offer (which always made my family look a little disappointed). When I accepted it today, though, they were extremely happy. (A bessele, I said as my host mother heaped the foie onto my plate--A bessele. It's the Alsatian phrase for "a little bit").

So yes, today I sat down to a plate of salad and pasta and, as I was kindly informed, half of a fattened veal liver. I'm not going to lie, it was a bit of a struggle to eat.

But to the slight surprise of both my host family and myself, I finished it all.  My impressions? The taste was not the "rich, buttery" taste that they had promised it would be. The foie was a bit spongy (which did not help my mental assertion that I was just eating a steak) and it had a weird flavor that I tried to mask by stuffing my mouth full of pasta for each bite of foie. Of course, I'm being a little dramatic--it wasn't that bad...but I was very, very thankful for all of the pasta. In the end, I conquered the foie gras, making my host mother so proud that she promptly clapped and then gave me some of the chocolate truffle ice cream that she knows I love.

Alsatian cuisine has been pretty standard fare so far--meat and potatoes dominate--so today's foe of foie gras was my first cultural-culinary battle. I hope I emerge just as victorious when I next encounter some bizarre French delicacy... like escargot, which I have been assured I have to try before leaving France.