Its all about Foie Gras this magical ingridient that is available to everyone now easier than ever! check out www.hudsonvalleyfoiegras.com
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Come in and stallming a world of sound.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Jeff pull on.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The mic, making hearts down.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
The Jeff Jeff worn shotguns myself, Chef Dead in the background,
making me down. Tom gets the peace, lay us down
any night, and the conversation. Sonne from Bull Made dishes
(00:29):
the street, boot Stone side these Sheff Spring Made Mont
and nice.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
So it tune a podcast. My chess can't ready of
the snuff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You all forget the conversation. So the fans say, Sun
on the knee, Chef Fern in the least.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And the rest, Oh, what's going on here?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Welcome to Plumb Love Foods Live right here on the
Voice of Connecticut WICC. We're excited to have a Saturday
with you. I hope you're having a great week. I
hope your week is uh brought you to a place
on a Saturday where you can relax, maybe pour yourself
a nice cocktail, decide on a dinner plan, and then
change it after listen to this program.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Jeffy, Yeah, exactly, You're definitely gonna change it. After this program.
Speaker 6 (01:20):
I think people are gonna get out there. We're going
chefy Saturday.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, I like that Chefy Saurday is not a bad
way to put it, you know. I kind of like that.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Get ready, folks, we're dropping it.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
It's gonna be amazing. Well, I can't hate.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
Why say it's going to be amazing, because I don't
know what if it's terrible, And here I am putting
something over gonna be amazing, it's to be awful.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
You taught me one thing in life, and that it's
pro wrestling.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Everything is incredible.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
That's what it is, right boom, that's what Well, we
were thinking about recently getting used some uh tights like
ravishing Rick Rudish to wear and we could paint people's
faces like spray painted on there for you.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
That's what I was gonna come out with today. But
you know it's the likeness. I couldn't get Lenny's likeness.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That makes sense. Work well, Jeff.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
This whole episode is going to be about demystifying the
magical mystical food we call foa gra and what it is,
where it comes from, why do we eat it.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I'll tell you why. It's freaking delicious. But you know,
so I think that you see it on menus.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
More people are doing more and more stuff with this,
So we thought it'd be a good time to come
on here and bring some experts onto the whole situation
to talk more about it, don't you think?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (02:22):
Absolutely, And it's a magical ingredient. I can't wait to
talk about it. I mean, it's one of my favorite things.
You can use it so many ways, and people have
no idea.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
They just have no idea. They think, what is this foogra.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Right, Well we're going to find out today, that's for sure.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Right, I'm super excited. I'm super excited to talk about
where it comes from. It's a full circle for me.
You know, I went there once very young chef with
my chef who's now deceased.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
But doniall hutnick.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
So it was like one of a what a fun
thing to be able to talk about, just to be
able to like full circle.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
Come back and be like, hey, tell us the story
and now, well here's the thing. I think when I
first learned about it in culinary school, it was a
little bit I don't want to say scary, but it
was a little bit like, Wow, what is this we're
talking about here?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
This is incredible?
Speaker 5 (03:10):
And then you kind of learn more about it and
then you taste it for the first time and your
entire life changes. But before we get to our guests,
I want to tell everybody listen, Thursday, March twentieth, I
am doing the Guest Chef series with our friend Chef
Proisade down at Chef Pisad and New Canaan. We're gonna
be there, We're gonna do a bunch of courses, we're
gonna hang out. It's gonna be a really, really fun night.
(03:31):
It's the Chef Collab series and we're gonna be there
and I'm gonna have a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
And there's no Jeffy with me, no Dan with me.
It's just me cooking, just plumbing.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
PA's it and it's gonna be awesome and we have
a lot of fun. We're gonna mix together some of
my Southern and New England food with some of his
Indian food. It should be a lot of fun and
I'm sure the menu will be outstanding. We haven't made
it yet, so if you're asking for menu, we don't
have it yet, but go check out Chef Pissad dot
com to find some more information. I know the tickets
are selling fast, you know, I don't think it's a
lot of money. I think it's one hundred bucks or something.
It's not expensive because this is not a making things
(04:00):
for anybody. It's it's I think the ticket costs basically
paid for the food.
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Jeff, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's it's but it's well
worth it because you're gonna have two legends in the building.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well not only that, but it's open bar. You can
drink whatever you want. You doesn't care.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
I'm trying to put up the food and you're over
here like all right, well you know, just come for
the open bar. No, man, you're gonna have legendary food
with a with an open bar under case.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Yeah, let's go to Well listen, you're gonna get great
food and and a great cocktails as much as you
can have. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.
There'll be some pretty big names in the house too,
so I hope to see you there. That's Thursday, March twentieth,
down a New Canaan Chef Brosad. Check out chef Prasad
dot com to get all the info there, and I'll
start posting on instantent on social media as well.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Jeffy, we got all those things. It's gonna be awesome things.
Joining us now is our guests, and we're really excited
about this.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
We got to meet, uh, one of these gentlemen over
the years from doing festivals, and he's just become a
really really great human being, a super nice guy, just
one of the people who you just you know, I
look forward to seeing every time that I get the
opportunity to UH. And he's also brought in another legend
with him, UH the one of the co owners of
Hudson Valley Farms, which does Hudson Valley FOI gras Uh.
(05:09):
Lady John please, welcome to the program. Lenny Messina and
Jordan Ganeer. Here's a problem. Jordan, So, I wrote your
last name, but my handwriting. I'm gonna show you my
notes like I wrote it out phonetically, but my handwriting
is so bad it looks like it looks like an E.
And I'm like, I'm like, like Anchorman, I just read
whatever's in front of me.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
Trust me, I've heard. I've heard every everything, every pronunciation.
Everybody gets one one free pass.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
All right, Well, I'll use my mind. That's good. Well,
I'm gonna give Jeffy a few two here, But Lenny,
always a pleasure, my friend.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Brother.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Great to see you.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
How are you excited to be here?
Speaker 8 (05:42):
Thank you very much for having us.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Dude, you are the man.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
We appreciate you also, of course, if you haven't, you know,
go out the Long Island Lola Restaurant.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
That's Lenny's spot, which is amazing.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
In the restaurant, they still like you.
Speaker 8 (05:54):
It depends on the day.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
It depends how much I'm pulling him away from them.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
That's right, that's right, Lenny. How much flaw do you
serve in the restaurant?
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Now?
Speaker 9 (06:02):
Oh, way too much. We use the sole of a
shoe to match the portion of our floggras, So we're
definitely definitely heavy handed with our portioning when it comes
to all things duck and floger.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So, Lenny, how did you get involved with Howson Valley?
How did that happen?
Speaker 6 (06:20):
So?
Speaker 9 (06:21):
I had graduated Cunori School Upstate New York, and then
after that I found myself just going through a few
different restaurants, training with some chefs, doing some stages and internships,
just getting my feet wet as much as possible. Everything
from like more fast casual spots to michel In a
couple of Michel and Caliber chefs that I had worked
(06:42):
for as well, and I ended up volunteering for a
heritage pork competition at the circuit that they do is
called Koshon, and I volunteered an event in Philadelphia and
the owner there says, you know, I need you to help.
Chef Michael Ganore, Jordan's father and the original one of
(07:04):
the original founders of Pudson Valley Farms, and him and
I immediately.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Hit it off.
Speaker 9 (07:09):
So he says, where are you from. I said, I'm
from Long Island, randomly in Pennsylvania, and he said, what
do you mean. Have you been to my restaurant? I'm like, no,
What's your restaurant is at Lola.
Speaker 8 (07:20):
In Great Neck.
Speaker 9 (07:21):
I'm like, I've seen the sign on the highway, but
I have never been to Gray Neck in my life.
So he invited me for dinner. I sat down and
it just blew me away. And then honestly, rest is
history have an amazing relationship with Jordan so on over
about twelve years now and really just never looked back. So,
(07:44):
starting with my connection at the restaurant, I was traveling
with Chef Michael a little bit. We were doing more
and more events that were supporting the farm efforts, and
then just got pulled in a little more, a little more,
a little more. Where we are now, which is i'd
say like fifty to fifty split.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
You and Jordan.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
You just kind of Lenny was a hand me down
to you.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
Huh, yeah, I'm not sure, or a gift from God
however however you want to describe it. But but yeah,
Lenny was my dad's right hand guy for twelve years
and has become you know, literally my brother and Hudson
Valley fog Ras has transformed tremendously over the last five years.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
A lot to do with Lenny's help.
Speaker 7 (08:38):
We produce about thirty percent of our business now is
producing private labowl or co manufactured products, and Lenny's the
head of our R and D as well as production
in that facility, and we've gone from you know, pretty
much no volume there to doing about one hundred, one
hundred and fifty pallets worth a week of products. So wow,
(09:01):
he's his his transfer when I would his progression in
the industry has just truly been amazing, and he can
do it all from Michelin caliber tasting menus to producing
uh you know, high volume, high scale products at an
industrial level while maintaining you know, a strict culinary standards, right, yeah,
(09:25):
standards exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Man.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's that. That's a great story. Look, it seems like
you have PEPs in the pod And I love that.
That was really nice. That's the nicest thing I ever said.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
You let me sure, not even close. We do Yeah,
we do everything together.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
So I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You've got a good team with us.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
Let's let's just shift again, and I kind of understand
who everybody is here. Let's shift it over to Flaw.
Speaker 9 (09:48):
What is it?
Speaker 7 (09:50):
Yes, so, uh floa gras literally translates to uh, fatty
liver and it's the fattened liver of a waterfa. And
you guys seem to know a good amount about flaw history,
but for the audience, uh, you know, Faw has a
really really interesting history that pretty much goes unknown other
(10:15):
than you know, people in the niche niche interests, you know,
such as ourselves. But fargra is the world's oldest culinary
delicacy and it dates back five thousand plus years and
the first depictions of fogar are actually in hieroglyphics on
Egyptian pyramid walls.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's truly fascinating, and we're.
Speaker 5 (10:37):
Sure of that, Like we're sure of that, Like we're
not like, you know, somebody drew it on the wall
and like what it looks like fora let's just call
it fwa.
Speaker 7 (10:43):
Well if in the intro of Fargra Passion, my dad's book,
he spent a lot of time and consulted with a
number of resources on the history of Fagra, and it
was truly remarkable what he discovered. And I think you
can just google hieroglyphics Squagra and you'll see pictures that
(11:04):
are pretty clear and the story, you know, paints paints
the picture and makes it all makes sense. Uh you know,
So why was it in hieroglyphics on Egyptian pyramid walls.
That's because the Nile River, the now River Delta was
a really interesting area, one of the only fertile areas
(11:24):
in that region, and you had geese going there prior
to migration to feed as the natural life side cycle
of geese is and Egyptians would you know, eat geese,
and they would eat them all times a year. But
something really interesting happened when they killed geese during the
(11:48):
winter time, right before migration. They found that the liver
of those geese completely transformed and and was just this
remarkable delicacy, much different flavor, much bigger, much fattier, and
much more versatile. And it was fascinating to them, and
they discovered it was all you know, related to this
(12:09):
natural behavior and life cycle of waterfowl, which includes them gorging.
Actually the word, the term gorging actually comes from this
word from the behavior of waterfowl prior to migration, where
they gorge as a store of energy because during migration,
you know, they need this energy to fly and they
(12:32):
don't have a constant access to food.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So all of this it's natural to do that. It's
natural to eat.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
That way, exactly exactly.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
We won't go into fatty liver being a disease in
humans but perfectly.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Natural for waterfowl.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
Well, met a little bit, but you know, that's one
of the things used against us, but is actually a
natural evolutionary behavior and waterfowl that allows them to migrate,
that expanding of the liver and using fat as as
store of energy, whereas in humans it's completely you know,
where mammals are a completely different thing. We don't need
(13:09):
to well sometimes we need to gorge, but for different
purposes exactly, work, exactly.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
So it's interesting. Just so much history here. I don't
think I realized there was so much history here.
Speaker 7 (13:22):
Well, it'll make sure you guys get a copy of
the book. And yeah, history is fascinating. And from there,
fogra is a consistent part of the world's culinary delicacy.
So Egyptians saw that and I said, whoa, this is
amazing how and like any food how any food products
survived And said, whoa, how can we as humans, uh,
agriculturally harvest this for ourselves, like we harvest any any
(13:46):
food product. And and it developed and developed and developed,
and today we most of the world's production of fograss
actually uses ducks, and we'll talk about that specifically Moulard
ducks and notchis. And it's all about the human impact
of science and agriculture as as humans have had on
every single foreign product. And fargra is no different, but
(14:09):
just but certainly fascinating. And so fagra spread from Egypt
through the Roman Empire as the Romans, you know, invaded
that area, and then from there through the Greek Empire
and eventually Eastern Europe and France, where uh you know,
became etched in culinary history and recipes really flourished in France.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
Man, there's a lot going on here. There's a whole
lot going on here. Unbelievable, Lenny, I gotta ask you, man,
are you tired of what at this point?
Speaker 9 (14:43):
No, No, I've actually been trying to accomplish that, but
it hasn't happened yet over the years.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
But I've definitely had my share, right, I could.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Say, yeah, I'll bet and Jordan we just raised on it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, you know, I was raised on duck and chicken,
for sure.
Speaker 7 (15:02):
I was, i'd say a little bit rebellious as as
a kid, not not actually rebellious, just in my love
for foger. Although maybe I'm realizing that it's just not
something for every five year old. But I only started
loving it, i'd say, in my you know, teenage years,
which is still probably earlier than the most late late teens.
(15:22):
And I have Actually, i'd say, every time I eat
font I like it more and more, and I love
the versatility of the product. I will say I can't
always eat you know that much of it. It's it's
super super rich. But yeah, sure, I'd say that that
few perfect bites of fog are probably the best bites
in the world.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
So Jordan talk to us a little bit here about
the process, like how do we get so Okay, we
have these these Mollard ducks, which is what we switched to.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
So how do we get to I guess how do
we get the ducks? First?
Speaker 9 (15:52):
Right?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
How do we go from geese to ducks?
Speaker 7 (15:54):
Yeah, that's that's a really interesting question. I'll try to
touch on just the important parts of that without spending
too much time. But out of so we will fast
forward from ancient Egypt to the nineteen sixties, so we'll
cut out a lot of history, and we're in Taiwan
and scientists. It's actually interesting time to even have this discussion.
(16:19):
Bird flu disease has always been an issue in poultry,
a huge, huge issue right now, but it's always been around,
and in the nineteen sixties, as the conquest for improving
agriculture always continues, scientists in Taiwan, experimenting with different breeds
(16:39):
of ducks, developed what in French there is known as
the Moollard duck. And this duck is a hybrid of
a female pekin and a male muscovi And there's pretty
interesting science. We can refer to it as hybrid vigor.
In the results of a mule species of animals, they
(17:03):
end up being a lot more disease resilient on average,
And so that was the primary goal of of what
they were doing. However, a really interesting other benefit came
out of the smular duck and it's it had a
tremendously unique ability to expand its liver far greater than
(17:26):
other species of waterfowl. And this is like another allegory
to just general agriculture.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
Now any just like he's the Super Soldier Project. Yeah,
he one for ducks. In the nineteen sixties. It's about
the same time that Captain America was created. I see
the reference.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I just are you are you googling this?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Yes, from what you're picked up from what I think
here Exactly.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
While we were also creating Captain America, we were creating
the Moullard duck, which makes sense.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Sounds like you know the Covert Project.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
Yeah, cod Area fifty one magic liver with that kind
of thing that makes lots of exactly love this son.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Any duck will have it.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
You know, its liver will change before it gorgees prior
to migration, but it will do it in different scales.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And it's the way you can think.
Speaker 7 (18:19):
About it is any cow will provide milk, but there's
a reason ninety or don't. I don't know what the
number is. Maybe it's ninety nine percent of the world's
milk comes from Holstein cows. That's because they're a lot
more docile and they provide a lot more milk. It's
just a much better product for the world. You can
(18:42):
try to milk a longhorn, but it's going to give
you very little milk and it'll probably kick you in
the face. So good the Mooillard, duck is and fog
out follows very similar stories to the rest of agriculture,
and these are unique interesting stories for sure.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I mean, Lenny, so how big are these ducks?
Speaker 5 (19:02):
Because I look at like, I've seen some lobes of
floi gras that I'm just like that really came out
of a duck. Like, how big are these of these animals?
Speaker 9 (19:11):
You know, surprisingly not as big until you see the
liver harvested, and then you'd be surprised how much of
the internal cavity is liver I mean final weight, Jorda,
what do we average?
Speaker 7 (19:25):
Yeah, it's about eight pounds dressed, and so that means
without the feathers and the head as far as sellable.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Quantity, and then prior to that, it's about ten and
a half pounds.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Interesting, So certainly on the bigger side of ducks. But
you're nowhere near you know, turkeys or anything. We grow
our ducks for fifteen weeks, so it kind of follows
the natural life cycle of a duck growing for fifteen
whereas most other duck farms in the country grow for.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
About six weeks macs. I mean, it's all super interesting.
It's crazy, and like how it's talked about, like it's
a a commodity, you know what I'm saying. Like I
think a lot of people and they think of farming
and they get too attached to animals.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I don't mean in a bad way.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
I'm watching how I'm saying this now, but like it's
a commodity, Like we're growing it's like growing carrots.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of internal intelligence that's been
acquired and built over the years where it's not very
it's very difficult to replicate what we're doing. We have
family farmers that have been with us, three generations of
(20:41):
family farmers, and a lot of the farmers that were
here thirty years ago when the farm started are still
with us, and that experience is truly, really, really really
important to understand the nuances of the behavior of these animals,
educater behaviora care effectively.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
It's all super interesting and it's crazy because I feel
like as a chef, you know, we look at fua
as this, you know, pinnacle of ingredients, you know, something
amazing to you is but then you know it's these
amazing local farmers who are growing this. It's just such
a cool thing to me. I mean, it's something that's
such a high quality thing that's growing locally. It's amazing.
I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Jeffy, I think we should have more flaw in our life.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
Again, you know, really amazing thing is that it comes
from New York, just like pizza.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
What no, don't, what's wrong with you? Don't? You can't
say that, stop it? You know, it's not true.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
It's very cool that New York produces foe Gras and
the best pizza.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
None, that's true. Stop you guys, gotta stop this, this blasphemy.
You're checking out Plumb Love Foods right on the Voice
of Connetic at WYCC. I'm Chef Plumb along with Chef Jeff.
We're joined by Lenny Messina and Jordan Gonor. We're talking
all about foie Gras we come back, We're going to
talk about a little bit more harvesting, what to cook
with it, why does it taste so good? And everything
you want to know right here on FUAG one oh
one on Plumb Love Foods. Stay right there, we'll be
(21:59):
right back.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
Farman Forge Market on thirty six Hampton Road in Southampton,
New York.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
Farming Forge is a fantastic market if you're an avid
home coke or professional chef like myself.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Johnny Bernard over there aka Street Leafs. Johnny, He's got
some great stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
I'm talking great olive oils, I'm talking great vinegars. He's
got some amazing caviar. Johnny's really got everything over there, Jeffy.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
Farm and Forge Market on thirty six Hampton Road in Southampton,
New York.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Yeah, I mean you were talking. He's got great fish
that you can get. He's got some produce stuff. He's
got mushrooms that are locally grown, which is incredible. And
he's got some amazing beef selections too, even some A
five wag you. I saw this stuff. It looks like
it's just completely white. It's amazing. I can't wait to
try it.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
That's right at Farm and Forge Market on thirty six
Hampton Road in Southampton, New York.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
You're just saying the same thing. You say anthing different.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Well, there's also Farmanforge Market dot com.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Okay, there we go, great website. Check out farmerforge Market
dot com. You gotta check them out.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Amazing things over there.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
Jeff, listen, I'm telling you I cannot wait to go
back and see what else Johnny has.
Speaker 6 (23:07):
That's right at Farm and Forge Market on thirty six
Hampton Road, Southampton, New York.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
You just said you know what else Johnny has. Johnny's
got amazing lion meat. I can't wait to get some
lion meet from Johnny.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
Yeah, it doesn't have that, but he does have a
website at Farmanforge Market dot com.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Oh my god, this is getting crazy.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
Now.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
He's got a great ostrich legs Loo can barbecue ostriche legs.
Speaker 6 (23:24):
Is you have those no ostrich legs, but he does
have seven x wagu at thirty six Hampton Road in Southampton,
New York.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I mean, it's just it's like a broken record with you.
I cannot. I don't understand it. Anything else you got for.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Me farm and Forge Market, I got it, thirty Sixthampton
Road in Southampton.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
We got it.
Speaker 10 (23:38):
Jeffy Lenny's in the kitchen, Gormet Pozza, Clinton, Jordan's at
the farm for a groad, Duck sinking Rich Flavor's coming
master Chef's flinkt Hudson Valley Gold braw steady drinking, Foyd
(24:02):
Grawl Love flavors from the heart, classic color in every
yard making taste Bud Start boy grawl love from.
Speaker 6 (24:08):
The farm to the plate, or may dreams away never
second rate.
Speaker 10 (24:13):
Lenny's got that recipe legacy to bring Jordan's on the
road for it, grad got that zing dug liver, Silkie tune,
the brass sing from Hudson Valley, Finest of the King.
Speaker 11 (24:23):
Foryd gra Love flavors from the heart, classic color in
every yard making taste Bud Start, Foyd Graw Love from
the farm to the plate, Gourmet, Dreams Away never second rate,
Valley's precious feet, Ducks in perfect mode, Chefs around the
globe sing that secret code, Taste the magic here, Harmony
(24:48):
the stove, Messina's Hands and jean Or Legends paved.
Speaker 12 (24:53):
The road from the coop to the stove, each step
Divine foy Graw expertise, stripping gold, refine, crown in the kitchen,
Lenny's design, Jordan's in the fields, tandem so aligned, flavors
from the heart, classical in every yard, making say flood,
start by glove from the farm to the play do
(25:13):
make dreams away.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
You have a second rate.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Plumb the foods live right here on a Saturday, having
a great time here on WYC.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
See the Voice of Connecticut. We appreciate you, guys.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Check out the program that's Hudson Valley Fuegra love from
the house band that we have the.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Flame on Spotify.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
There you go, right.
Speaker 5 (25:38):
I do like the liberty as they take with some
of the words just to make them rhyme. I mean, yeah,
which is kind of hilarious.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
That's artistry a bit.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I mean I've never experienced that in my life. This
is unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Two minutes, you will each get a copy of your song.
Speaker 9 (25:55):
I have never been so excited to change my ring tone.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
That's amazing.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
We're joined by our good friend chef Lenny Messina and
Jordan Gonor from Hudson Valley Flower talking all about foig ra.
What is foagra the mystifying magical ingredient that's used in
so many different cuisines now, I was about to say
French cuisine, but god, it's everywhere now, Jordan, it really is.
You can find this stuff in all types of food.
I mean Lenny was baking pastries with it. It was crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I mean, this stuff is everywhere now.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
I still think about that Bomballini. Oh my god, it
was like it might have been one of the greatest.
I ate two of them and was terrible.
Speaker 9 (26:30):
Was dood it?
Speaker 4 (26:31):
Definitely? I had it was rich, but they were so delicious.
It was like I ate one early and then I
finished my night that night with one and it was
so good.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
You had two. I think I had twenty two.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Oh my gosh, that's incredible. Why does this stuff taste
so good? Thoughts?
Speaker 5 (26:49):
I'm not sure what one of you guys can try
to answer that, but why does it taste so good.
What happens to this flaw in the process of being
raised that makes it taste so unbelievable as it's inside
that duck.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
I think.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
That might be a good thing for you.
Speaker 9 (27:05):
I think you're starting starting with the feed is a
is a high corn blend, and for me as a chef,
I always find it has this really really.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
Beautiful and nutty sweetness when you compound that, which the
richness of the fogg are up.
Speaker 9 (27:21):
Just gives you perfect choking sorry, that's all right, just
gives you this perfect flavor profile that's not overpowering but
super super delicate.
Speaker 8 (27:31):
And then the richness just comes through and it just
checks so many boxes for a culinary win.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
And so Jordan A.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Lenni brought up the feeding part of it.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
That's something we got to talk about here when it
comes to these ducks and how they're raised.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
I mean, what's the best way to describe this. How
do we talk about how they're.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
Fed and how that that whole situation happens, Because I
think that I think that's the biggest hang up that
some people have with this.
Speaker 7 (27:55):
Sure, yes, let's let's talk about the maybe the whole
the whole process us and you know, the life cycle
of a duck on our farm, and it's really important
that the whole goal of our process is to line
that life cycle up with what they would be doing
(28:15):
naturally in the wild. So we grow our ducks for
twelve weeks. Most other duck farms in the country are
only growing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
To six weeks.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
But we'll grow for twelve weeks and then we do
our hand feeding gavage process for the last three weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And each stage is divided up to mimic.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
What those ducks would experience, you know, specifically feed, access
to water or where that is relative to the feed
in the wild. And so in the beginning part of
that process, in the nursery stage, which lasts for three weeks,
the ducks have access to a higher percentage of protein.
(28:54):
This allows for you know, more growth. It's similar to
what they'd have a naturally in the fall time before
the grains have ripened. After those three weeks, the next
three stages of three weeks or nine weeks generally speaking,
are are in growing. During that stage is when would
(29:16):
coincide with nature's ripening of the grain. Uh and more
that coincides with more carbohydrates. That's really important, like we
discussed earlier, for the for the birds uh gorging prior
to migration. That carbohydrate is that store of energy and
fat and converse to fat that the ducks need in
(29:41):
the wild. And then in the last three weeks of
the growing cycle is when they will we'll do the
gavage process. And so gavage translates you know. That's that's
the French word for the process, and I think it's
the most act hear it a picture of the process,
(30:02):
and gavage in French means to fill up, just as
you would your car at a gas station. And when
we talk about filling up, what we really mean is
uh depositing food into the crop of the duck. And
it's it's really really important for us to fully understand
the anatomy of a duck. When we talk about the.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Process of fogra and fagra being a good farming practice.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
It's it's crucially, uh crucially important to distinguish the anatomy
of humans from ducks. And that's one of the battles,
one of the most uphill battles for us that we've
we continue to face because the other side likes to
blur those lines, uh. And when you blur those lines,
uh is when the issues get complicated. But if you
(30:51):
truly understand the anatomy of the duck, you'll see that
fogra is a good farming practice. So we're depositing food
into the into the crop.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
What is the crop?
Speaker 7 (31:01):
So again, unlike humans, the ducks have this sack called
the crop that lies before the stomach and the crop
is simply we can think of it about it like
a tank and the crop can be filled fully and
that doesn't go right into the digestive track. There's a
gizzard that lies between the crop and the stomach, and
(31:24):
the gizzard will regulate the deposit of.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Food into the stomach.
Speaker 7 (31:28):
This is again essential evolutionary development or ducks that allows
them to fly, to migrate successfully in the wild when
they don't have a consistent access to food.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
Because they're eating while they're flying, so like when they're migrating.
This is the organ in their body or the process
in their body that allows them to fly for twenty
five hours or whatever it is when they're doing those
long flights and things like that.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Exactly, it's all about storing energy and you can either
store that energy as rough food in the crop, and
they're also storing that energy as fat in their livers.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
This whole build up of.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
Energy allows them to successfully migrate when they don't have
access to the calories or that energy.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
Have you ever like played around with like feeds in
like the finishing process the way you know, like how
Dan Barber feeds his chickens only like red pepper ends
for you know, however many days and he says it
the you know, the yolks turned more red and the
eggs have a sweeter taste. Have you ever tried anything
like that with the feed like any wee.
Speaker 7 (32:33):
We've done a bunch of various probably every kind of
experiment you can imagine, not getting caught up with, you know,
certain certain non practical things. And I would certainly I
have certainly some knowledge on the subject that I would
also defer some or refer some questions to Marcus Henley,
(32:54):
who's our head of farming operation. So I know as
much as I can about the farming operation, but I
don't run our farming operations, so he's kind of, you know,
been the lead on those experiments in the past. What
I will say is, well, it depends on what the
question is. Certainly things like colorful items in the feed
will will affect color. I actually don't know if it
(33:16):
will affect color. Well, actually I assume it will affect
color of far grass. So one example of this is
we have Hudson Reality Farms in Canada as well, and
in the US we do what we call New York
or American style flowgra, which we pioneered and are the
only people in the world doing, and we can talk
about those differences. And in Canada, Hutson Other farms Canada
(33:39):
we do a European style fagra. One of those differences
is more corn relative to soy in the feed in Canada,
and that results in a bit of a yellower color
on the far gra.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
That's really interesting. So I know that flaw is graded,
there's different grades of the flaw. Where does that come from?
And does the feet affect that and does it actually matter?
Speaker 7 (34:03):
Yeah, So grading fogra is a five thousand year history,
but grading dates back thirty five years to my dad.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
So he's no one graded fagra until he thought we should.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
How about that?
Speaker 7 (34:21):
In Europe they don't grade fagra. In Hudson Elli Farms Canada,
we don't grade fagra.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
So there's a you know, a long discussion we could
have around grading, whether whether it should or shouldn't be done.
But generally speaking, you know, delivers we get out of
our American style of fargro can vary a bit more
in size relative to Europeans, so it as some avenue
(34:49):
to kind of distinguish between qualities, and that's that's one
way we will distinguish between ABC. So size, color and
texture are the three things that we'll use to distinguish
between A, B and C. The firmer, larger and more
white colorful are is the spectrum of A and the
opposite C softer, less white, And.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Forget the loss metric.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
But is there is there a difference in tastes in
different grades or not?
Speaker 4 (35:20):
Really?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I let Lenny Lenny talk to them and they ultimately
I'd say, could have different use cases, but generally speaking
on the taste are exactly the same. I'd say, well,
let's see what to say on that.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
For sure, very distinguished between the feed and the actual
feeding program cycle differences from the American style to our
to our European style. So but I would say if
we're looking specifically at our New York style what we
do here at Hudson Valley. It's more related to size
than it is anything else. As far as flavor, you're
(35:55):
going to get the same flavor out of an A,
B or C grade. Smaller is going to have better
use for just anything. You're going to convert to traditional
cooking turens towards Shawan's and then our a's and even
our bees. I always say like it annoys me that
we gray them be because they're they're A grade. They're
like threty perfect, right, those are going to be like
(36:16):
ones you'll want a car for slicing and so on.
Speaker 8 (36:19):
But as far as the flavor standpoint, all on par it's.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
All pretty much the same at that point. It's just
it's just the color and the texture and that sort
of stuff.
Speaker 9 (36:28):
I'll and even the color doesn't vary much. So between
our A, B, and C here in New York, they're
all relatively distinguishable, just slight variation.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, how many different companies are doing for now? Is
it a bunch? It reels like you guys have the market,
That's what it feels like. You got there's really.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Only two of us in the United States.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
That's interesting.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
So what about states, like, I'm not sure if it's
still is it still illegal in California where they where
they not serve it?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
There is it? I means it still have some legal
issues in certain states.
Speaker 7 (36:59):
California is a unique, weird legal situation that continues to
go back and forth and I imagine will do so
that the current situation is that sales.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Are not allowed within California.
Speaker 7 (37:11):
So we are allowed to sell to for instance, our
website to to home Cooks were completely allowed to sell
to Californians and they can produce, they can cook the
products and need it there. You're not allowed to sell
within the state, the product can't.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
Restaurants can't buy it and actually sell it. But if
like it was like a giveaway, they could do it,
Like if they gave something away, they could put its
probably like a loophole there.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Well they to mose boosh to start a meal like it.
Speaker 7 (37:40):
Was a you know, yeah, yeah, there's I imagine there's great,
but I don't really know. But you know, all I
could say is that restaurants are not allowed to sell.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
They sell it in New York now again right because
I know, rightstat when I first wi joined the company,
and as the year I first started brought some bad
luck with us in New York tried to New York City,
tried to ban farther on.
Speaker 7 (38:06):
New York State really came to our defense. There was
complicated government. It was a compliment complicated government at the
time because Cromo was on our side and then was transitioning,
and it took a while to get New York State
back on our side. But just simply instituting the laws
(38:29):
of New York State, the New York City ban was illegal.
It should have never been should have never happened in
the first place. And so New York passed that in
twenty nineteen, with it going into effect three years later,
and that ben was shut down just before it was
(38:49):
expected to go into effect. So we sweated it out
for three years, poured our souls on the line, and
you know, pretty much every dollar we had in legal bills.
But we event actually one and New York City tried
to appeal that ruling and last maybe a year and
a half ago. That appeal was shut down. So there's
(39:10):
pretty much no room left for New York City to
do this again.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
You never know, but don't say never. Let's light club,
never say never, don't don't do.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
That for sure, We're prepared.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
So what's the biggest who's your biggest What state buys
the most foie gras?
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Do you think?
Speaker 7 (39:30):
Yeah, it's a good question to talk a little bit
about what we discussed about the trends before about fograt
And it's a little bit complicated for me to give
you a factual answer because pretty much all of our
sales go to distributors rather than the end customers, So
I don't actually have perfect visibility.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Into the end customer sales.
Speaker 7 (39:51):
Just given we're in the New York area, New York
State has to be our number one state in sales. However,
trends over the last ten years of complete we are
completely changing that, and I wouldn't be surprised if that
changes in the medium or near term. Generally speaking, southern
(40:12):
state states like Florida and Texas used to buy no
Farga and are taking some trips to Miami with some distributors,
and it's it's unbelievable, what's what's happening there. It's possible,
and I don't have this visibility that we're doing more
in Miami than we are in New York City. Wow,
(40:34):
and like the trends we were speaking to the trends
we were also talking to earlier. That's fogra is extending
past a French you know, pigeonhole or legacy, and you're
seeing it in kind of all all sorts of restaurants
and cuisines all over Japanese food.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Pretty much. It's such a versatile product that any cuisine
has a place for.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Farga and obviously too at at the website.
Speaker 5 (41:02):
You know, you guys, if anybody goes home cooks out there,
who want to buy a stuff Hudson valleyfuogrow dot com,
anybody who want you also you have duck, you have chicken,
you have you have like a flag ros or showing
already made.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
I mean it's not.
Speaker 5 (41:13):
You can also buy just chunked up flag ross slice
foil if you just want a little bit to try
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
What a great way to do it, What an easy
way to do it.
Speaker 6 (41:20):
Oh, I love the trim, baby, you can do a
lot with that, right, There's so much you can do
with the trim.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
It's so good.
Speaker 5 (41:27):
That's amazing, and does freezing it. We got to under
break here, assume does freezing it actually like, does it
hurt the flaw at all if you freeze it?
Speaker 7 (41:35):
So one thing I'll say, and I'll let Lenny take
it from there, is we have a really special freezing
process using nitrogen to maintain the crystals and you know,
the best way possible. And then I'll let Lenny talk
about the well that lenin eating experience.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Well, Lenny as a chef, so I hear freezing and
I'm like, eh.
Speaker 8 (41:55):
It follows the same everyone knows this from ice cream.
Speaker 9 (41:58):
So, like Jordan was just alluding to, when you purchase
frozen flagraph from us, we're using our proprietary nitrogen process
which helps make the crystals on a molecular level much
much smaller, so it doesn't damage any of the structural
integrity that you want for the flawgrap.
Speaker 8 (42:14):
If somebody were.
Speaker 9 (42:15):
To throw it on the top layer of a chest
freezer and in you know, forty eight hours it finally froze,
you could see a little bit of degradation of the
actual quality when you defrost it. But we have amazing
luck with like any any decent home freezer with a
little bit of air circulation is not an issue. So
if you bring in a fresh flogra and you realize
(42:36):
you're not going to use all of it, you know,
use the food saver or vacuum seal and try to
get that in the freezer, and you're not.
Speaker 8 (42:43):
You're not going to have an issue.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
And that's great, That sounds amazing.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
I appreciate that because there's so much fun something on
the website here which I think is a great way
to dip your toe into flog you never had before.
I mean, the Flagras slices, I mean, all this stuff
is just a great way to get in there and
start playing with it, you know.
Speaker 9 (42:58):
So the Floagras slice is for sure because they call
them individually frozen and under vacuum seal, so you can
actually keep those in your freezer. And then you want
to cook for me and me and Jeff are going
to have dinner tomorrow hopefully, and uh, I'll pull two out,
throw them in a pan, sear them up, go right
on top of chicken right uh, right on top of
(43:21):
a steak and uh and you can start it without
without having to take on the risk of bringing in
a whole flaw, which was your first time. If you've
never butchered and process it could be like a daunting task.
So uh, flog off for searing. Our frozen slices are
like our ideal and.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
That sounds amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Man.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
I can't wait.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
I'm gonna order some myself because I think I'll start
playing with it and doing more stuff with it.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
I want to put on the smoker. Is that a
terrible idea?
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Great idea.
Speaker 8 (43:47):
We're happy you guys some potatoes underneath for the drippings.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I was just gonna we could talk.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
I can't wait to talk about cooking, flogger. That's what's
gonna come up next, I think exactly.
Speaker 8 (43:56):
I set up a discount code on the site.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Oh we can do that too, that'd be a fun
thing to do as well.
Speaker 8 (44:01):
Definitely, let's chat about that.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
All right, friends, we're talking all about FOI gar right
here on Plumla Foods on wy C the Voice of Connecticut.
Speaker 9 (44:09):
We come back.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
We're gonna talk a little bit about actually cooking. We
got the history, we know what the stuff is, we
know where it comes from.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Now what do we do with it in the kitchen?
Speaker 5 (44:16):
Find out next when we come back right here on
Plumla Foods, stay right there, ct Distilling jeffy.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
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Speaker 5 (44:39):
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Speaker 6 (45:06):
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Speaker 4 (45:14):
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Speaker 3 (45:18):
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Speaker 4 (45:21):
Oh man, we had that this year at the Sunlin
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song Good.
Speaker 5 (45:28):
I mean, I think it's probably better than that dude, Okay,
White Snakes song Good. Well, either way, it's really amazing,
all right, Fine, we'll at least we agree.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
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Speaker 5 (45:38):
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Speaker 6 (45:42):
Here I go again.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
You can go to ct Distilling coo dot com for
more info on the road.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
Plumb love foods right here on WYIC see the Voice
of Connecticut on a Saturday.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I hope you guys are having a great day.
Speaker 5 (46:06):
I hope you're changing your dinner plans now after checking
out this episode and learning a little bit more about
the magical mystery Foi Gras and listen. If you want
to get some fuagras sent to you really quickly, check
out Hudson Valleyfoagra dot com. You can go there, you
can order have a cent to your house, all kinds.
You even get small pieces. It's just a taste for
the first time, Jeffy, if you've never done it before.
It's worth it, right, It's absolutely worth it.
Speaker 6 (46:26):
It's such a fun ingredient and it has such unique flavor,
Like people freak out right you say liver, and people go, ah,
I don't.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Like liver, right, But this is not. This is foi gras.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
This is like a magical piece, like it literally transforms,
like when you guys are talking about the flavor earlier.
All I wanted to say is like fat is flavor,
and this is eighty five percent fat?
Speaker 4 (46:46):
No do maybe more? I don't even know. I mean,
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
We're joined by Jordan Gnore and Lenny Massina from Hudson
Valley Farms and Hudson Valley Foi Gras.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Lenny home cooks who may be afraid of this, Should
they be? Is it a hard thing for them to cook?
Speaker 8 (47:00):
Absolutely not?
Speaker 9 (47:01):
And even more importantly, we've curated a line of very
chef driven, thoughtfully detailed products that eliminate a lot of
the guessworks for the home chefs. So as I was
alluding to earlier, our seared foegra is the easiest way
to get a hot preparation of foegra to top any
(47:22):
protein of your desire for a spectacular meal, and that's
going to be your easiest intro segue into hot fogras.
Seared foegra you get that miard reaction, that nice caramelization
that you look for, that adds to the complexity of
the flavor, and that in itself is a delicacy and
can be a showstopper, but generally following a principle of
(47:46):
a carbohydrate and then something with either some sweetness or
acidity is really going to be your baseline framework to
making a dish stand out that is centered around foegarra.
Speaker 8 (47:59):
So we are also going back to our product line.
Speaker 9 (48:03):
We have all of the traditional charcuterie products, so we
do pat tay like things, terine are torchwn. We have
a moose of foie gras and a moose that also
has fortified with some awesome black truffle. Those are things
that are charcuterie board ready. So we're gonna unbox that
when it arrives at your door, get that onto a
charcuary board, and it's gonna take your your run of
(48:25):
the mill cheese and salami board to the next level.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Man, those sounds incredible, and those.
Speaker 9 (48:30):
Are things that other than putting out with a little
bit of toast, you know, toast points, crackers, a little
bit of jam, we'll bring everything full circle. So one
bite a nice crispy toast point, a piece of Fuagra torchon.
It's just simple slice and serve. Finish that with some
seasonal fruit jam or whatever of your choice. Again, anything
(48:52):
with some acidity or a little sweetness, and you're gonna
have a lot of impressed guests.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
And a really fun tip.
Speaker 5 (48:57):
I like to say, well, just to Tager, what let
me say in here, if you get these you know,
these pre made pieces, or you want to just serve
it with little toast points And he said, you a
little jam if you want to be super fancy, take
us take your jam and take a small spoonful of
the jam out right, put the side, eat it, do
whatever you want with it. But then take a little
tiny bit of you know, whatever kind of vineary you got,
apple cider, vinegar, You've got a little I have a
little honey vinegar, which is amazing, right, and just put
(49:19):
some of that in that little spoon hole you made
in the jam and serve the jam like that. So
it has that vinegariness with the sweetness and with the
fat unbelievable, and people like.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Why is that taste so good? Well, because those three
things go together, they're best friends. So that little splash
makes a big difference.
Speaker 8 (49:33):
Lenny, sounds great, absolutely good tip.
Speaker 5 (49:36):
Simple, simple, it's simple things. Yeah, that little acid I
mean literally, it's it's kind of the thing there. One
of the things I just noticed on the website, So
I was looking at it when you were talking, Lenny,
that I'm excited about and I think I'm going to
order this very very soon. Is the smoked foi gras
brought worst. I mean we're talking first of all brought worst,
the delicious.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
These are ready to go. I mean I would cook
cereum and cook them in beer. Is that we're thinking
here or no?
Speaker 8 (49:58):
Absolutely?
Speaker 9 (49:58):
So We've done million studies, very very tough work the
R and D.
Speaker 8 (50:03):
On that sure, like two months straight.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
First, that's right study and we appreciate that for the
R and D.
Speaker 9 (50:13):
That right. We actually we did a tailgating event a
few months back and we did an awesome like a
Brioche hot dog bun Foagra brought wurst, and then we
topped it with like an Aleppo pepper and pineapple.
Speaker 8 (50:26):
Relish and it was just like so awesome. But yeah,
you can go the same.
Speaker 9 (50:30):
Other route co poaching and beer, some sweated onions and mustard.
It's super super versatile, really straightforward on the broughtwurst uh
texture and flavor profile, but then it has these nice
little inclusions of rich fatty foggart and when you break.
Speaker 8 (50:46):
Into it just.
Speaker 9 (50:49):
To the moon.
Speaker 5 (50:50):
Jeff, why have we been serving this not even I
didn't even know this exists that I won't one so bad.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
To everything's different. Now everything's changed.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
It's a whole world is different.
Speaker 6 (50:58):
That was like a nice like app full mustarta something like,
oh my god, forget about it.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
I'm absolutely that sounds incredible. Listen.
Speaker 5 (51:05):
I'm pitching next year to go to WrestleMania, and I
don't know if you guys know, I'm a diehard wrestling fan,
have in my whole life, but it's a it's a
massive event, and I want to do is this tailgate
situation at WrestleMania. So if it happens, I'm gonna hit
you up and we're gonna you're gonna do this with me.
It's gonna be ridiculous. It's gonna be ridiculous. So but
what I like about that that brought words like you said, easy,
(51:26):
easy to go, you can get. It's kind of getting
the you know, something that you're used to having, but
getting flag Rock kind of integrated into it if you're
trying to learn it and kind of get that into
your diet. One of the things I also thought was
pretty cool here was the fuag raw fat. So when
I think of fat on an organ, I think of
what they call leaf lard, you know, kind of grows
around the organ, and that that that really delicious fat
around we're getting really gross, now very cheffy, but around
(51:48):
the heart, you know, around some of the organs.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Is that where this fat comes from? Or is this
just rendered flaw?
Speaker 8 (51:53):
So we do we do actually full rendered flaw.
Speaker 9 (51:56):
So you get all of the nutty richness, all of
them neurality from the floa grass, all of that full
flavor into the.
Speaker 8 (52:03):
Rendered product that is spoonable, spreadable like butter.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
And we just I mean simple way to use this, Jeffy.
I mean, listen, I'm gonna I'm talking my butt off,
not let you talk anything. I would just do some
easy roast potatoes with this and put a little bit
of garlic, a little bit of rosemary and toss them
with this and put them in the oven, even like
potato wedges.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
Are you kidding me? What a great way? And then
when you're done, always spoon a little of that fat
on top of them to finish it. Yeah, that's what
I want to say.
Speaker 6 (52:31):
You could also just eat it with a spoon and
some rock salt. I mean, I'm just throwing it out there,
a little slice of bread.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
I think that's how we show it on the website.
Speaker 8 (52:38):
Yeah yeah, I throw it on some sour dough, a
little flaky salt, and.
Speaker 3 (52:42):
Oh okay, I get it. Health food there we go.
Speaker 6 (52:46):
Yeah, no, listen, we're not talking. Fat is your friend, man,
as long as you don't need too many carbs.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
You know, we all love good brain food. Now.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
Also, you guys, obviously, because I mean we're doing flass,
you have duck as well. I mean you have you
can get some amazing duck right here on the website.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
Right.
Speaker 7 (53:04):
Our line extends far beyond fogron. While we focused on
the Fagra aspect of our business, we do other types
of ducks, non fogra ducks, and we actually do a
good amount more chickens today than we even do ducks.
And then in our further processing facility, we make all
(53:24):
these charcuter read products. So we've evolved to be much
more than just fogra or eve even just just duck.
And Hudson Valley Chicken is kind of taking over our
bit our farm.
Speaker 6 (53:38):
The Hudson Valley Chickens. I've recently bought them. Uh, it's
a heritage breeding chicken too. It's like a like, it's
a really really delicious chicken. I mean really, it tastes
like chicken supposed to. I feel like there's a lot
of brands out there. No, I'm serious, Like you know,
I'm a private chef and people who don't know so
I buy a lot of I look for really great
products and I recently had it and I was like, whoa,
(54:00):
this is really great.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
In fact, we'll talk about there, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5 (54:05):
Yeah, all these things are fantastic. So let's talk about
I'm a home chef. I've got some flaw What are
some things I can make with them besides just searing it? Lenny,
and give us, give us a tip. What's something that
they can make? You tell me what's a buy. Let's
just I mean, listen, let's just say we let's just
say we got a bunch of fog rock cubes.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
What can we do with that?
Speaker 9 (54:23):
So for me, honestly, the fog rock cubes are awesome
as well for a couple of different things.
Speaker 8 (54:28):
I like blending them into some purees.
Speaker 9 (54:31):
I also like using those chunks and fortifying any of
the finishing sauces I would make, so you can just
get like low sodium broth.
Speaker 8 (54:41):
You can reduce that down to what a.
Speaker 9 (54:43):
Chef's called demigloss esque and then fortify that with some
chives and some foag rock cubes. Just let literally raw
right in there, let them poach in the hot sauce.
Pour that over a steak, and you're you're at the
next level. Same for a roasted chicken. A so you
breast natural pairing, uh, anything along those lines. The cubes
(55:05):
can be a mulsified in for you can make a
moose at home, depending on how ambitious you want to be,
any kind of finishing sauces and any kind of curios,
and it'll give that nice nutty richness and an extra
depth of flavor where you're kind of like, where did
this come from?
Speaker 8 (55:20):
And that's that's the secret.
Speaker 7 (55:23):
Pasta and filled pastas as well. Perfect accompaniment.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
That sounds great, man, that's my mind here.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Hold on.
Speaker 6 (55:29):
So you thicken the sauce like you mount it, like
the way you would do butter. People at home don't
know what that is. You take a little butter, cold butter,
you put it into your hot sauce and you whisk
it in or I'm sure you can use that hand blender.
Some people do that and it thickens the sauce and
it gives it a nice gloss. So you're taking cubes
woi gras just mounting your sauce.
Speaker 9 (55:49):
Yes, it won't it won't fully dissolve like butter, so
you'll be left with the small inclusions out of poached
foie gras. But the fat that does render ound in
can emulsify just like when you mounting with butter, and
it gives that same shine, but with a much much muddy,
yer flavor.
Speaker 6 (56:06):
Oh wow, I'm so in on that. That's sounds delicious.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
I mean, that sounds incredible. I'm kind of down with
that for sure.
Speaker 5 (56:13):
And what a fun way to I mean, what about
even like adding something like that to a tomato soup,
like something silly, you know, just adding it to any
kind of like a vegetable soup, a a a braised
piece of beef that you're finishing off with a sauce.
Just put that flaw to finish a sauce off.
Speaker 8 (56:28):
That would definitely be my kind of vegetable soup. I'll
take that.
Speaker 9 (56:31):
Yeah, any any brazing so for a hot preparation of foagra.
Speaker 8 (56:38):
You know, even you can go as.
Speaker 9 (56:39):
Far as saying, if you add a hole lob of fogra,
you can roast it whole, which we do at the
restaurant all the time.
Speaker 8 (56:44):
Jordan loves if he'll eat it with a spoon.
Speaker 9 (56:46):
So we'll take the whole liver, We'll score it kind
of crosshatch the exterior, and then we crust it with
salt and pepper, some very finely minced shallets, and then
we top it with fresh herbs, stems of thyme, a
little rosemary, and we throw that whole thing into a
screaming hot oven. We roast it whole, and then you
have this like crazy crazy presentation. That's your more ambitious,
(57:09):
like expert level home chef. So I'm like kind of
spreading the gamut here, but that will give you the
most true flogger eating experience because you have a thin
caramelization on the outside and the inside has this very
soft custardy like texture.
Speaker 8 (57:27):
So really, depending on how you cook it, you can.
Speaker 9 (57:29):
Mount sauces with it, you can roast it whole, you
can slice thin slices and sear them. You have moose
tine torchewn. All of them have completely different eating experiences,
just texturally and also flavor profile wise, which is what
I think makes it so versatile.
Speaker 5 (57:45):
Oh man, I'll tell you what honestly, Like I am
just thinking right now, like what if you do like
a let's just say you want a very simple kachia peppe,
very very simple dish, right, easy to make, easy dinner
in a sidepan.
Speaker 3 (57:59):
We take some of this cube while that we got
from Hudson Valley flaw.
Speaker 5 (58:01):
We see it off a little salt in the pants,
sear it off right, and then we just tossed that
right in before we serve our our cochiae.
Speaker 3 (58:08):
I have this cocha pepe with these a flaw in there. Yeah,
how about that?
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (58:12):
Like fwatchia Pepe.
Speaker 6 (58:14):
That's great, WATCHI o Pepe. Did we just create something.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
I think we might have.
Speaker 6 (58:19):
I think we might love Foods World Premiere.
Speaker 4 (58:21):
Watch you old Pepe.
Speaker 8 (58:23):
You heard it here.
Speaker 1 (58:24):
You guys can take that trademark.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
Fatchio Pepe.
Speaker 5 (58:28):
Look, I'm gonna go on the website in two months
and they got frozen quat fotchy.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
Of Pepe on there.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
It's amazing.
Speaker 5 (58:33):
But I think just taking it and just kind of
out of the box, thinking it's an easy way just
to add it to a meal and to add like
a whole different succulence, a whole different flavor to it. Jeffy,
I think this is going to be a bad thing.
I'm about to ask Jeffie.
Speaker 6 (58:45):
I know you're gonna ask me a good question. I'm excited.
Speaker 4 (58:47):
I got it. I've been I got a cock that
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
Yeah, but you're seventeen step Jeffy, wif you we don't
want to do all.
Speaker 6 (58:52):
Right, we are gonna go a handful of steps here.
It's gonna take a few days.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Oh, come on, man, give me give me something easy
to slice.
Speaker 6 (58:58):
Listen, listen, you're gonna get a chunk of wah right,
You're gonna go ahead. You're gonna order yourself a chunk
of Wi Gras. You're gonna take a nice chunk of that.
You're gonna pull out all the veins. You're gonna take it.
You're gonna get a bowl in your fridge, a piece
of tuppware. You're gonna fill it with salt, fill it
with pepper corns, put some herbs in it. Then you're
gonna bury the faw in that salt and you're gonna
(59:20):
throw it in the fridge for a couple of days
and you're gonna take it out, clean all the salt
off it, and then you're gonna just eat it. And
it's cured foi gras and it's absolutely delicious. It's super
simple to do. It's salty, it's delicious, and you can
it's basically a torch shown just not shaped, and you
can have it in a chunk. You can cut into slices.
You can see it then if you want super eas
I'm just saying it's a super fun thing to do
(59:41):
at home. I like to put it in the freezer
and use a vegetable peeler and go like this on
it and take peels of it and then take those
curls and add it to the top of things and
make people think like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing.
And it really is just super simple cured and then
put in the freezer to get it ice cold so
it can peel.
Speaker 3 (59:59):
And that's and you call those feels. Yeah, whales, that
sounds awesome too, ny any thoughts on curing it.
Speaker 9 (01:00:10):
So we've done a couple of dishes with like a
noorri cured flaw. So we do a blend of some
noory sheets and salt, and then we'll do a three
day dried cure on it. And those like you mentioned,
if you freeze them. And a short cut expedite is
to take our tors a fogra, which is available in
an eight ounce a smaller portion. You can take those,
(01:00:32):
put them right in the freezer, take them out and
take like your finest microplane. You could use a regular
box grad or two and you could grate that over
like any crudo dish you could ever imagine, and it
just like starts gently melting but still coats your mouth
with all the flawgraff flavors, doesn't overpower the fish like
I don't. I refuse to have tuna crude without it now, So.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Wow, I travel. What a great segue on Time's Day.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Oh man, what a great segue too.
Speaker 5 (01:01:01):
Is I was just about to say, it's amazing how
well flag goes with almost everything. It really works well
with seafood, it works great with scallops. What a great
way to serve it too, and just incorporating it into
things last week on this program, If you guys didn't
hear it, Jeff and I were talking about hot dogs
and we both ended up inserting a flagra into our
hot dog dishes, which was hilarious. I was gonna do
(01:01:22):
thin slices and wrap my hot dog and flaw and
then see it and that was gonna be my dog,
a flah wrapped hot dog. Jeffy he had made a
moose and pumped the center of the hot dog full
of flagra moose.
Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
All these things sound delicious.
Speaker 5 (01:01:36):
Any thoughts on doing just anything out of the box
thinking with this stuff, like, you know, something like hot
you know, hot dog or something like that.
Speaker 9 (01:01:42):
You know, So we've we've been playing around with the
flaw dog for a little while now, and that one
is always a showstopper. We haven't launched it as a product,
but don't be surprised if you see it on the
site sooner than later.
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Russemenia next year, let's go dog.
Speaker 8 (01:01:59):
We'll get orgon to it.
Speaker 9 (01:02:01):
And uh, you know, honestly, one really fun thing we
used to do is, like we've we've done.
Speaker 8 (01:02:07):
Some bombollinis in the past.
Speaker 9 (01:02:09):
We make like some duck pies where you take it
more like a chicken pot pie, but you stuff it
with some seared fog gras roasted root vegetables, and we've
done peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We've done French dips
with sliced duck and fuagra gravy. So we we've spenned
the funky spectrum on some some fun things. So we're
(01:02:31):
always we're always looking to push to see what's next.
Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
This all sounds incredible. I want some of this right now, Jeff,
we've got any more.
Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
Fog gravy because it's I licked it and drank it right.
Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
But I like how he licks it first and then
he drinks it, and then I licked it first and
then I drank it.
Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
Man, this all sounds incredible stuff here, man, I think
it's really something fun to get into and to really
kick your homemade dishes up a notch.
Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
You want to get really crazy with it.
Speaker 5 (01:03:00):
Get some of these cubes and add them to your
taco meat when you're making tacos. What an unbelievable way
to just add it to a rigo dish or having
on a taco Tuesday wuacos fuagos, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 7 (01:03:12):
Perfect duck is in general great for tacos, are awesome.
The skin to crisp up for teacher on the rendered fat,
making tortillas and crisping tortillas.
Speaker 6 (01:03:24):
I can't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I work
for a family of Jewish people, and so we don't
need a lot of pork.
Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
So I used duck.
Speaker 7 (01:03:31):
That's actually one of the reasons Flagran duck was so
popularized in Eastern Europe the large Jewish population that didn't
have a lot of money and couldn't eat pork, and
duck was the thing most readily available.
Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Well, and you guys are making that fuagra fat.
Speaker 6 (01:03:50):
I mean, duck fat is already like gold and gold
goose fat, and duck fat is like I save it
and whenever I do anything with it, I always.
Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
I mean I have freezers full of different types of fats.
I love it all.
Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
But that's the true story, actually is where does that sounds?
Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
It is a true story. I hoard many animal fats,
but FOI craft pre rendered. I am freaking out. I
mean that's like you.
Speaker 7 (01:04:14):
Should come up and take a visit at UH and
you can see the rendering, and well, we do five
plus species of animals animal fat rendering.
Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
It's got to smell amazed.
Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Bison we do pork and beef on an everyday basis.
Speaker 5 (01:04:28):
Well, that actually is a great question then, I mean
can people come up there and get a tour and
check things out and see the farm and see stuff
like that?
Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Is that how it works?
Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (01:04:36):
Absolutely, and generally speaking one hundred percent is the most
important thing we can do, I will say right now,
in this very time, we're under really unique Avian influenza
biosecurity protocols and so we uh limit our visits into
it as far as interacting with the ducks, but absolutely
(01:04:58):
you can come see h everything else to do, And
generally speaking, yes, it's the most important thing we can
do is show people everything. But our cooking facility is
twenty minutes away from our farmer fifteen minutes and that.
Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Yeah, yeah, you guys can come and visit any time.
It's less exciting.
Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
For a list, sure, sure of course, but yeah, generally.
Speaker 7 (01:05:18):
Speaking the farm just reach out to our office and
a lot of time I'm personally showing people around.
Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
That's amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:05:25):
Letting any thoughts of doing like a dinner program at
the farm or some kind of like I don't know,
you know, like a like a dining series or something so.
Speaker 9 (01:05:32):
There was a house that popped up for sale like
kind of bordering our property here, and Jordan and I
were toying with this idea of trying to make it
like a like a chef's bread and bed and breakfast
where we can just have some people come up and host.
So yeah, I think I think down the line we definitely.
Speaker 6 (01:05:49):
Cultural tourism is huge, man.
Speaker 4 (01:05:51):
People love that.
Speaker 6 (01:05:52):
People want to see where their food comes from and
spend it right there and meet the people behind it.
Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
I mean I would.
Speaker 5 (01:05:57):
I mean that I'm going to France and April stay
on a truffle farm amazing, which is crazy. I mean
it's not trouble season, but its still gonna be a
truffle farm. It's which is awesome. But yeah, I mean
he's right, like we look for stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
That's amazing. Man, let's set something up that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
I love that. That's great man. You guys are fantastic.
Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
I feel like we kind of got a much better
picture now, Jeffy on fua, don't you.
Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
Oh absolutely? I mean the history of it all is
what really is crazy.
Speaker 6 (01:06:24):
Like, yeah, long people have been eating foi gras and
now it's time to make everyone. Teach your people at home.
Come get some foie gras and show them that you
learned it on plumb Love Foods.
Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Hey, Lenny, ever, just put it in chocolate and cookies.
Just see what happens.
Speaker 9 (01:06:40):
I can't confirm, nor deny, but I will say I've
stuffed salted chocolates and cookies.
Speaker 8 (01:06:49):
With foua gra gelato before. So I think we're happy.
Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Oh wow, Jeffie's losing his mind over here.
Speaker 4 (01:06:55):
I'm in, I'm so in. Are you kidding? I can't even.
Speaker 8 (01:06:59):
I did a dinner for Jordan.
Speaker 9 (01:07:01):
We did a like just a vanilla bean ice cream
with a sic sauce caramel, and then we did a
chicken skin crunch on it.
Speaker 8 (01:07:09):
That That was his nightcoub the other day.
Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Come on crazy.
Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
The fact that either of you aren't four hundred pounds,
it is blowing my mind.
Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
You can't.
Speaker 8 (01:07:18):
You can only see my top half.
Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
But Lenny is all bottom weight.
Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
It's all bottom weight. That's what it is.
Speaker 5 (01:07:29):
Jordan Gan or Lenny Messina. We appreciate you guys joining
us on the program. Jeffic it those plugs out for
them for absolutely.
Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Hudson Valley Foagra dot Com.
Speaker 6 (01:07:36):
Go there if you want to order anything, Lenny Underscore, Messina,
Lola Restaurant, all one word, get out there. There's also
Hudson Valley Farms at Hudson Valley Farms. You can find
them on Instagram, Facebook, all over, do it, Get out there,
follow them, Let him know you saw it here. Get
some foie Gras on your life, baby, that's what we want.
Speaker 5 (01:07:55):
Get it in your life and enjoy it. Change the
way things are done, that's right. Change home cooking. That's
what we're trying to here, fellas.
Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
We appreciate you guys. Thanks for joining us, and we'll
see you guys on down the road.
Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Likewise, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (01:08:06):
Stay right there, guys, Thank you guys are the best.
You're checking out Plumb Foods. Right back here on w
Vice to see the voice Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
To put a bow on this. Stay right there.
Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
That's right, Jeffy.
Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
You know what I like to do. I like to
go shopping for knives. I love knives. I'm a chef,
of course I love knives. If you cook food at home,
you gotta love knives.
Speaker 4 (01:08:29):
Too, right, love knives, sharp things.
Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
It's got to be important because you want to make
sure things are nice and cut. And let me tell
you what this PSA is brought to you by our
friends over at Ergo Chef Knives Friends, a sharper knife.
It's safer than a more dull knife, I promise you.
And let me explain to you why adult knife you
have to use more force, and more force means less control, Jeffy,
and less control means less fingers.
Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 6 (01:08:51):
Listen, knives one of the most important tools in the kitchen.
Speaker 4 (01:08:53):
Can't really get much done without a knife.
Speaker 5 (01:08:55):
You absolutely are preaching to the choir. And one of
the best place to get knives are friends over at
Ergo Chef. They got a showroom in Dan Barry at
for Eagle Road. You can go see them there. And
if you go see them, let me tell you what
you can do. You can walk in the front door,
and Jeffy, when you walk in the front door Ergo Chef,
if you want to get a discount, what do you do?
Speaker 6 (01:09:12):
You yell, hey, is mike' stive here? And when he
walks out, you go, hey, electric factory.
Speaker 5 (01:09:16):
That's right, the electric factory. Mike Styve, call me electric factory.
Ask form by name. Now if you're not there, and
you can't get the knife and you can't go into
the store, you can always go to the website at
ergochef dot com. Use promo code Plumb twenty and get
yourself a great discount on an amazing knife that will
always stay sharp and keep your fingers attached to your hand.
Jeffrey Ergo chef Knives. Check them out at ergo chef
(01:09:38):
dot com. Use promo code plumb twenty for a great discount.
Plumb love foods Right here on a Saturday, wy I
(01:10:00):
see see the Voice of Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
We appreciate you guys. Check out the program.
Speaker 5 (01:10:04):
We appreciate all of you being here hanging out with
to you on Saturday, talking fo gra talking food.
Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
It's not just about food.
Speaker 5 (01:10:11):
We got to talk a little bit about the WICC
Impact Awards that are happening May fourteenth at Vazano's Four
Seasons in Stratford.
Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Listen.
Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
You can go to WICC dot com. Excuse me, go
to Voice of Connecticut dot com. Still can use that
change Voice Connecticut dot com and you can nominate any
local businesses or nonprofits and future leaders and innovators who
just do so much for our state. You can nominate
people right there and you know, get them nominated for
you know, this whole thing, because this is the Impact
Awards is a cool thing, Jeffy.
Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
Yeah, it's a very cool thing.
Speaker 6 (01:10:40):
And there's a number of different categories you can you
can nominate people for who are making an impact in
your state.
Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
Yeah, no doubt about it. So make sure you go
Voice Connecticut dot com. The wy c C Impact Awards
happening Wednesday, May fourteenth. Go to Voice Connecticut dot com
to nominate local businesses, nonprofits, innovators, you know, people who
you think are important. You can I'm right there, and
they can get in the war got to recognize, Jeffy.
Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
That's what we want to do.
Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
That's what we want.
Speaker 6 (01:11:03):
We want people to get their flowers while they're still
here to smell them.
Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
I like flowers, Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
Listen.
Speaker 5 (01:11:09):
I also like flaw And I gotta tell you what.
The first time I had Fuagara, I was in culinary
school and it was a bit life changing for me.
I remember I remember having it and thinking, Wow, this
flavor is unbelievable, this is undeniable. This it's sometimes delicious.
But then I kind of forgot about it until I
went to craft steak at Foxwoods about fifteen years ago,
(01:11:30):
and it was when it first opened, and they treat
us very well, my wife and I, and they just
kept bringing out all these dishes with flaw in it,
and it was I mean, I didn't even eat dinner
because I had so much waw. It was because it's
so filling and delicious, and you know, it just is
one of those things that's so savor you almost you
want to keep beating it, but you don't.
Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
And I kind of overdid it on foah that day.
But it was amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
I mean everything from seared faw to uh they did
it with a bunch of charcouterie. They did it in
a sandwich, which was crazy, like the little biscuit was crazy,
but absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
That's that's awesome. I think.
Speaker 6 (01:12:04):
I think the first time I had fuagras I was
a kid actually, and I uh, there was a cheeseboard.
I had an aunt, My aunt Amelia's like my rich chant,
you know that has money, and we used to go
to her house for all the functions and there was
like a cheeseboard type of thing out and there was
a fuagras pat there and I didn't even know what
foagras was. They said, oh, it's a path. I said, okay,
(01:12:26):
I try it. They said sure, And I ate two
thirds of it by myself.
Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (01:12:30):
I just sat there as a little chubby kid, just
wiping it on crackers. And then my aunt was like, hey,
that's for everybody, and that's expensive.
Speaker 4 (01:12:36):
I can't believe. Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:12:37):
I get him away from there. Yeah, and I had
to like get away from it. And then you know,
I was like, what was that and they were like, oh,
it's it's liver. And I was like, no, it wasn't.
I've had liver and onions and that's not liver and onions.
That's different. And they were like, well, it's expensive liver.
And I was like and then from that point on
in my life, I always thought I needed money so
I could eat fuai gras.
Speaker 5 (01:12:57):
That's why you did it. That's hilarious. I mean, listen,
because you're right though. It is one of those things
where it doesn't taste like liver. You know it is liver,
it doesn't taste like liver.
Speaker 6 (01:13:07):
No, it's rich and it has like a nutty flavor
and the color of it and the texture it's just
so smooth. Like when it's when it's done properly, it's like, yeah, oh,
I just I love I love foi gras in all
its forms. And then, uh, you know, I I never
cooked with it. I didn't go to culinary school, and
I'd never really cooked with it. And I had become
(01:13:28):
a chef at this point of a restaurant and I
had seared it. I taught myself how to like just
seer little medallions. And at that point you could already
buy medallions of fuagra. Yeah, sure, already cut. But a
buddy of mine may or may not have kicked a
giant lobe of foie gras at the back of his
restaurant and may not may or may not have brought
(01:13:49):
it to me, and me and him cooked it about
thirty ways woun So we got sick to teach ourselves
because neither one of us I grew up with any money,
and we didn't know how to do what to do
with it, and we want to learn. So I got
them my Fuagras Passion Cookbook out, and we literally went
through like about thirty recipes with different different pieces, trying
to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
What was a fail one for you? It was one
that didn't work.
Speaker 6 (01:14:11):
Oh, one that didn't work was actually the one that
Donyo made, the potted foie gras. I don't know how
he did it. I think you have to salt it
ahead of time. I put it right in the oil
and tried to bake it, and I baked it a
little too hot and it became very grainy. The potted
foe gras is a very old school recipe. It was
(01:14:32):
a way to preserve it as well, where they basically
cook foagras in its own fat, usually with onions and
maybe a piece of time or something like that, and
then it's in a little terene pot, like a little
glass pot, and they.
Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
Top it with the fat and you kind of bake
it in a water bath.
Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Uh you know, I think done like little terra cotta
pots too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:14:54):
You can do it in terra cotta pots. I think
anything that's kind of you know, tiny little situation and uh,
it's it's it's when it's done properly. You kind of
take a knife and you can kind of stir it
up and it becomes like a like a like a
like a topping and it's like it's like an oily.
Speaker 4 (01:15:14):
But but it does not really oily.
Speaker 6 (01:15:16):
It's like because the flogger kind of emultipies a little
bit as just turn it up a little bit with
your with your knife and then you're pulling up like
pieces of like oil cook oil, squagra with the onions
and the other oil. I mean, it's a it's an
old little dish. It's so good. I mean, it's very fatty.
Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
I I did not nail that, and it did not
nail that. Got it? Have you got any of them?
Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
Have you got it right? Since?
Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
Yes? Yes, I've definitely made it since that day and
got it right.
Speaker 6 (01:15:43):
And I realized what I had done wrong, uh, but
which was not read the whole recipe and think that
I got it because I of course, and I just
tried to throw it together and there was many steps
involved that I didn't quite overlooked.
Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Yeah, so it didn't work.
Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Yeah. I think what's interesting about flaws.
Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
It's one of those things that you can you can
use it to add a savory element to a dessert,
which is kind of fun.
Speaker 6 (01:16:03):
With it, you can add your chocolate chip cookie idea.
I thought was that was money? I thought, so, you know,
I would do that all day long. I mean, I
just wonder how much.
Speaker 5 (01:16:12):
It would melt or could you use it like butter
and I don't know, but it's interesting. I think it
could work.
Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
I think you have to play around with it a
little bit.
Speaker 6 (01:16:17):
I mean I've been trying to push the the foi
grasket to do it at uh.
Speaker 4 (01:16:26):
That actually comes from that down your recipe.
Speaker 6 (01:16:27):
He did a duck crackling biscuit with uh with with
the potted foi gras, and I was like, well, how
can I do? And I'd bought in cube foe gras
before and trim like the fua gra trim and cube.
If you don't know what that like, it's just uh,
it's pieces like you know, when they're cutting nice lobes
or they're making these little pieces out they're that they're doing.
There's always a little bit of waste and they'll take
(01:16:48):
that waste and they can sell it to you. Uh,
and you can do all these other interesting things like.
Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Use it's a little cheaper and yeah, it's still great
fua gras.
Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
It's great foa gras.
Speaker 6 (01:16:56):
But like if you're going to do something like trying
to make a chocolate chip cookie with it, this is
it's a little cheaper, and it's it's perfect for what
you're using it for.
Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
It's not a show.
Speaker 6 (01:17:04):
You're not trying to have a medallion on top of
the snake to look perfect. You're just looking for that
flavor and all that fat. So it's it's a great product.
Speaker 3 (01:17:11):
An old school chocolate pie, but we use foa gras
in it.
Speaker 4 (01:17:15):
Oh, like a chocolate silk pie. Instead of butter. We
use rendered foie gras. Uh, can I come over?
Speaker 6 (01:17:21):
It sounds like to top it with Muldon salt, and
it may be some sort of really amazing gas streak
on the side, like a raspberry gas streak maybe.
Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
I mean, I think that sounds like a plan to me.
Speaker 4 (01:17:31):
Oh my god. And then we do a duck fat meringue. Oh,
let's go, let's go, Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:17:37):
And then we make then we make pixie dust at
a at a duck skin.
Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
Oh the Jeffy's got his hands up. I can just
a touchdown.
Speaker 6 (01:17:45):
He's just scored. I mean, this is a you next
year mohigan son. If we get invited back. You never know, folks,
it could be a chocolate flag grass soak pie with
all these delicious toppings on it.
Speaker 4 (01:17:55):
I mean I'm ready. We got to we have to
R and D this. This is gonna be hard.
Speaker 5 (01:18:00):
I think the fun part about fa though, is like
it just there's a lots of different applications for it,
you know, in my brain for like, I feel like
for years I've been trying to figure out how I
could incorporate it into lasangna.
Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
I feel like thereould be some delicious way to do
it into lasangna.
Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
Well, I think I think you because you bake it.
Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
And I don't want to break down, you know what
I'm saying, Like we'll break down.
Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
A little bit.
Speaker 6 (01:18:15):
But if you see your foie gras and then added
to things like like I think they were mentioned they
made like a duct pie with sere foe gras, like
a pot pie, like like right right right, traditional pot pie,
and the foi gras you'll still have. I mean, it's
gonna get very soft. It's it is a lot fat
and there's there's protein that kind of holds the structure together,
and it'll get soft, but it's it's a luscious softness.
Speaker 4 (01:18:37):
So if you add it with other meats, as like
if you would do like.
Speaker 6 (01:18:39):
A mixed meat pie with fuagra or like a lasagna
where you did a layer of say you're bowling as right,
and then you did a layer of cheese, and then
you did a layer with like herbs foi gras and
like uh, tomato.
Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
And then you know, I think I would do it
like a white lasagna, and it would.
Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
Oh, I mean, there you go. White lasagna, you know, likes.
Speaker 3 (01:19:01):
A little bit of green on top to finish it.
Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
And then we put it on top of a little
like we serve a slice on top of tomato sauce,
so you get the Italian flag colors.
Speaker 6 (01:19:07):
Come on, I'm in and you know me, I'm crazy.
I'll do anything in lasagna. We talked buffalo lasagna a
couple of weeks ago. I mean, you know, I think
foa Gravlasanya.
Speaker 4 (01:19:16):
I mean you can get I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
For grand for easy, for grazia. I don't know how
we can say that for Grazna.
Speaker 6 (01:19:26):
Yeah, laz jasanga, Wazanya, wazana. All right, all right, hey,
little fazana.
Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
Delicious.
Speaker 6 (01:19:40):
But I think you could take fua gras if you
wanted to get super crazy making an ice cream, like
he was saying, is is just a wild ways to
use to trim you can render it.
Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
I would render it.
Speaker 6 (01:19:54):
Just add it to your your cream mixture, you know,
with the sugar, and blend it and then put it
in your ice cream maker and it will come out
so good and so wild, like instead of vanilla, you
actually had a tiny bit of vanilla. Vanilla is not
a vanilla and foie gras are friends. I mean it's
like that's a very common additive to toison.
Speaker 5 (01:20:13):
What if we don't do that, Jeff, we make that
mixture for the ice cream maker, it's ready to go,
but we don't put in the ice cream maker. We
put it in small containers and we we we put
it into a water bath and we bake it like
a cremberlet, and then we take it out top of
sugar and we have fua rock cramblet.
Speaker 6 (01:20:30):
I'm into fuagras cremble at all day. Quagrack crimblet sounds
so good, dude. Oh you know, you know, even just
making that little custard and then unmolding a little fuagraw
custard on top of something, you know, like like oh yeah,
making a fuagras custard and like putting.
Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
I think we're getting down the This is getting super chefy.
Speaker 6 (01:20:52):
Yeah, getting super chefy. Absolutely, But you can use squagra
to do almost anything. You can use the fuagra fat
that they were talking about just to make scrambled eggs,
and it's just going to elevate it to the next level.
It's just going to add that little bit of like
that nuttiness that like you know, duck fat and foa
gras fat and goose fat have a have a really
beautiful richness.
Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
That is like the next level to oh, no doubt
about it.
Speaker 6 (01:21:15):
So it's like you think butter, think about how rich
and delicious butter is and what that does to a recipe.
Fua fat is like butter on super steroids. Like I mean,
we already found out that it's made from a super soldier.
Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
Duck, right, the duck super Soldiers Duck.
Speaker 6 (01:21:31):
Super Soldier Captain New York, America to farm super soldier. Well,
I probably was in Taiwan. It might be an American soldier,
you know, overseas program.
Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
It's short, short, fair enough, you know.
Speaker 5 (01:21:43):
I think on the website too, they have this delicious
like it's like a it's like a moose, like a
tourene of it's a moose with foagra and truffles. You know,
if if you're scared of it, you want to get
into it slowly, just grill a steak and take a
spoonful of that and finish your steak with a spoonful
of that on top of it. That sounds amazing and delicious,
very very simple. Like I think, it's easy ways to
kind of get into this hot cuisine. You know, these
(01:22:03):
days especially, it's a great time to be live in
food cause there's so many fun things you can do,
and so everything's so readily available.
Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
It's so easy to get now.
Speaker 6 (01:22:09):
You know, yeah, you know, oh I just had a
brain child. All right, we're gonna get crazy. We're gonna
get drinking now. We're gonna take that fat. We're gonna
render it. Then, we're gonna we're gonna flard our bourbon
with foa gras.
Speaker 4 (01:22:24):
We're gonna take it.
Speaker 6 (01:22:25):
We're gonna dump it into the fuagras, into the bourbon.
We're gonna put it in the fridge overnight. We're gonna
agitate it a couple of times, put it in, agitated
a couple of times, take it out the next morning,
straining out.
Speaker 4 (01:22:35):
All that fat. Because people do like butter washed burb
butter washing it. They do it with bacon fat. We're
gonna do it with fua graw fat washed. Do you
read my mind?
Speaker 6 (01:22:48):
Man?
Speaker 4 (01:22:48):
Or an old fashioned wash? Oh wow, we're on fire
right now.
Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Old fashion might be at my dinner with prossad.
Speaker 4 (01:23:00):
I'm telling you, we got we gotta get crazy with it.
We gotta get crazy with it.
Speaker 3 (01:23:04):
That's insane.
Speaker 4 (01:23:05):
Listen, folks, don't don't sleep on just being creative.
Speaker 6 (01:23:07):
Think outside of the box sometimes and look at foie
gras like you would butter, you know, looking at it
like like, and then just take that as a fat
and now you can add it to any recipe that
you wanted to add it to, and it could be
something really cool, or it could be like, you know,
not great. But I'm pretty sure it'll probably be pretty
good because you're just using foggar instead of butter, and
it's gonna be delicious.
Speaker 3 (01:23:27):
Hard to mess it up.
Speaker 5 (01:23:27):
I mean, how about just taking a few slices, steering
them off in a pan and toss them with your
mac and cheese. You know, let's just get a little
crazy with it. Let's just keep adding it to things
and see where it goes. This is the fun part
about cooking. There's no right or wrong here, there's no
you know, you're gonna do what's what you're gonna do
and try things. That's how things get made for the
first time. Think about the first time someone ever even
decided to eat Quagra. They were like, well, let's try
(01:23:48):
to eat this part because we have to. And they're like,
what did I just stumble upon?
Speaker 12 (01:23:51):
You know?
Speaker 6 (01:23:51):
Listen, I I the first time I had fuai Gra
that really blew my mind. I think I was at
a restaurant and it was justin Warner's I think one
of his first restaurants called do We're Dying in uh
Bedsty in Orklyn, and they had a Fuagra donut and
I ate one, and I went back and I bought
the rest of them that he had.
Speaker 4 (01:24:09):
They were all I wanted them all.
Speaker 6 (01:24:11):
I mean, a Fuagra moves so light and fluffy but
inside a perfectly crunchy, perfect donut with and he had
like a like a like a like a glaze on it,
like a fruit glaze. It was like the perfect Fuagra
And it was like a three biter.
Speaker 4 (01:24:25):
Oh man. I mean, you can do so much with it.
You can do so much with it. It's so much fun.
Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Things sound delicious. You get me so fired up.
Speaker 5 (01:24:34):
I gotta go buy foagras now for sure, Like this
is what we're gonna do. We gotta go buya and
try to make some fun things with it.
Speaker 6 (01:24:40):
Well, those sausages are definitely getting bought. I mean, I'm
so sad football season's over and I'm just finding out
about foie gras.
Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
You're gonna say you just found out football season was over.
Speaker 4 (01:24:48):
Yeah, well that too sports.
Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
I just found out it was that there's no more football.
Speaker 4 (01:24:53):
Well no, I think there's like arena football or something
like this. Is there like a new football league some
of the football?
Speaker 5 (01:24:58):
Yeah, the XFL, Yeah, that's I start. That starts soon
in March, which which is fun to watch too. But listen,
uh flog Ra, those brats are gonna happen. You got
to check him out. You gotta go to Hudson Valley
Flogara dot com. Great stuff there, and of course check
out our guest Jordan Gnore and Lenny Messina, two great
human beings there doing some really good stuff. I mean,
Lenny Assina is one of the smartest chef you're ever
going to meet. He doesn't act like he's smart.
Speaker 3 (01:25:19):
He's smart.
Speaker 6 (01:25:20):
He's so smart, he's so he's such a great chef.
I mean his restaurant, Lola Restaurant. All one word at
Lola Restaurant. Check that out. It's in Great Neck.
Speaker 4 (01:25:29):
If you're on Long Island, you don't go eat there,
You're you're really sleeping on a gym.
Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
The show broadcasting Long Island.
Speaker 6 (01:25:34):
Yeah exactly. I'm just saying, like, go over there. It's
a ferry ride, it's it's not far from Poor Jeff.
You know, you could easily easily go and enjoy his
restaurant and.
Speaker 5 (01:25:44):
Worth the trip. Worth the trip for sure. And you
know what I'm guessing. I'm guessing he's probably a little
flogger on the menu.
Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
That's my guest.
Speaker 4 (01:25:49):
Dude, the whole roasted foger out. Did you even talk
about that?
Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
Oh yeah, we talked about it.
Speaker 4 (01:25:54):
Remember Yeah, Oh man, roasted hard. That sounds so good.
Speaker 3 (01:25:59):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 9 (01:26:00):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
Listen, go out there, try something different, Try some different food,
past something you haven't had before. Change your dinner plans,
go order some fuagra for next weekend because it's gonna
be delicious. I'm telling you Hudson Valley Fagra dot com.
It's not a scary thing to cook, it's not a
scary thing to eat. It's delicious and will change anything
you put it in or having it by itself. It's amazing.
For Chef Jeffy, I'm Chef Plump. Thanks for checking out
Plumb the foods right here on the Voice of Connecticut
(01:26:22):
w c C and friends. Remember food is one of
the most important things we have in life. Everything important
life with volls around food. We'll see you guys next
weekend right here on wicc rest in peace, Meat.
Speaker 6 (01:26:31):
Offs, Dass
Speaker 9 (01:26:55):
And the rest.
Come in and stallming a world of sound.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Jeff pull on.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
The mic, making hearts down.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
The Jeff Jeff worn shotguns myself, Chef Dead in the background,
making me down. Tom gets the peace, lay us down
any night, and the conversation. Sonne from Bull Made dishes
(00:29):
the street, boot Stone side these Sheff Spring Made Mont
and nice.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
So it tune a podcast. My chess can't ready of
the snuff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
You all forget the conversation. So the fans say, Sun
on the knee, Chef Fern in the least.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
And the rest, Oh, what's going on here?
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Welcome to Plumb Love Foods Live right here on the
Voice of Connecticut WICC. We're excited to have a Saturday
with you. I hope you're having a great week. I
hope your week is uh brought you to a place
on a Saturday where you can relax, maybe pour yourself
a nice cocktail, decide on a dinner plan, and then
change it after listen to this program.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
Jeffy, Yeah, exactly, You're definitely gonna change it. After this program.
Speaker 6 (01:20):
I think people are gonna get out there. We're going
chefy Saturday.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, I like that Chefy Saurday is not a bad
way to put it, you know. I kind of like that.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Get ready, folks, we're dropping it.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
It's gonna be amazing. Well, I can't hate.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
Why say it's going to be amazing, because I don't
know what if it's terrible, And here I am putting
something over gonna be amazing, it's to be awful.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
You taught me one thing in life, and that it's
pro wrestling.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's amazing.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Let's go.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Everything is incredible.
Speaker 5 (01:41):
That's what it is, right boom, that's what Well, we
were thinking about recently getting used some uh tights like
ravishing Rick Rudish to wear and we could paint people's
faces like spray painted on there for you.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
That's what I was gonna come out with today. But
you know it's the likeness. I couldn't get Lenny's likeness.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh that makes sense.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That makes sense. Work well, Jeff.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
This whole episode is going to be about demystifying the
magical mystical food we call foa gra and what it is,
where it comes from, why do we eat it.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I'll tell you why. It's freaking delicious. But you know,
so I think that you see it on menus.
Speaker 5 (02:13):
More people are doing more and more stuff with this,
So we thought it'd be a good time to come
on here and bring some experts onto the whole situation
to talk more about it, don't you think?
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (02:22):
Absolutely, And it's a magical ingredient. I can't wait to
talk about it. I mean, it's one of my favorite things.
You can use it so many ways, and people have
no idea.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
They just have no idea. They think, what is this foogra.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Right, Well we're going to find out today, that's for sure.
Speaker 6 (02:35):
Right, I'm super excited. I'm super excited to talk about
where it comes from. It's a full circle for me.
You know, I went there once very young chef with
my chef who's now deceased.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
But doniall hutnick.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
So it was like one of a what a fun
thing to be able to talk about, just to be
able to like full circle.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
Come back and be like, hey, tell us the story
and now, well here's the thing. I think when I
first learned about it in culinary school, it was a
little bit I don't want to say scary, but it
was a little bit like, Wow, what is this we're
talking about here?
Speaker 3 (03:09):
This is incredible?
Speaker 5 (03:10):
And then you kind of learn more about it and
then you taste it for the first time and your
entire life changes. But before we get to our guests,
I want to tell everybody listen, Thursday, March twentieth, I
am doing the Guest Chef series with our friend Chef
Proisade down at Chef Pisad and New Canaan. We're gonna
be there, We're gonna do a bunch of courses, we're
gonna hang out. It's gonna be a really, really fun night.
(03:31):
It's the Chef Collab series and we're gonna be there
and I'm gonna have a lot of fun.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
And there's no Jeffy with me, no Dan with me.
It's just me cooking, just plumbing.
Speaker 5 (03:39):
PA's it and it's gonna be awesome and we have
a lot of fun. We're gonna mix together some of
my Southern and New England food with some of his
Indian food. It should be a lot of fun and
I'm sure the menu will be outstanding. We haven't made
it yet, so if you're asking for menu, we don't
have it yet, but go check out Chef Pissad dot
com to find some more information. I know the tickets
are selling fast, you know, I don't think it's a
lot of money. I think it's one hundred bucks or something.
It's not expensive because this is not a making things
(04:00):
for anybody. It's it's I think the ticket costs basically
paid for the food.
Speaker 6 (04:03):
Jeff, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's it's but it's well
worth it because you're gonna have two legends in the building.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Well not only that, but it's open bar. You can
drink whatever you want. You doesn't care.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
I'm trying to put up the food and you're over
here like all right, well you know, just come for
the open bar. No, man, you're gonna have legendary food
with a with an open bar under case.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
Yeah, let's go to Well listen, you're gonna get great
food and and a great cocktails as much as you
can have. So it's gonna be a lot of fun.
There'll be some pretty big names in the house too,
so I hope to see you there. That's Thursday, March twentieth,
down a New Canaan Chef Brosad. Check out chef Prasad
dot com to get all the info there, and I'll
start posting on instantent on social media as well.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Jeffy, we got all those things. It's gonna be awesome things.
Joining us now is our guests, and we're really excited
about this.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 5 (04:47):
We got to meet, uh, one of these gentlemen over
the years from doing festivals, and he's just become a
really really great human being, a super nice guy, just
one of the people who you just you know, I
look forward to seeing every time that I get the
opportunity to UH. And he's also brought in another legend
with him, UH the one of the co owners of
Hudson Valley Farms, which does Hudson Valley FOI gras Uh.
(05:09):
Lady John please, welcome to the program. Lenny Messina and
Jordan Ganeer. Here's a problem. Jordan, So, I wrote your
last name, but my handwriting. I'm gonna show you my
notes like I wrote it out phonetically, but my handwriting
is so bad it looks like it looks like an E.
And I'm like, I'm like, like Anchorman, I just read
whatever's in front of me.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
Trust me, I've heard. I've heard every everything, every pronunciation.
Everybody gets one one free pass.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
All right, Well, I'll use my mind. That's good. Well,
I'm gonna give Jeffy a few two here, But Lenny,
always a pleasure, my friend.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
Brother.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Great to see you.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
How are you excited to be here?
Speaker 8 (05:42):
Thank you very much for having us.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Dude, you are the man.
Speaker 5 (05:45):
We appreciate you also, of course, if you haven't, you know,
go out the Long Island Lola Restaurant.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
That's Lenny's spot, which is amazing.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
In the restaurant, they still like you.
Speaker 8 (05:54):
It depends on the day.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
It depends how much I'm pulling him away from them.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
That's right, that's right, Lenny. How much flaw do you
serve in the restaurant?
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Now?
Speaker 9 (06:02):
Oh, way too much. We use the sole of a
shoe to match the portion of our floggras, So we're
definitely definitely heavy handed with our portioning when it comes
to all things duck and floger.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So, Lenny, how did you get involved with Howson Valley?
How did that happen?
Speaker 6 (06:20):
So?
Speaker 9 (06:21):
I had graduated Cunori School Upstate New York, and then
after that I found myself just going through a few
different restaurants, training with some chefs, doing some stages and internships,
just getting my feet wet as much as possible. Everything
from like more fast casual spots to michel In a
couple of Michel and Caliber chefs that I had worked
(06:42):
for as well, and I ended up volunteering for a
heritage pork competition at the circuit that they do is
called Koshon, and I volunteered an event in Philadelphia and
the owner there says, you know, I need you to help.
Chef Michael Ganore, Jordan's father and the original one of
(07:04):
the original founders of Pudson Valley Farms, and him and
I immediately.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Hit it off.
Speaker 9 (07:09):
So he says, where are you from. I said, I'm
from Long Island, randomly in Pennsylvania, and he said, what
do you mean. Have you been to my restaurant? I'm like, no,
What's your restaurant is at Lola.
Speaker 8 (07:20):
In Great Neck.
Speaker 9 (07:21):
I'm like, I've seen the sign on the highway, but
I have never been to Gray Neck in my life.
So he invited me for dinner. I sat down and
it just blew me away. And then honestly, rest is
history have an amazing relationship with Jordan so on over
about twelve years now and really just never looked back. So,
(07:44):
starting with my connection at the restaurant, I was traveling
with Chef Michael a little bit. We were doing more
and more events that were supporting the farm efforts, and
then just got pulled in a little more, a little more,
a little more. Where we are now, which is i'd
say like fifty to fifty split.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
You and Jordan.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
You just kind of Lenny was a hand me down
to you.
Speaker 7 (08:12):
Huh, yeah, I'm not sure, or a gift from God
however however you want to describe it. But but yeah,
Lenny was my dad's right hand guy for twelve years
and has become you know, literally my brother and Hudson
Valley fog Ras has transformed tremendously over the last five years.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
A lot to do with Lenny's help.
Speaker 7 (08:38):
We produce about thirty percent of our business now is
producing private labowl or co manufactured products, and Lenny's the
head of our R and D as well as production
in that facility, and we've gone from you know, pretty
much no volume there to doing about one hundred, one
hundred and fifty pallets worth a week of products. So wow,
(09:01):
he's his his transfer when I would his progression in
the industry has just truly been amazing, and he can
do it all from Michelin caliber tasting menus to producing
uh you know, high volume, high scale products at an
industrial level while maintaining you know, a strict culinary standards, right, yeah,
(09:25):
standards exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
Man.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That's that. That's a great story. Look, it seems like
you have PEPs in the pod And I love that.
That was really nice. That's the nicest thing I ever said.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
You let me sure, not even close. We do Yeah,
we do everything together.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
So I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You've got a good team with us.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
Let's let's just shift again, and I kind of understand
who everybody is here. Let's shift it over to Flaw.
Speaker 9 (09:48):
What is it?
Speaker 7 (09:50):
Yes, so, uh floa gras literally translates to uh, fatty
liver and it's the fattened liver of a waterfa. And
you guys seem to know a good amount about flaw history,
but for the audience, uh, you know, Faw has a
really really interesting history that pretty much goes unknown other
(10:15):
than you know, people in the niche niche interests, you know,
such as ourselves. But fargra is the world's oldest culinary
delicacy and it dates back five thousand plus years and
the first depictions of fogar are actually in hieroglyphics on
Egyptian pyramid walls.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's truly fascinating, and we're.
Speaker 5 (10:37):
Sure of that, Like we're sure of that, Like we're
not like, you know, somebody drew it on the wall
and like what it looks like fora let's just call
it fwa.
Speaker 7 (10:43):
Well if in the intro of Fargra Passion, my dad's book,
he spent a lot of time and consulted with a
number of resources on the history of Fagra, and it
was truly remarkable what he discovered. And I think you
can just google hieroglyphics Squagra and you'll see pictures that
(11:04):
are pretty clear and the story, you know, paints paints
the picture and makes it all makes sense. Uh you know,
So why was it in hieroglyphics on Egyptian pyramid walls.
That's because the Nile River, the now River Delta was
a really interesting area, one of the only fertile areas
(11:24):
in that region, and you had geese going there prior
to migration to feed as the natural life side cycle
of geese is and Egyptians would you know, eat geese,
and they would eat them all times a year. But
something really interesting happened when they killed geese during the
(11:48):
winter time, right before migration. They found that the liver
of those geese completely transformed and and was just this
remarkable delicacy, much different flavor, much bigger, much fattier, and
much more versatile. And it was fascinating to them, and
they discovered it was all you know, related to this
(12:09):
natural behavior and life cycle of waterfowl, which includes them gorging.
Actually the word, the term gorging actually comes from this
word from the behavior of waterfowl prior to migration, where
they gorge as a store of energy because during migration,
you know, they need this energy to fly and they
(12:32):
don't have a constant access to food.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
So all of this it's natural to do that. It's
natural to eat.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
That way, exactly exactly.
Speaker 7 (12:42):
We won't go into fatty liver being a disease in
humans but perfectly.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Natural for waterfowl.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
Well, met a little bit, but you know, that's one
of the things used against us, but is actually a
natural evolutionary behavior and waterfowl that allows them to migrate,
that expanding of the liver and using fat as as
store of energy, whereas in humans it's completely you know,
where mammals are a completely different thing. We don't need
(13:09):
to well sometimes we need to gorge, but for different
purposes exactly, work, exactly.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
So it's interesting. Just so much history here. I don't
think I realized there was so much history here.
Speaker 7 (13:22):
Well, it'll make sure you guys get a copy of
the book. And yeah, history is fascinating. And from there,
fogra is a consistent part of the world's culinary delicacy.
So Egyptians saw that and I said, whoa, this is
amazing how and like any food how any food products
survived And said, whoa, how can we as humans, uh,
agriculturally harvest this for ourselves, like we harvest any any
(13:46):
food product. And and it developed and developed and developed,
and today we most of the world's production of fograss
actually uses ducks, and we'll talk about that specifically Moulard
ducks and notchis. And it's all about the human impact
of science and agriculture as as humans have had on
every single foreign product. And fargra is no different, but
(14:09):
just but certainly fascinating. And so fagra spread from Egypt
through the Roman Empire as the Romans, you know, invaded
that area, and then from there through the Greek Empire
and eventually Eastern Europe and France, where uh you know,
became etched in culinary history and recipes really flourished in France.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
Man, there's a lot going on here. There's a whole
lot going on here. Unbelievable, Lenny, I gotta ask you, man,
are you tired of what at this point?
Speaker 9 (14:43):
No, No, I've actually been trying to accomplish that, but
it hasn't happened yet over the years.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
But I've definitely had my share, right, I could.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Say, yeah, I'll bet and Jordan we just raised on it.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, you know, I was raised on duck and chicken,
for sure.
Speaker 7 (15:02):
I was, i'd say a little bit rebellious as as
a kid, not not actually rebellious, just in my love
for foger. Although maybe I'm realizing that it's just not
something for every five year old. But I only started
loving it, i'd say, in my you know, teenage years,
which is still probably earlier than the most late late teens.
(15:22):
And I have Actually, i'd say, every time I eat
font I like it more and more, and I love
the versatility of the product. I will say I can't
always eat you know that much of it. It's it's
super super rich. But yeah, sure, I'd say that that
few perfect bites of fog are probably the best bites
in the world.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
So Jordan talk to us a little bit here about
the process, like how do we get so Okay, we
have these these Mollard ducks, which is what we switched to.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
So how do we get to I guess how do
we get the ducks? First?
Speaker 9 (15:52):
Right?
Speaker 3 (15:52):
How do we go from geese to ducks?
Speaker 7 (15:54):
Yeah, that's that's a really interesting question. I'll try to
touch on just the important parts of that without spending
too much time. But out of so we will fast
forward from ancient Egypt to the nineteen sixties, so we'll
cut out a lot of history, and we're in Taiwan
and scientists. It's actually interesting time to even have this discussion.
(16:19):
Bird flu disease has always been an issue in poultry,
a huge, huge issue right now, but it's always been around,
and in the nineteen sixties, as the conquest for improving
agriculture always continues, scientists in Taiwan, experimenting with different breeds
(16:39):
of ducks, developed what in French there is known as
the Moollard duck. And this duck is a hybrid of
a female pekin and a male muscovi And there's pretty
interesting science. We can refer to it as hybrid vigor.
In the results of a mule species of animals, they
(17:03):
end up being a lot more disease resilient on average,
And so that was the primary goal of of what
they were doing. However, a really interesting other benefit came
out of the smular duck and it's it had a
tremendously unique ability to expand its liver far greater than
(17:26):
other species of waterfowl. And this is like another allegory
to just general agriculture.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
Now any just like he's the Super Soldier Project. Yeah,
he one for ducks. In the nineteen sixties. It's about
the same time that Captain America was created. I see
the reference.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I just are you are you googling this?
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Yes, from what you're picked up from what I think
here Exactly.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
While we were also creating Captain America, we were creating
the Moullard duck, which makes sense.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Sounds like you know the Covert Project.
Speaker 6 (17:59):
Yeah, cod Area fifty one magic liver with that kind
of thing that makes lots of exactly love this son.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Any duck will have it.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
You know, its liver will change before it gorgees prior
to migration, but it will do it in different scales.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And it's the way you can think.
Speaker 7 (18:19):
About it is any cow will provide milk, but there's
a reason ninety or don't. I don't know what the
number is. Maybe it's ninety nine percent of the world's
milk comes from Holstein cows. That's because they're a lot
more docile and they provide a lot more milk. It's
just a much better product for the world. You can
(18:42):
try to milk a longhorn, but it's going to give
you very little milk and it'll probably kick you in
the face. So good the Mooillard, duck is and fog
out follows very similar stories to the rest of agriculture,
and these are unique interesting stories for sure.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
I mean, Lenny, so how big are these ducks?
Speaker 5 (19:02):
Because I look at like, I've seen some lobes of
floi gras that I'm just like that really came out
of a duck. Like, how big are these of these animals?
Speaker 9 (19:11):
You know, surprisingly not as big until you see the
liver harvested, and then you'd be surprised how much of
the internal cavity is liver I mean final weight, Jorda,
what do we average?
Speaker 7 (19:25):
Yeah, it's about eight pounds dressed, and so that means
without the feathers and the head as far as sellable.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Quantity, and then prior to that, it's about ten and
a half pounds.
Speaker 7 (19:40):
Interesting, So certainly on the bigger side of ducks. But
you're nowhere near you know, turkeys or anything. We grow
our ducks for fifteen weeks, so it kind of follows
the natural life cycle of a duck growing for fifteen
whereas most other duck farms in the country grow for.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
About six weeks macs. I mean, it's all super interesting.
It's crazy, and like how it's talked about, like it's
a a commodity, you know what I'm saying. Like I
think a lot of people and they think of farming
and they get too attached to animals.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I don't mean in a bad way.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
I'm watching how I'm saying this now, but like it's
a commodity, Like we're growing it's like growing carrots.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Right.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
Yeah, there's certainly a lot of internal intelligence that's been
acquired and built over the years where it's not very
it's very difficult to replicate what we're doing. We have
family farmers that have been with us, three generations of
(20:41):
family farmers, and a lot of the farmers that were
here thirty years ago when the farm started are still
with us, and that experience is truly, really, really really
important to understand the nuances of the behavior of these animals,
educater behaviora care effectively.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
It's all super interesting and it's crazy because I feel
like as a chef, you know, we look at fua
as this, you know, pinnacle of ingredients, you know, something
amazing to you is but then you know it's these
amazing local farmers who are growing this. It's just such
a cool thing to me. I mean, it's something that's
such a high quality thing that's growing locally. It's amazing.
I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Jeffy, I think we should have more flaw in our life.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
Again, you know, really amazing thing is that it comes
from New York, just like pizza.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
What no, don't, what's wrong with you? Don't? You can't
say that, stop it? You know, it's not true.
Speaker 6 (21:34):
It's very cool that New York produces foe Gras and
the best pizza.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
None, that's true. Stop you guys, gotta stop this, this blasphemy.
You're checking out Plumb Love Foods right on the Voice
of Connetic at WYCC. I'm Chef Plumb along with Chef Jeff.
We're joined by Lenny Messina and Jordan Gonor. We're talking
all about foie Gras we come back, We're going to
talk about a little bit more harvesting, what to cook
with it, why does it taste so good? And everything
you want to know right here on FUAG one oh
one on Plumb Love Foods. Stay right there, we'll be
(21:59):
right back.
Speaker 6 (22:13):
Farman Forge Market on thirty six Hampton Road in Southampton,
New York.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
Farming Forge is a fantastic market if you're an avid
home coke or professional chef like myself.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Johnny Bernard over there aka Street Leafs. Johnny, He's got
some great stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:25):
I'm talking great olive oils, I'm talking great vinegars. He's
got some amazing caviar. Johnny's really got everything over there, Jeffy.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
Farm and Forge Market on thirty six Hampton Road in Southampton,
New York.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
Yeah, I mean you were talking. He's got great fish
that you can get. He's got some produce stuff. He's
got mushrooms that are locally grown, which is incredible. And
he's got some amazing beef selections too, even some A
five wag you. I saw this stuff. It looks like
it's just completely white. It's amazing. I can't wait to
try it.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
That's right at Farm and Forge Market on thirty six
Hampton Road in Southampton, New York.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
You're just saying the same thing. You say anthing different.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
Well, there's also Farmanforge Market dot com.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Okay, there we go, great website. Check out farmerforge Market
dot com. You gotta check them out.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
Amazing things over there.
Speaker 5 (23:03):
Jeff, listen, I'm telling you I cannot wait to go
back and see what else Johnny has.
Speaker 6 (23:07):
That's right at Farm and Forge Market on thirty six
Hampton Road, Southampton, New York.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
You just said you know what else Johnny has. Johnny's
got amazing lion meat. I can't wait to get some
lion meet from Johnny.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
Yeah, it doesn't have that, but he does have a
website at Farmanforge Market dot com.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Oh my god, this is getting crazy.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
Now.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
He's got a great ostrich legs Loo can barbecue ostriche legs.
Speaker 6 (23:24):
Is you have those no ostrich legs, but he does
have seven x wagu at thirty six Hampton Road in Southampton,
New York.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I mean, it's just it's like a broken record with you.
I cannot. I don't understand it. Anything else you got for.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
Me farm and Forge Market, I got it, thirty Sixthampton
Road in Southampton.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
We got it.
Speaker 10 (23:38):
Jeffy Lenny's in the kitchen, Gormet Pozza, Clinton, Jordan's at
the farm for a groad, Duck sinking Rich Flavor's coming
master Chef's flinkt Hudson Valley Gold braw steady drinking, Foyd
(24:02):
Grawl Love flavors from the heart, classic color in every
yard making taste Bud Start boy grawl love from.
Speaker 6 (24:08):
The farm to the plate, or may dreams away never
second rate.
Speaker 10 (24:13):
Lenny's got that recipe legacy to bring Jordan's on the
road for it, grad got that zing dug liver, Silkie tune,
the brass sing from Hudson Valley, Finest of the King.
Speaker 11 (24:23):
Foryd gra Love flavors from the heart, classic color in
every yard making taste Bud Start, Foyd Graw Love from
the farm to the plate, Gourmet, Dreams Away never second rate,
Valley's precious feet, Ducks in perfect mode, Chefs around the
globe sing that secret code, Taste the magic here, Harmony
(24:48):
the stove, Messina's Hands and jean Or Legends paved.
Speaker 12 (24:53):
The road from the coop to the stove, each step
Divine foy Graw expertise, stripping gold, refine, crown in the kitchen,
Lenny's design, Jordan's in the fields, tandem so aligned, flavors
from the heart, classical in every yard, making say flood,
start by glove from the farm to the play do
(25:13):
make dreams away.
Speaker 4 (25:14):
You have a second rate.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Plumb the foods live right here on a Saturday, having
a great time here on WYC.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
See the Voice of Connecticut. We appreciate you, guys.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
Check out the program that's Hudson Valley Fuegra love from
the house band that we have the.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Flame on Spotify.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
There you go, right.
Speaker 5 (25:38):
I do like the liberty as they take with some
of the words just to make them rhyme. I mean, yeah,
which is kind of hilarious.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
That's artistry a bit.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Listen.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
I mean I've never experienced that in my life. This
is unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Two minutes, you will each get a copy of your song.
Speaker 9 (25:55):
I have never been so excited to change my ring tone.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
That's amazing.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
We're joined by our good friend chef Lenny Messina and
Jordan Gonor from Hudson Valley Flower talking all about foig ra.
What is foagra the mystifying magical ingredient that's used in
so many different cuisines now, I was about to say
French cuisine, but god, it's everywhere now, Jordan, it really is.
You can find this stuff in all types of food.
I mean Lenny was baking pastries with it. It was crazy.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I mean, this stuff is everywhere now.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
I still think about that Bomballini. Oh my god, it
was like it might have been one of the greatest.
I ate two of them and was terrible.
Speaker 9 (26:30):
Was dood it?
Speaker 4 (26:31):
Definitely? I had it was rich, but they were so delicious.
It was like I ate one early and then I
finished my night that night with one and it was
so good.
Speaker 8 (26:41):
You had two. I think I had twenty two.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
Oh my gosh, that's incredible. Why does this stuff taste
so good? Thoughts?
Speaker 5 (26:49):
I'm not sure what one of you guys can try
to answer that, but why does it taste so good.
What happens to this flaw in the process of being
raised that makes it taste so unbelievable as it's inside
that duck.
Speaker 6 (27:01):
I think.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
That might be a good thing for you.
Speaker 9 (27:05):
I think you're starting starting with the feed is a
is a high corn blend, and for me as a chef,
I always find it has this really really.
Speaker 8 (27:14):
Beautiful and nutty sweetness when you compound that, which the
richness of the fogg are up.
Speaker 9 (27:21):
Just gives you perfect choking sorry, that's all right, just
gives you this perfect flavor profile that's not overpowering but
super super delicate.
Speaker 8 (27:31):
And then the richness just comes through and it just
checks so many boxes for a culinary win.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
And that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
And so Jordan A.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Lenni brought up the feeding part of it.
Speaker 5 (27:40):
That's something we got to talk about here when it
comes to these ducks and how they're raised.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
I mean, what's the best way to describe this. How
do we talk about how they're.
Speaker 5 (27:46):
Fed and how that that whole situation happens, Because I
think that I think that's the biggest hang up that
some people have with this.
Speaker 7 (27:55):
Sure, yes, let's let's talk about the maybe the whole
the whole process us and you know, the life cycle
of a duck on our farm, and it's really important
that the whole goal of our process is to line
that life cycle up with what they would be doing
(28:15):
naturally in the wild. So we grow our ducks for
twelve weeks. Most other duck farms in the country are
only growing.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
To six weeks.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
But we'll grow for twelve weeks and then we do
our hand feeding gavage process for the last three weeks.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
And each stage is divided up to mimic.
Speaker 7 (28:33):
What those ducks would experience, you know, specifically feed, access
to water or where that is relative to the feed
in the wild. And so in the beginning part of
that process, in the nursery stage, which lasts for three weeks,
the ducks have access to a higher percentage of protein.
(28:54):
This allows for you know, more growth. It's similar to
what they'd have a naturally in the fall time before
the grains have ripened. After those three weeks, the next
three stages of three weeks or nine weeks generally speaking,
are are in growing. During that stage is when would
(29:16):
coincide with nature's ripening of the grain. Uh and more
that coincides with more carbohydrates. That's really important, like we
discussed earlier, for the for the birds uh gorging prior
to migration. That carbohydrate is that store of energy and
fat and converse to fat that the ducks need in
(29:41):
the wild. And then in the last three weeks of
the growing cycle is when they will we'll do the
gavage process. And so gavage translates you know. That's that's
the French word for the process, and I think it's
the most act hear it a picture of the process,
(30:02):
and gavage in French means to fill up, just as
you would your car at a gas station. And when
we talk about filling up, what we really mean is
uh depositing food into the crop of the duck. And
it's it's really really important for us to fully understand
the anatomy of a duck. When we talk about the.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Process of fogra and fagra being a good farming practice.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
It's it's crucially, uh crucially important to distinguish the anatomy
of humans from ducks. And that's one of the battles,
one of the most uphill battles for us that we've
we continue to face because the other side likes to
blur those lines, uh. And when you blur those lines,
uh is when the issues get complicated. But if you
(30:51):
truly understand the anatomy of the duck, you'll see that
fogra is a good farming practice. So we're depositing food
into the into the crop.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
What is the crop?
Speaker 7 (31:01):
So again, unlike humans, the ducks have this sack called
the crop that lies before the stomach and the crop
is simply we can think of it about it like
a tank and the crop can be filled fully and
that doesn't go right into the digestive track. There's a
gizzard that lies between the crop and the stomach, and
(31:24):
the gizzard will regulate the deposit of.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Food into the stomach.
Speaker 7 (31:28):
This is again essential evolutionary development or ducks that allows
them to fly, to migrate successfully in the wild when
they don't have a consistent access to food.
Speaker 6 (31:41):
Because they're eating while they're flying, so like when they're migrating.
This is the organ in their body or the process
in their body that allows them to fly for twenty
five hours or whatever it is when they're doing those
long flights and things like that.
Speaker 7 (31:54):
Exactly, it's all about storing energy and you can either
store that energy as rough food in the crop, and
they're also storing that energy as fat in their livers.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
This whole build up of.
Speaker 7 (32:06):
Energy allows them to successfully migrate when they don't have
access to the calories or that energy.
Speaker 6 (32:13):
Have you ever like played around with like feeds in
like the finishing process the way you know, like how
Dan Barber feeds his chickens only like red pepper ends
for you know, however many days and he says it
the you know, the yolks turned more red and the
eggs have a sweeter taste. Have you ever tried anything
like that with the feed like any wee.
Speaker 7 (32:33):
We've done a bunch of various probably every kind of
experiment you can imagine, not getting caught up with, you know,
certain certain non practical things. And I would certainly I
have certainly some knowledge on the subject that I would
also defer some or refer some questions to Marcus Henley,
(32:54):
who's our head of farming operation. So I know as
much as I can about the farming operation, but I
don't run our farming operations, so he's kind of, you know,
been the lead on those experiments in the past. What
I will say is, well, it depends on what the
question is. Certainly things like colorful items in the feed
will will affect color. I actually don't know if it
(33:16):
will affect color. Well, actually I assume it will affect
color of far grass. So one example of this is
we have Hudson Reality Farms in Canada as well, and
in the US we do what we call New York
or American style flowgra, which we pioneered and are the
only people in the world doing, and we can talk
about those differences. And in Canada, Hutson Other farms Canada
(33:39):
we do a European style fagra. One of those differences
is more corn relative to soy in the feed in Canada,
and that results in a bit of a yellower color
on the far gra.
Speaker 5 (33:51):
That's really interesting. So I know that flaw is graded,
there's different grades of the flaw. Where does that come from?
And does the feet affect that and does it actually matter?
Speaker 7 (34:03):
Yeah, So grading fogra is a five thousand year history,
but grading dates back thirty five years to my dad.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
So he's no one graded fagra until he thought we should.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
How about that?
Speaker 7 (34:21):
In Europe they don't grade fagra. In Hudson Elli Farms Canada,
we don't grade fagra.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Wow.
Speaker 7 (34:28):
So there's a you know, a long discussion we could
have around grading, whether whether it should or shouldn't be done.
But generally speaking, you know, delivers we get out of
our American style of fargro can vary a bit more
in size relative to Europeans, so it as some avenue
(34:49):
to kind of distinguish between qualities, and that's that's one
way we will distinguish between ABC. So size, color and
texture are the three things that we'll use to distinguish
between A, B and C. The firmer, larger and more
white colorful are is the spectrum of A and the
opposite C softer, less white, And.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Forget the loss metric.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
But is there is there a difference in tastes in
different grades or not?
Speaker 4 (35:20):
Really?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
I let Lenny Lenny talk to them and they ultimately
I'd say, could have different use cases, but generally speaking
on the taste are exactly the same. I'd say, well,
let's see what to say on that.
Speaker 9 (35:34):
For sure, very distinguished between the feed and the actual
feeding program cycle differences from the American style to our
to our European style. So but I would say if
we're looking specifically at our New York style what we
do here at Hudson Valley. It's more related to size
than it is anything else. As far as flavor, you're
(35:55):
going to get the same flavor out of an A,
B or C grade. Smaller is going to have better
use for just anything. You're going to convert to traditional
cooking turens towards Shawan's and then our a's and even
our bees. I always say like it annoys me that
we gray them be because they're they're A grade. They're
like threty perfect, right, those are going to be like
(36:16):
ones you'll want a car for slicing and so on.
Speaker 8 (36:19):
But as far as the flavor standpoint, all on par it's.
Speaker 5 (36:23):
All pretty much the same at that point. It's just
it's just the color and the texture and that sort
of stuff.
Speaker 9 (36:28):
I'll and even the color doesn't vary much. So between
our A, B, and C here in New York, they're
all relatively distinguishable, just slight variation.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Yeah, how many different companies are doing for now? Is
it a bunch? It reels like you guys have the market,
That's what it feels like. You got there's really.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Only two of us in the United States.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
That's interesting.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
So what about states, like, I'm not sure if it's
still is it still illegal in California where they where
they not serve it?
Speaker 3 (36:55):
There is it? I means it still have some legal
issues in certain states.
Speaker 7 (36:59):
California is a unique, weird legal situation that continues to
go back and forth and I imagine will do so
that the current situation is that sales.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Are not allowed within California.
Speaker 7 (37:11):
So we are allowed to sell to for instance, our
website to to home Cooks were completely allowed to sell
to Californians and they can produce, they can cook the
products and need it there. You're not allowed to sell
within the state, the product can't.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
Restaurants can't buy it and actually sell it. But if
like it was like a giveaway, they could do it,
Like if they gave something away, they could put its
probably like a loophole there.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Well they to mose boosh to start a meal like it.
Speaker 7 (37:40):
Was a you know, yeah, yeah, there's I imagine there's great,
but I don't really know. But you know, all I
could say is that restaurants are not allowed to sell.
Speaker 6 (37:52):
They sell it in New York now again right because
I know, rightstat when I first wi joined the company,
and as the year I first started brought some bad
luck with us in New York tried to New York City,
tried to ban farther on.
Speaker 7 (38:06):
New York State really came to our defense. There was
complicated government. It was a compliment complicated government at the
time because Cromo was on our side and then was transitioning,
and it took a while to get New York State
back on our side. But just simply instituting the laws
(38:29):
of New York State, the New York City ban was illegal.
It should have never been should have never happened in
the first place. And so New York passed that in
twenty nineteen, with it going into effect three years later,
and that ben was shut down just before it was
(38:49):
expected to go into effect. So we sweated it out
for three years, poured our souls on the line, and
you know, pretty much every dollar we had in legal bills.
But we event actually one and New York City tried
to appeal that ruling and last maybe a year and
a half ago. That appeal was shut down. So there's
(39:10):
pretty much no room left for New York City to
do this again.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
You never know, but don't say never. Let's light club,
never say never, don't don't do.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
That for sure, We're prepared.
Speaker 6 (39:23):
So what's the biggest who's your biggest What state buys
the most foie gras?
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Do you think?
Speaker 7 (39:30):
Yeah, it's a good question to talk a little bit
about what we discussed about the trends before about fograt
And it's a little bit complicated for me to give
you a factual answer because pretty much all of our
sales go to distributors rather than the end customers, So
I don't actually have perfect visibility.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Into the end customer sales.
Speaker 7 (39:51):
Just given we're in the New York area, New York
State has to be our number one state in sales. However,
trends over the last ten years of complete we are
completely changing that, and I wouldn't be surprised if that
changes in the medium or near term. Generally speaking, southern
(40:12):
state states like Florida and Texas used to buy no
Farga and are taking some trips to Miami with some distributors,
and it's it's unbelievable, what's what's happening there. It's possible,
and I don't have this visibility that we're doing more
in Miami than we are in New York City. Wow,
(40:34):
and like the trends we were speaking to the trends
we were also talking to earlier. That's fogra is extending
past a French you know, pigeonhole or legacy, and you're
seeing it in kind of all all sorts of restaurants
and cuisines all over Japanese food.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Pretty much. It's such a versatile product that any cuisine
has a place for.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Farga and obviously too at at the website.
Speaker 5 (41:02):
You know, you guys, if anybody goes home cooks out there,
who want to buy a stuff Hudson valleyfuogrow dot com,
anybody who want you also you have duck, you have chicken,
you have you have like a flag ros or showing
already made.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
I mean it's not.
Speaker 5 (41:13):
You can also buy just chunked up flag ross slice
foil if you just want a little bit to try
for the first time.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
What a great way to do it, What an easy
way to do it.
Speaker 6 (41:20):
Oh, I love the trim, baby, you can do a
lot with that, right, There's so much you can do
with the trim.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
It's so good.
Speaker 5 (41:27):
That's amazing, and does freezing it. We got to under
break here, assume does freezing it actually like, does it
hurt the flaw at all if you freeze it?
Speaker 7 (41:35):
So one thing I'll say, and I'll let Lenny take
it from there, is we have a really special freezing
process using nitrogen to maintain the crystals and you know,
the best way possible. And then I'll let Lenny talk
about the well that lenin eating experience.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Well, Lenny as a chef, so I hear freezing and
I'm like, eh.
Speaker 8 (41:55):
It follows the same everyone knows this from ice cream.
Speaker 9 (41:58):
So, like Jordan was just alluding to, when you purchase
frozen flagraph from us, we're using our proprietary nitrogen process
which helps make the crystals on a molecular level much
much smaller, so it doesn't damage any of the structural
integrity that you want for the flawgrap.
Speaker 8 (42:14):
If somebody were.
Speaker 9 (42:15):
To throw it on the top layer of a chest
freezer and in you know, forty eight hours it finally froze,
you could see a little bit of degradation of the
actual quality when you defrost it. But we have amazing
luck with like any any decent home freezer with a
little bit of air circulation is not an issue. So
if you bring in a fresh flogra and you realize
(42:36):
you're not going to use all of it, you know,
use the food saver or vacuum seal and try to
get that in the freezer, and you're not.
Speaker 8 (42:43):
You're not going to have an issue.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
And that's great, That sounds amazing.
Speaker 5 (42:47):
I appreciate that because there's so much fun something on
the website here which I think is a great way
to dip your toe into flog you never had before.
I mean, the Flagras slices, I mean, all this stuff
is just a great way to get in there and
start playing with it, you know.
Speaker 9 (42:58):
So the Floagras slice is for sure because they call
them individually frozen and under vacuum seal, so you can
actually keep those in your freezer. And then you want
to cook for me and me and Jeff are going
to have dinner tomorrow hopefully, and uh, I'll pull two out,
throw them in a pan, sear them up, go right
on top of chicken right uh, right on top of
(43:21):
a steak and uh and you can start it without
without having to take on the risk of bringing in
a whole flaw, which was your first time. If you've
never butchered and process it could be like a daunting task.
So uh, flog off for searing. Our frozen slices are
like our ideal and.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
That sounds amazing.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Man.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
I can't wait.
Speaker 5 (43:39):
I'm gonna order some myself because I think I'll start
playing with it and doing more stuff with it.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
I want to put on the smoker. Is that a
terrible idea?
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Great idea.
Speaker 8 (43:47):
We're happy you guys some potatoes underneath for the drippings.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
I was just gonna we could talk.
Speaker 6 (43:52):
I can't wait to talk about cooking, flogger. That's what's
gonna come up next, I think exactly.
Speaker 8 (43:56):
I set up a discount code on the site.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
Oh we can do that too, that'd be a fun
thing to do as well.
Speaker 8 (44:01):
Definitely, let's chat about that.
Speaker 5 (44:03):
All right, friends, we're talking all about FOI gar right
here on Plumla Foods on wy C the Voice of Connecticut.
Speaker 9 (44:09):
We come back.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
We're gonna talk a little bit about actually cooking. We
got the history, we know what the stuff is, we
know where it comes from.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Now what do we do with it in the kitchen?
Speaker 5 (44:16):
Find out next when we come back right here on
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Speaker 4 (44:36):
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Speaker 3 (45:18):
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Speaker 4 (45:21):
Oh man, we had that this year at the Sunlin
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Speaker 5 (45:28):
I mean, I think it's probably better than that dude, Okay,
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Speaker 4 (45:38):
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Speaker 5 (45:38):
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Here I go again.
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You can go to ct Distilling coo dot com for
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Speaker 5 (46:00):
Plumb love foods right here on WYIC see the Voice
of Connecticut on a Saturday.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I hope you guys are having a great day.
Speaker 5 (46:06):
I hope you're changing your dinner plans now after checking
out this episode and learning a little bit more about
the magical mystery Foi Gras and listen. If you want
to get some fuagras sent to you really quickly, check
out Hudson Valleyfoagra dot com. You can go there, you
can order have a cent to your house, all kinds.
You even get small pieces. It's just a taste for
the first time, Jeffy, if you've never done it before.
It's worth it, right, It's absolutely worth it.
Speaker 6 (46:26):
It's such a fun ingredient and it has such unique flavor,
Like people freak out right you say liver, and people go, ah,
I don't.
Speaker 4 (46:32):
Like liver, right, But this is not. This is foi gras.
Speaker 6 (46:35):
This is like a magical piece, like it literally transforms,
like when you guys are talking about the flavor earlier.
All I wanted to say is like fat is flavor,
and this is eighty five percent fat?
Speaker 4 (46:46):
No do maybe more? I don't even know. I mean,
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
We're joined by Jordan Gnore and Lenny Massina from Hudson
Valley Farms and Hudson Valley Foi Gras.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Lenny home cooks who may be afraid of this, Should
they be? Is it a hard thing for them to cook?
Speaker 8 (47:00):
Absolutely not?
Speaker 9 (47:01):
And even more importantly, we've curated a line of very
chef driven, thoughtfully detailed products that eliminate a lot of
the guessworks for the home chefs. So as I was
alluding to earlier, our seared foegra is the easiest way
to get a hot preparation of foegra to top any
(47:22):
protein of your desire for a spectacular meal, and that's
going to be your easiest intro segue into hot fogras.
Seared foegra you get that miard reaction, that nice caramelization
that you look for, that adds to the complexity of
the flavor, and that in itself is a delicacy and
can be a showstopper, but generally following a principle of
(47:46):
a carbohydrate and then something with either some sweetness or
acidity is really going to be your baseline framework to
making a dish stand out that is centered around foegarra.
Speaker 8 (47:59):
So we are also going back to our product line.
Speaker 9 (48:03):
We have all of the traditional charcuterie products, so we
do pat tay like things, terine are torchwn. We have
a moose of foie gras and a moose that also
has fortified with some awesome black truffle. Those are things
that are charcuterie board ready. So we're gonna unbox that
when it arrives at your door, get that onto a
charcuary board, and it's gonna take your your run of
(48:25):
the mill cheese and salami board to the next level.
Speaker 3 (48:28):
Man, those sounds incredible, and those.
Speaker 9 (48:30):
Are things that other than putting out with a little
bit of toast, you know, toast points, crackers, a little
bit of jam, we'll bring everything full circle. So one
bite a nice crispy toast point, a piece of Fuagra torchon.
It's just simple slice and serve. Finish that with some
seasonal fruit jam or whatever of your choice. Again, anything
(48:52):
with some acidity or a little sweetness, and you're gonna
have a lot of impressed guests.
Speaker 4 (48:56):
You know.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
And a really fun tip.
Speaker 5 (48:57):
I like to say, well, just to Tager, what let
me say in here, if you get these you know,
these pre made pieces, or you want to just serve
it with little toast points And he said, you a
little jam if you want to be super fancy, take
us take your jam and take a small spoonful of
the jam out right, put the side, eat it, do
whatever you want with it. But then take a little
tiny bit of you know, whatever kind of vineary you got,
apple cider, vinegar, You've got a little I have a
little honey vinegar, which is amazing, right, and just put
(49:19):
some of that in that little spoon hole you made
in the jam and serve the jam like that. So
it has that vinegariness with the sweetness and with the
fat unbelievable, and people like.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Why is that taste so good? Well, because those three
things go together, they're best friends. So that little splash
makes a big difference.
Speaker 8 (49:33):
Lenny, sounds great, absolutely good tip.
Speaker 5 (49:36):
Simple, simple, it's simple things. Yeah, that little acid I
mean literally, it's it's kind of the thing there. One
of the things I just noticed on the website, So
I was looking at it when you were talking, Lenny,
that I'm excited about and I think I'm going to
order this very very soon. Is the smoked foi gras
brought worst. I mean we're talking first of all brought worst,
the delicious.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
These are ready to go. I mean I would cook
cereum and cook them in beer. Is that we're thinking
here or no?
Speaker 8 (49:58):
Absolutely?
Speaker 9 (49:58):
So We've done million studies, very very tough work the
R and D.
Speaker 8 (50:03):
On that sure, like two months straight.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
First, that's right study and we appreciate that for the
R and D.
Speaker 9 (50:13):
That right. We actually we did a tailgating event a
few months back and we did an awesome like a
Brioche hot dog bun Foagra brought wurst, and then we
topped it with like an Aleppo pepper and pineapple.
Speaker 8 (50:26):
Relish and it was just like so awesome. But yeah,
you can go the same.
Speaker 9 (50:30):
Other route co poaching and beer, some sweated onions and mustard.
It's super super versatile, really straightforward on the broughtwurst uh
texture and flavor profile, but then it has these nice
little inclusions of rich fatty foggart and when you break.
Speaker 8 (50:46):
Into it just.
Speaker 9 (50:49):
To the moon.
Speaker 5 (50:50):
Jeff, why have we been serving this not even I
didn't even know this exists that I won't one so bad.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
To everything's different. Now everything's changed.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
It's a whole world is different.
Speaker 6 (50:58):
That was like a nice like app full mustarta something like,
oh my god, forget about it.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
I'm absolutely that sounds incredible. Listen.
Speaker 5 (51:05):
I'm pitching next year to go to WrestleMania, and I
don't know if you guys know, I'm a diehard wrestling fan,
have in my whole life, but it's a it's a
massive event, and I want to do is this tailgate
situation at WrestleMania. So if it happens, I'm gonna hit
you up and we're gonna you're gonna do this with me.
It's gonna be ridiculous. It's gonna be ridiculous. So but
what I like about that that brought words like you said, easy,
(51:26):
easy to go, you can get. It's kind of getting
the you know, something that you're used to having, but
getting flag Rock kind of integrated into it if you're
trying to learn it and kind of get that into
your diet. One of the things I also thought was
pretty cool here was the fuag raw fat. So when
I think of fat on an organ, I think of
what they call leaf lard, you know, kind of grows
around the organ, and that that that really delicious fat
around we're getting really gross, now very cheffy, but around
(51:48):
the heart, you know, around some of the organs.
Speaker 3 (51:50):
Is that where this fat comes from? Or is this
just rendered flaw?
Speaker 8 (51:53):
So we do we do actually full rendered flaw.
Speaker 9 (51:56):
So you get all of the nutty richness, all of
them neurality from the floa grass, all of that full
flavor into the.
Speaker 8 (52:03):
Rendered product that is spoonable, spreadable like butter.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
And we just I mean simple way to use this, Jeffy.
I mean, listen, I'm gonna I'm talking my butt off,
not let you talk anything. I would just do some
easy roast potatoes with this and put a little bit
of garlic, a little bit of rosemary and toss them
with this and put them in the oven, even like
potato wedges.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
Are you kidding me? What a great way? And then
when you're done, always spoon a little of that fat
on top of them to finish it. Yeah, that's what
I want to say.
Speaker 6 (52:31):
You could also just eat it with a spoon and
some rock salt. I mean, I'm just throwing it out there,
a little slice of bread.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
I think that's how we show it on the website.
Speaker 8 (52:38):
Yeah yeah, I throw it on some sour dough, a
little flaky salt, and.
Speaker 3 (52:42):
Oh okay, I get it. Health food there we go.
Speaker 6 (52:46):
Yeah, no, listen, we're not talking. Fat is your friend, man,
as long as you don't need too many carbs.
Speaker 3 (52:52):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (52:52):
You know, we all love good brain food. Now.
Speaker 5 (52:55):
Also, you guys, obviously, because I mean we're doing flass,
you have duck as well. I mean you have you
can get some amazing duck right here on the website.
Speaker 4 (53:03):
Right.
Speaker 7 (53:04):
Our line extends far beyond fogron. While we focused on
the Fagra aspect of our business, we do other types
of ducks, non fogra ducks, and we actually do a
good amount more chickens today than we even do ducks.
And then in our further processing facility, we make all
(53:24):
these charcuter read products. So we've evolved to be much
more than just fogra or eve even just just duck.
And Hudson Valley Chicken is kind of taking over our
bit our farm.
Speaker 6 (53:38):
The Hudson Valley Chickens. I've recently bought them. Uh, it's
a heritage breeding chicken too. It's like a like, it's
a really really delicious chicken. I mean really, it tastes
like chicken supposed to. I feel like there's a lot
of brands out there. No, I'm serious, Like you know,
I'm a private chef and people who don't know so
I buy a lot of I look for really great
products and I recently had it and I was like, whoa,
(54:00):
this is really great.
Speaker 4 (54:01):
In fact, we'll talk about there, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 5 (54:05):
Yeah, all these things are fantastic. So let's talk about
I'm a home chef. I've got some flaw What are
some things I can make with them besides just searing it? Lenny,
and give us, give us a tip. What's something that
they can make? You tell me what's a buy. Let's
just I mean, listen, let's just say we let's just
say we got a bunch of fog rock cubes.
Speaker 3 (54:22):
What can we do with that?
Speaker 9 (54:23):
So for me, honestly, the fog rock cubes are awesome
as well for a couple of different things.
Speaker 8 (54:28):
I like blending them into some purees.
Speaker 9 (54:31):
I also like using those chunks and fortifying any of
the finishing sauces I would make, so you can just
get like low sodium broth.
Speaker 8 (54:41):
You can reduce that down to what a.
Speaker 9 (54:43):
Chef's called demigloss esque and then fortify that with some
chives and some foag rock cubes. Just let literally raw
right in there, let them poach in the hot sauce.
Pour that over a steak, and you're you're at the
next level. Same for a roasted chicken. A so you
breast natural pairing, uh, anything along those lines. The cubes
(55:05):
can be a mulsified in for you can make a
moose at home, depending on how ambitious you want to be,
any kind of finishing sauces and any kind of curios,
and it'll give that nice nutty richness and an extra
depth of flavor where you're kind of like, where did
this come from?
Speaker 8 (55:20):
And that's that's the secret.
Speaker 7 (55:23):
Pasta and filled pastas as well. Perfect accompaniment.
Speaker 3 (55:27):
That sounds great, man, that's my mind here.
Speaker 4 (55:29):
Hold on.
Speaker 6 (55:29):
So you thicken the sauce like you mount it, like
the way you would do butter. People at home don't
know what that is. You take a little butter, cold butter,
you put it into your hot sauce and you whisk
it in or I'm sure you can use that hand blender.
Some people do that and it thickens the sauce and
it gives it a nice gloss. So you're taking cubes
woi gras just mounting your sauce.
Speaker 9 (55:49):
Yes, it won't it won't fully dissolve like butter, so
you'll be left with the small inclusions out of poached
foie gras. But the fat that does render ound in
can emulsify just like when you mounting with butter, and
it gives that same shine, but with a much much muddy,
yer flavor.
Speaker 6 (56:06):
Oh wow, I'm so in on that. That's sounds delicious.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
I mean, that sounds incredible. I'm kind of down with
that for sure.
Speaker 5 (56:13):
And what a fun way to I mean, what about
even like adding something like that to a tomato soup,
like something silly, you know, just adding it to any
kind of like a vegetable soup, a a a braised
piece of beef that you're finishing off with a sauce.
Just put that flaw to finish a sauce off.
Speaker 8 (56:28):
That would definitely be my kind of vegetable soup. I'll
take that.
Speaker 9 (56:31):
Yeah, any any brazing so for a hot preparation of foagra.
Speaker 8 (56:38):
You know, even you can go as.
Speaker 9 (56:39):
Far as saying, if you add a hole lob of fogra,
you can roast it whole, which we do at the
restaurant all the time.
Speaker 8 (56:44):
Jordan loves if he'll eat it with a spoon.
Speaker 9 (56:46):
So we'll take the whole liver, We'll score it kind
of crosshatch the exterior, and then we crust it with
salt and pepper, some very finely minced shallets, and then
we top it with fresh herbs, stems of thyme, a
little rosemary, and we throw that whole thing into a
screaming hot oven. We roast it whole, and then you
have this like crazy crazy presentation. That's your more ambitious,
(57:09):
like expert level home chef. So I'm like kind of
spreading the gamut here, but that will give you the
most true flogger eating experience because you have a thin
caramelization on the outside and the inside has this very
soft custardy like texture.
Speaker 8 (57:27):
So really, depending on how you cook it, you can.
Speaker 9 (57:29):
Mount sauces with it, you can roast it whole, you
can slice thin slices and sear them. You have moose
tine torchewn. All of them have completely different eating experiences,
just texturally and also flavor profile wise, which is what
I think makes it so versatile.
Speaker 5 (57:45):
Oh man, I'll tell you what honestly, Like I am
just thinking right now, like what if you do like
a let's just say you want a very simple kachia peppe,
very very simple dish, right, easy to make, easy dinner
in a sidepan.
Speaker 3 (57:59):
We take some of this cube while that we got
from Hudson Valley flaw.
Speaker 5 (58:01):
We see it off a little salt in the pants,
sear it off right, and then we just tossed that
right in before we serve our our cochiae.
Speaker 3 (58:08):
I have this cocha pepe with these a flaw in there. Yeah,
how about that?
Speaker 4 (58:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (58:12):
Like fwatchia Pepe.
Speaker 6 (58:14):
That's great, WATCHI o Pepe. Did we just create something.
Speaker 3 (58:18):
I think we might have.
Speaker 6 (58:19):
I think we might love Foods World Premiere.
Speaker 4 (58:21):
Watch you old Pepe.
Speaker 8 (58:23):
You heard it here.
Speaker 1 (58:24):
You guys can take that trademark.
Speaker 3 (58:27):
Fatchio Pepe.
Speaker 5 (58:28):
Look, I'm gonna go on the website in two months
and they got frozen quat fotchy.
Speaker 3 (58:31):
Of Pepe on there.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
It's amazing.
Speaker 5 (58:33):
But I think just taking it and just kind of
out of the box, thinking it's an easy way just
to add it to a meal and to add like
a whole different succulence, a whole different flavor to it. Jeffy,
I think this is going to be a bad thing.
I'm about to ask Jeffie.
Speaker 6 (58:45):
I know you're gonna ask me a good question. I'm excited.
Speaker 4 (58:47):
I got it. I've been I got a cock that
I'm ready.
Speaker 3 (58:49):
Yeah, but you're seventeen step Jeffy, wif you we don't
want to do all.
Speaker 6 (58:52):
Right, we are gonna go a handful of steps here.
It's gonna take a few days.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Oh, come on, man, give me give me something easy
to slice.
Speaker 6 (58:58):
Listen, listen, you're gonna get a chunk of wah right,
You're gonna go ahead. You're gonna order yourself a chunk
of Wi Gras. You're gonna take a nice chunk of that.
You're gonna pull out all the veins. You're gonna take it.
You're gonna get a bowl in your fridge, a piece
of tuppware. You're gonna fill it with salt, fill it
with pepper corns, put some herbs in it. Then you're
gonna bury the faw in that salt and you're gonna
(59:20):
throw it in the fridge for a couple of days
and you're gonna take it out, clean all the salt
off it, and then you're gonna just eat it. And
it's cured foi gras and it's absolutely delicious. It's super
simple to do. It's salty, it's delicious, and you can
it's basically a torch shown just not shaped, and you
can have it in a chunk. You can cut into slices.
You can see it then if you want super eas
I'm just saying it's a super fun thing to do
(59:41):
at home. I like to put it in the freezer
and use a vegetable peeler and go like this on
it and take peels of it and then take those
curls and add it to the top of things and
make people think like, oh my gosh, this is so amazing.
And it really is just super simple cured and then
put in the freezer to get it ice cold so
it can peel.
Speaker 3 (59:59):
And that's and you call those feels. Yeah, whales, that
sounds awesome too, ny any thoughts on curing it.
Speaker 9 (01:00:10):
So we've done a couple of dishes with like a
noorri cured flaw. So we do a blend of some
noory sheets and salt, and then we'll do a three
day dried cure on it. And those like you mentioned,
if you freeze them. And a short cut expedite is
to take our tors a fogra, which is available in
an eight ounce a smaller portion. You can take those,
(01:00:32):
put them right in the freezer, take them out and
take like your finest microplane. You could use a regular
box grad or two and you could grate that over
like any crudo dish you could ever imagine, and it
just like starts gently melting but still coats your mouth
with all the flawgraff flavors, doesn't overpower the fish like
I don't. I refuse to have tuna crude without it now, So.
Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Wow, I travel. What a great segue on Time's Day.
Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
Oh man, what a great segue too.
Speaker 5 (01:01:01):
Is I was just about to say, it's amazing how
well flag goes with almost everything. It really works well
with seafood, it works great with scallops. What a great
way to serve it too, and just incorporating it into
things last week on this program, If you guys didn't
hear it, Jeff and I were talking about hot dogs
and we both ended up inserting a flagra into our
hot dog dishes, which was hilarious. I was gonna do
(01:01:22):
thin slices and wrap my hot dog and flaw and
then see it and that was gonna be my dog,
a flah wrapped hot dog. Jeffy he had made a
moose and pumped the center of the hot dog full
of flagra moose.
Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
All these things sound delicious.
Speaker 5 (01:01:36):
Any thoughts on doing just anything out of the box
thinking with this stuff, like, you know, something like hot
you know, hot dog or something like that.
Speaker 9 (01:01:42):
You know, So we've we've been playing around with the
flaw dog for a little while now, and that one
is always a showstopper. We haven't launched it as a product,
but don't be surprised if you see it on the
site sooner than later.
Speaker 3 (01:01:56):
Russemenia next year, let's go dog.
Speaker 8 (01:01:59):
We'll get orgon to it.
Speaker 9 (01:02:01):
And uh, you know, honestly, one really fun thing we
used to do is, like we've we've done.
Speaker 8 (01:02:07):
Some bombollinis in the past.
Speaker 9 (01:02:09):
We make like some duck pies where you take it
more like a chicken pot pie, but you stuff it
with some seared fog gras roasted root vegetables, and we've
done peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We've done French dips
with sliced duck and fuagra gravy. So we we've spenned
the funky spectrum on some some fun things. So we're
(01:02:31):
always we're always looking to push to see what's next.
Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
This all sounds incredible. I want some of this right now, Jeff,
we've got any more.
Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
Fog gravy because it's I licked it and drank it right.
Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
But I like how he licks it first and then
he drinks it, and then I licked it first and
then I drank it.
Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
Man, this all sounds incredible stuff here, man, I think
it's really something fun to get into and to really
kick your homemade dishes up a notch.
Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
You want to get really crazy with it.
Speaker 5 (01:03:00):
Get some of these cubes and add them to your
taco meat when you're making tacos. What an unbelievable way
to just add it to a rigo dish or having
on a taco Tuesday wuacos fuagos, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 7 (01:03:12):
Perfect duck is in general great for tacos, are awesome.
The skin to crisp up for teacher on the rendered fat,
making tortillas and crisping tortillas.
Speaker 6 (01:03:24):
I can't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I work
for a family of Jewish people, and so we don't
need a lot of pork.
Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
So I used duck.
Speaker 7 (01:03:31):
That's actually one of the reasons Flagran duck was so
popularized in Eastern Europe the large Jewish population that didn't
have a lot of money and couldn't eat pork, and
duck was the thing most readily available.
Speaker 4 (01:03:47):
Well, and you guys are making that fuagra fat.
Speaker 6 (01:03:50):
I mean, duck fat is already like gold and gold
goose fat, and duck fat is like I save it
and whenever I do anything with it, I always.
Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
I mean I have freezers full of different types of fats.
I love it all.
Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
But that's the true story, actually is where does that sounds?
Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
It is a true story. I hoard many animal fats,
but FOI craft pre rendered. I am freaking out. I
mean that's like you.
Speaker 7 (01:04:14):
Should come up and take a visit at UH and
you can see the rendering, and well, we do five
plus species of animals animal fat rendering.
Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
It's got to smell amazed.
Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Bison we do pork and beef on an everyday basis.
Speaker 5 (01:04:28):
Well, that actually is a great question then, I mean
can people come up there and get a tour and
check things out and see the farm and see stuff
like that?
Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
Is that how it works?
Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yes?
Speaker 7 (01:04:36):
Absolutely, and generally speaking one hundred percent is the most
important thing we can do, I will say right now,
in this very time, we're under really unique Avian influenza
biosecurity protocols and so we uh limit our visits into
it as far as interacting with the ducks, but absolutely
(01:04:58):
you can come see h everything else to do, And
generally speaking, yes, it's the most important thing we can
do is show people everything. But our cooking facility is
twenty minutes away from our farmer fifteen minutes and that.
Speaker 1 (01:05:11):
Yeah, yeah, you guys can come and visit any time.
It's less exciting.
Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
For a list, sure, sure of course, but yeah, generally.
Speaker 7 (01:05:18):
Speaking the farm just reach out to our office and
a lot of time I'm personally showing people around.
Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
That's amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:05:25):
Letting any thoughts of doing like a dinner program at
the farm or some kind of like I don't know,
you know, like a like a dining series or something so.
Speaker 9 (01:05:32):
There was a house that popped up for sale like
kind of bordering our property here, and Jordan and I
were toying with this idea of trying to make it
like a like a chef's bread and bed and breakfast
where we can just have some people come up and host.
So yeah, I think I think down the line we definitely.
Speaker 6 (01:05:49):
Cultural tourism is huge, man.
Speaker 4 (01:05:51):
People love that.
Speaker 6 (01:05:52):
People want to see where their food comes from and
spend it right there and meet the people behind it.
Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
I mean I would.
Speaker 5 (01:05:57):
I mean that I'm going to France and April stay
on a truffle farm amazing, which is crazy. I mean
it's not trouble season, but its still gonna be a
truffle farm. It's which is awesome. But yeah, I mean
he's right, like we look for stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
That's amazing. Man, let's set something up that's amazing.
Speaker 4 (01:06:13):
I love that. That's great man. You guys are fantastic.
Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
I feel like we kind of got a much better
picture now, Jeffy on fua, don't you.
Speaker 4 (01:06:20):
Oh absolutely? I mean the history of it all is
what really is crazy.
Speaker 6 (01:06:24):
Like, yeah, long people have been eating foi gras and
now it's time to make everyone. Teach your people at home.
Come get some foie gras and show them that you
learned it on plumb Love Foods.
Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Hey, Lenny, ever, just put it in chocolate and cookies.
Just see what happens.
Speaker 9 (01:06:40):
I can't confirm, nor deny, but I will say I've
stuffed salted chocolates and cookies.
Speaker 8 (01:06:49):
With foua gra gelato before. So I think we're happy.
Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Oh wow, Jeffie's losing his mind over here.
Speaker 4 (01:06:55):
I'm in, I'm so in. Are you kidding? I can't even.
Speaker 8 (01:06:59):
I did a dinner for Jordan.
Speaker 9 (01:07:01):
We did a like just a vanilla bean ice cream
with a sic sauce caramel, and then we did a
chicken skin crunch on it.
Speaker 8 (01:07:09):
That That was his nightcoub the other day.
Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Come on crazy.
Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
The fact that either of you aren't four hundred pounds,
it is blowing my mind.
Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
You can't.
Speaker 8 (01:07:18):
You can only see my top half.
Speaker 3 (01:07:20):
But Lenny is all bottom weight.
Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
It's all bottom weight. That's what it is.
Speaker 5 (01:07:29):
Jordan Gan or Lenny Messina. We appreciate you guys joining
us on the program. Jeffic it those plugs out for
them for absolutely.
Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Hudson Valley Foagra dot Com.
Speaker 6 (01:07:36):
Go there if you want to order anything, Lenny Underscore, Messina,
Lola Restaurant, all one word, get out there. There's also
Hudson Valley Farms at Hudson Valley Farms. You can find
them on Instagram, Facebook, all over, do it, Get out there,
follow them, Let him know you saw it here. Get
some foie Gras on your life, baby, that's what we want.
Speaker 5 (01:07:55):
Get it in your life and enjoy it. Change the
way things are done, that's right. Change home cooking. That's
what we're trying to here, fellas.
Speaker 4 (01:08:00):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
We appreciate you guys. Thanks for joining us, and we'll
see you guys on down the road.
Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Likewise, thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (01:08:06):
Stay right there, guys, Thank you guys are the best.
You're checking out Plumb Foods. Right back here on w
Vice to see the voice Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
To put a bow on this. Stay right there.
Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
That's right, Jeffy.
Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
You know what I like to do. I like to
go shopping for knives. I love knives. I'm a chef,
of course I love knives. If you cook food at home,
you gotta love knives.
Speaker 4 (01:08:29):
Too, right, love knives, sharp things.
Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
It's got to be important because you want to make
sure things are nice and cut. And let me tell
you what this PSA is brought to you by our
friends over at Ergo Chef Knives Friends, a sharper knife.
It's safer than a more dull knife, I promise you.
And let me explain to you why adult knife you
have to use more force, and more force means less control, Jeffy,
and less control means less fingers.
Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Yeah, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 6 (01:08:51):
Listen, knives one of the most important tools in the kitchen.
Speaker 4 (01:08:53):
Can't really get much done without a knife.
Speaker 5 (01:08:55):
You absolutely are preaching to the choir. And one of
the best place to get knives are friends over at
Ergo Chef. They got a showroom in Dan Barry at
for Eagle Road. You can go see them there. And
if you go see them, let me tell you what
you can do. You can walk in the front door,
and Jeffy, when you walk in the front door Ergo Chef,
if you want to get a discount, what do you do?
Speaker 6 (01:09:12):
You yell, hey, is mike' stive here? And when he
walks out, you go, hey, electric factory.
Speaker 5 (01:09:16):
That's right, the electric factory. Mike Styve, call me electric factory.
Ask form by name. Now if you're not there, and
you can't get the knife and you can't go into
the store, you can always go to the website at
ergochef dot com. Use promo code Plumb twenty and get
yourself a great discount on an amazing knife that will
always stay sharp and keep your fingers attached to your hand.
Jeffrey Ergo chef Knives. Check them out at ergo chef
(01:09:38):
dot com. Use promo code plumb twenty for a great discount.
Plumb love foods Right here on a Saturday, wy I
(01:10:00):
see see the Voice of Connecticut.
Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
We appreciate you guys. Check out the program.
Speaker 5 (01:10:04):
We appreciate all of you being here hanging out with
to you on Saturday, talking fo gra talking food.
Speaker 3 (01:10:10):
It's not just about food.
Speaker 5 (01:10:11):
We got to talk a little bit about the WICC
Impact Awards that are happening May fourteenth at Vazano's Four
Seasons in Stratford.
Speaker 3 (01:10:18):
Listen.
Speaker 5 (01:10:19):
You can go to WICC dot com. Excuse me, go
to Voice of Connecticut dot com. Still can use that
change Voice Connecticut dot com and you can nominate any
local businesses or nonprofits and future leaders and innovators who
just do so much for our state. You can nominate
people right there and you know, get them nominated for
you know, this whole thing, because this is the Impact
Awards is a cool thing, Jeffy.
Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
Yeah, it's a very cool thing.
Speaker 6 (01:10:40):
And there's a number of different categories you can you
can nominate people for who are making an impact in
your state.
Speaker 5 (01:10:46):
Yeah, no doubt about it. So make sure you go
Voice Connecticut dot com. The wy c C Impact Awards
happening Wednesday, May fourteenth. Go to Voice Connecticut dot com
to nominate local businesses, nonprofits, innovators, you know, people who
you think are important. You can I'm right there, and
they can get in the war got to recognize, Jeffy.
Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
That's what we want to do.
Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
That's what we want.
Speaker 6 (01:11:03):
We want people to get their flowers while they're still
here to smell them.
Speaker 3 (01:11:06):
I like flowers, Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
Listen.
Speaker 5 (01:11:09):
I also like flaw And I gotta tell you what.
The first time I had Fuagara, I was in culinary
school and it was a bit life changing for me.
I remember I remember having it and thinking, Wow, this
flavor is unbelievable, this is undeniable. This it's sometimes delicious.
But then I kind of forgot about it until I
went to craft steak at Foxwoods about fifteen years ago,
(01:11:30):
and it was when it first opened, and they treat
us very well, my wife and I, and they just
kept bringing out all these dishes with flaw in it,
and it was I mean, I didn't even eat dinner
because I had so much waw. It was because it's
so filling and delicious, and you know, it just is
one of those things that's so savor you almost you
want to keep beating it, but you don't.
Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
And I kind of overdid it on foah that day.
But it was amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:11:51):
I mean everything from seared faw to uh they did
it with a bunch of charcouterie. They did it in
a sandwich, which was crazy, like the little biscuit was crazy,
but absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
That's that's awesome. I think.
Speaker 6 (01:12:04):
I think the first time I had fuagras I was
a kid actually, and I uh, there was a cheeseboard.
I had an aunt, My aunt Amelia's like my rich chant,
you know that has money, and we used to go
to her house for all the functions and there was
like a cheeseboard type of thing out and there was
a fuagras pat there and I didn't even know what
foagras was. They said, oh, it's a path. I said, okay,
(01:12:26):
I try it. They said sure, And I ate two
thirds of it by myself.
Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (01:12:30):
I just sat there as a little chubby kid, just
wiping it on crackers. And then my aunt was like, hey,
that's for everybody, and that's expensive.
Speaker 4 (01:12:36):
I can't believe. Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:12:37):
I get him away from there. Yeah, and I had
to like get away from it. And then you know,
I was like, what was that and they were like, oh,
it's it's liver. And I was like, no, it wasn't.
I've had liver and onions and that's not liver and onions.
That's different. And they were like, well, it's expensive liver.
And I was like and then from that point on
in my life, I always thought I needed money so
I could eat fuai gras.
Speaker 5 (01:12:57):
That's why you did it. That's hilarious. I mean, listen,
because you're right though. It is one of those things
where it doesn't taste like liver. You know it is liver,
it doesn't taste like liver.
Speaker 6 (01:13:07):
No, it's rich and it has like a nutty flavor
and the color of it and the texture it's just
so smooth. Like when it's when it's done properly, it's like, yeah, oh,
I just I love I love foi gras in all
its forms. And then, uh, you know, I I never
cooked with it. I didn't go to culinary school, and
I'd never really cooked with it. And I had become
(01:13:28):
a chef at this point of a restaurant and I
had seared it. I taught myself how to like just
seer little medallions. And at that point you could already
buy medallions of fuagra. Yeah, sure, already cut. But a
buddy of mine may or may not have kicked a
giant lobe of foie gras at the back of his
restaurant and may not may or may not have brought
(01:13:49):
it to me, and me and him cooked it about
thirty ways woun So we got sick to teach ourselves
because neither one of us I grew up with any money,
and we didn't know how to do what to do
with it, and we want to learn. So I got
them my Fuagras Passion Cookbook out, and we literally went
through like about thirty recipes with different different pieces, trying
to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
What was a fail one for you? It was one
that didn't work.
Speaker 6 (01:14:11):
Oh, one that didn't work was actually the one that
Donyo made, the potted foie gras. I don't know how
he did it. I think you have to salt it
ahead of time. I put it right in the oil
and tried to bake it, and I baked it a
little too hot and it became very grainy. The potted
foe gras is a very old school recipe. It was
(01:14:32):
a way to preserve it as well, where they basically
cook foagras in its own fat, usually with onions and
maybe a piece of time or something like that, and
then it's in a little terene pot, like a little
glass pot, and they.
Speaker 4 (01:14:46):
Top it with the fat and you kind of bake
it in a water bath.
Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Uh you know, I think done like little terra cotta
pots too, right, Yeah.
Speaker 6 (01:14:54):
You can do it in terra cotta pots. I think
anything that's kind of you know, tiny little situation and uh,
it's it's it's when it's done properly. You kind of
take a knife and you can kind of stir it
up and it becomes like a like a like a
like a topping and it's like it's like an oily.
Speaker 4 (01:15:14):
But but it does not really oily.
Speaker 6 (01:15:16):
It's like because the flogger kind of emultipies a little
bit as just turn it up a little bit with
your with your knife and then you're pulling up like
pieces of like oil cook oil, squagra with the onions
and the other oil. I mean, it's a it's an
old little dish. It's so good. I mean, it's very fatty.
Speaker 4 (01:15:32):
I I did not nail that, and it did not
nail that. Got it? Have you got any of them?
Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
Have you got it right? Since?
Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
Yes? Yes, I've definitely made it since that day and
got it right.
Speaker 6 (01:15:43):
And I realized what I had done wrong, uh, but
which was not read the whole recipe and think that
I got it because I of course, and I just
tried to throw it together and there was many steps
involved that I didn't quite overlooked.
Speaker 4 (01:15:55):
Yeah, so it didn't work.
Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Yeah. I think what's interesting about flaws.
Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
It's one of those things that you can you can
use it to add a savory element to a dessert,
which is kind of fun.
Speaker 6 (01:16:03):
With it, you can add your chocolate chip cookie idea.
I thought was that was money? I thought, so, you know,
I would do that all day long. I mean, I
just wonder how much.
Speaker 5 (01:16:12):
It would melt or could you use it like butter
and I don't know, but it's interesting. I think it
could work.
Speaker 4 (01:16:16):
I think you have to play around with it a
little bit.
Speaker 6 (01:16:17):
I mean I've been trying to push the the foi
grasket to do it at uh.
Speaker 4 (01:16:26):
That actually comes from that down your recipe.
Speaker 6 (01:16:27):
He did a duck crackling biscuit with uh with with
the potted foi gras, and I was like, well, how
can I do? And I'd bought in cube foe gras
before and trim like the fua gra trim and cube.
If you don't know what that like, it's just uh,
it's pieces like you know, when they're cutting nice lobes
or they're making these little pieces out they're that they're doing.
There's always a little bit of waste and they'll take
(01:16:48):
that waste and they can sell it to you. Uh,
and you can do all these other interesting things like.
Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
Use it's a little cheaper and yeah, it's still great
fua gras.
Speaker 4 (01:16:55):
It's great foa gras.
Speaker 6 (01:16:56):
But like if you're going to do something like trying
to make a chocolate chip cookie with it, this is
it's a little cheaper, and it's it's perfect for what
you're using it for.
Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
It's not a show.
Speaker 6 (01:17:04):
You're not trying to have a medallion on top of
the snake to look perfect. You're just looking for that
flavor and all that fat. So it's it's a great product.
Speaker 3 (01:17:11):
An old school chocolate pie, but we use foa gras
in it.
Speaker 4 (01:17:15):
Oh, like a chocolate silk pie. Instead of butter. We
use rendered foie gras. Uh, can I come over?
Speaker 6 (01:17:21):
It sounds like to top it with Muldon salt, and
it may be some sort of really amazing gas streak
on the side, like a raspberry gas streak maybe.
Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
I mean, I think that sounds like a plan to me.
Speaker 4 (01:17:31):
Oh my god. And then we do a duck fat meringue. Oh,
let's go, let's go, Oh my god.
Speaker 6 (01:17:37):
And then we make then we make pixie dust at
a at a duck skin.
Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
Oh the Jeffy's got his hands up. I can just
a touchdown.
Speaker 6 (01:17:45):
He's just scored. I mean, this is a you next
year mohigan son. If we get invited back. You never know, folks,
it could be a chocolate flag grass soak pie with
all these delicious toppings on it.
Speaker 4 (01:17:55):
I mean I'm ready. We got to we have to
R and D this. This is gonna be hard.
Speaker 5 (01:18:00):
I think the fun part about fa though, is like
it just there's a lots of different applications for it,
you know, in my brain for like, I feel like
for years I've been trying to figure out how I
could incorporate it into lasangna.
Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
I feel like thereould be some delicious way to do
it into lasangna.
Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
You know.
Speaker 4 (01:18:10):
Well, I think I think you because you bake it.
Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
And I don't want to break down, you know what
I'm saying, Like we'll break down.
Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
A little bit.
Speaker 6 (01:18:15):
But if you see your foie gras and then added
to things like like I think they were mentioned they
made like a duct pie with sere foe gras, like
a pot pie, like like right right right, traditional pot pie,
and the foi gras you'll still have. I mean, it's
gonna get very soft. It's it is a lot fat
and there's there's protein that kind of holds the structure together,
and it'll get soft, but it's it's a luscious softness.
Speaker 4 (01:18:37):
So if you add it with other meats, as like
if you would do like.
Speaker 6 (01:18:39):
A mixed meat pie with fuagra or like a lasagna
where you did a layer of say you're bowling as right,
and then you did a layer of cheese, and then
you did a layer with like herbs foi gras and
like uh, tomato.
Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
And then you know, I think I would do it
like a white lasagna, and it would.
Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
Oh, I mean, there you go. White lasagna, you know, likes.
Speaker 3 (01:19:01):
A little bit of green on top to finish it.
Speaker 5 (01:19:02):
And then we put it on top of a little
like we serve a slice on top of tomato sauce,
so you get the Italian flag colors.
Speaker 6 (01:19:07):
Come on, I'm in and you know me, I'm crazy.
I'll do anything in lasagna. We talked buffalo lasagna a
couple of weeks ago. I mean, you know, I think
foa Gravlasanya.
Speaker 4 (01:19:16):
I mean you can get I mean.
Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
For grand for easy, for grazia. I don't know how
we can say that for Grazna.
Speaker 6 (01:19:26):
Yeah, laz jasanga, Wazanya, wazana. All right, all right, hey,
little fazana.
Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
Delicious.
Speaker 6 (01:19:40):
But I think you could take fua gras if you
wanted to get super crazy making an ice cream, like
he was saying, is is just a wild ways to
use to trim you can render it.
Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
I would render it.
Speaker 6 (01:19:54):
Just add it to your your cream mixture, you know,
with the sugar, and blend it and then put it
in your ice cream maker and it will come out
so good and so wild, like instead of vanilla, you
actually had a tiny bit of vanilla. Vanilla is not
a vanilla and foie gras are friends. I mean it's
like that's a very common additive to toison.
Speaker 5 (01:20:13):
What if we don't do that, Jeff, we make that
mixture for the ice cream maker, it's ready to go,
but we don't put in the ice cream maker. We
put it in small containers and we we we put
it into a water bath and we bake it like
a cremberlet, and then we take it out top of
sugar and we have fua rock cramblet.
Speaker 6 (01:20:30):
I'm into fuagras cremble at all day. Quagrack crimblet sounds
so good, dude. Oh you know, you know, even just
making that little custard and then unmolding a little fuagraw
custard on top of something, you know, like like oh yeah,
making a fuagras custard and like putting.
Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
I think we're getting down the This is getting super chefy.
Speaker 6 (01:20:52):
Yeah, getting super chefy. Absolutely, But you can use squagra
to do almost anything. You can use the fuagra fat
that they were talking about just to make scrambled eggs,
and it's just going to elevate it to the next level.
It's just going to add that little bit of like
that nuttiness that like you know, duck fat and foa
gras fat and goose fat have a have a really
beautiful richness.
Speaker 3 (01:21:12):
That is like the next level to oh, no doubt
about it.
Speaker 6 (01:21:15):
So it's like you think butter, think about how rich
and delicious butter is and what that does to a recipe.
Fua fat is like butter on super steroids. Like I mean,
we already found out that it's made from a super soldier.
Speaker 3 (01:21:28):
Duck, right, the duck super Soldiers Duck.
Speaker 6 (01:21:31):
Super Soldier Captain New York, America to farm super soldier. Well,
I probably was in Taiwan. It might be an American soldier,
you know, overseas program.
Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
It's short, short, fair enough, you know.
Speaker 5 (01:21:43):
I think on the website too, they have this delicious
like it's like a it's like a moose, like a
tourene of it's a moose with foagra and truffles. You know,
if if you're scared of it, you want to get
into it slowly, just grill a steak and take a
spoonful of that and finish your steak with a spoonful
of that on top of it. That sounds amazing and delicious,
very very simple. Like I think, it's easy ways to
kind of get into this hot cuisine. You know, these
(01:22:03):
days especially, it's a great time to be live in
food cause there's so many fun things you can do,
and so everything's so readily available.
Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
It's so easy to get now.
Speaker 6 (01:22:09):
You know, yeah, you know, oh I just had a
brain child. All right, we're gonna get crazy. We're gonna
get drinking now. We're gonna take that fat. We're gonna
render it. Then, we're gonna we're gonna flard our bourbon
with foa gras.
Speaker 4 (01:22:24):
We're gonna take it.
Speaker 6 (01:22:25):
We're gonna dump it into the fuagras, into the bourbon.
We're gonna put it in the fridge overnight. We're gonna
agitate it a couple of times, put it in, agitated
a couple of times, take it out the next morning,
straining out.
Speaker 4 (01:22:35):
All that fat. Because people do like butter washed burb
butter washing it. They do it with bacon fat. We're
gonna do it with fua graw fat washed. Do you
read my mind?
Speaker 6 (01:22:48):
Man?
Speaker 4 (01:22:48):
Or an old fashioned wash? Oh wow, we're on fire
right now.
Speaker 3 (01:22:57):
Old fashion might be at my dinner with prossad.
Speaker 4 (01:23:00):
I'm telling you, we got we gotta get crazy with it.
We gotta get crazy with it.
Speaker 3 (01:23:04):
That's insane.
Speaker 4 (01:23:05):
Listen, folks, don't don't sleep on just being creative.
Speaker 6 (01:23:07):
Think outside of the box sometimes and look at foie
gras like you would butter, you know, looking at it
like like, and then just take that as a fat
and now you can add it to any recipe that
you wanted to add it to, and it could be
something really cool, or it could be like, you know,
not great. But I'm pretty sure it'll probably be pretty
good because you're just using foggar instead of butter, and
it's gonna be delicious.
Speaker 3 (01:23:27):
Hard to mess it up.
Speaker 5 (01:23:27):
I mean, how about just taking a few slices, steering
them off in a pan and toss them with your
mac and cheese. You know, let's just get a little
crazy with it. Let's just keep adding it to things
and see where it goes. This is the fun part
about cooking. There's no right or wrong here, there's no
you know, you're gonna do what's what you're gonna do
and try things. That's how things get made for the
first time. Think about the first time someone ever even
decided to eat Quagra. They were like, well, let's try
(01:23:48):
to eat this part because we have to. And they're like,
what did I just stumble upon?
Speaker 12 (01:23:51):
You know?
Speaker 6 (01:23:51):
Listen, I I the first time I had fuai Gra
that really blew my mind. I think I was at
a restaurant and it was justin Warner's I think one
of his first restaurants called do We're Dying in uh
Bedsty in Orklyn, and they had a Fuagra donut and
I ate one, and I went back and I bought
the rest of them that he had.
Speaker 4 (01:24:09):
They were all I wanted them all.
Speaker 6 (01:24:11):
I mean, a Fuagra moves so light and fluffy but
inside a perfectly crunchy, perfect donut with and he had
like a like a like a like a glaze on it,
like a fruit glaze. It was like the perfect Fuagra
And it was like a three biter.
Speaker 4 (01:24:25):
Oh man. I mean, you can do so much with it.
You can do so much with it. It's so much fun.
Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Things sound delicious. You get me so fired up.
Speaker 5 (01:24:34):
I gotta go buy foagras now for sure, Like this
is what we're gonna do. We gotta go buya and
try to make some fun things with it.
Speaker 6 (01:24:40):
Well, those sausages are definitely getting bought. I mean, I'm
so sad football season's over and I'm just finding out
about foie gras.
Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
You're gonna say you just found out football season was over.
Speaker 4 (01:24:48):
Yeah, well that too sports.
Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
I just found out it was that there's no more football.
Speaker 4 (01:24:53):
Well no, I think there's like arena football or something
like this. Is there like a new football league some
of the football?
Speaker 5 (01:24:58):
Yeah, the XFL, Yeah, that's I start. That starts soon
in March, which which is fun to watch too. But listen,
uh flog Ra, those brats are gonna happen. You got
to check him out. You gotta go to Hudson Valley
Flogara dot com. Great stuff there, and of course check
out our guest Jordan Gnore and Lenny Messina, two great
human beings there doing some really good stuff. I mean,
Lenny Assina is one of the smartest chef you're ever
going to meet. He doesn't act like he's smart.
Speaker 3 (01:25:19):
He's smart.
Speaker 6 (01:25:20):
He's so smart, he's so he's such a great chef.
I mean his restaurant, Lola Restaurant. All one word at
Lola Restaurant. Check that out. It's in Great Neck.
Speaker 4 (01:25:29):
If you're on Long Island, you don't go eat there,
You're you're really sleeping on a gym.
Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
The show broadcasting Long Island.
Speaker 6 (01:25:34):
Yeah exactly. I'm just saying, like, go over there. It's
a ferry ride, it's it's not far from Poor Jeff.
You know, you could easily easily go and enjoy his
restaurant and.
Speaker 5 (01:25:44):
Worth the trip. Worth the trip for sure. And you
know what I'm guessing. I'm guessing he's probably a little
flogger on the menu.
Speaker 3 (01:25:48):
That's my guest.
Speaker 4 (01:25:49):
Dude, the whole roasted foger out. Did you even talk
about that?
Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
Oh yeah, we talked about it.
Speaker 4 (01:25:54):
Remember Yeah, Oh man, roasted hard. That sounds so good.
Speaker 3 (01:25:59):
Unbelievable.
Speaker 9 (01:26:00):
Man.
Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
I'll tell you what.
Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
Listen, go out there, try something different, Try some different food,
past something you haven't had before. Change your dinner plans,
go order some fuagra for next weekend because it's gonna
be delicious. I'm telling you Hudson Valley Fagra dot com.
It's not a scary thing to cook, it's not a
scary thing to eat. It's delicious and will change anything
you put it in or having it by itself. It's amazing.
For Chef Jeffy, I'm Chef Plump. Thanks for checking out
Plumb the foods right here on the Voice of Connecticut
(01:26:22):
w c C and friends. Remember food is one of
the most important things we have in life. Everything important
life with volls around food. We'll see you guys next
weekend right here on wicc rest in peace, Meat.
Speaker 6 (01:26:31):
Offs, Dass
Speaker 9 (01:26:55):
And the rest.
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