Cooking, Recipes, Wine............ and Ethical Foie Gras - At Last!

There's so much snobbery surrounding Foie Gras. For some, it appears to be such a holy grail of French cuisine that it's mere appearance on a menu or atop a salad gives a restaurant some kind of special status. It's as if they're saying "look at all the expense and suffering that's gone into your meal - it has to be good". Not always so! Worse still, and partly because foie gras remains an expensive product, the French surround it with mystique and tradition and far too often throw any notion of risk or creativity out of the window when it comes to cooking with foie gras.

So, while the traditional foie gras on toast with sweet white wine is a winning and simple combination, there's plenty of scope for doing something a little different. Such as Foie Gras a la Breville.

So, recognising that we're really just talking about top end toasted sandwiches there really must be some scope for using the best sandwich maker out there - the Breville in the preparation of your foie gras.... And it's not just a pretentious sounding name for a dish. Using duck fat on your toasted sandwiches instead of butter is delicious.
So here's the recipe:

• Foie Gras
• Fresh ripe pears, quartered
• brioche or sweetish bread, sliced as thinly as possible
• Fresh Basil

A little warm water on the outside of the jar helps to melt the fat and ease out the foie gras. Carefully run a knife around the edge and prise out the contents of the jar. Carefully scrape off the fat and spread it directly onto the bread. Now with the "buttered" side of the bread facing outward and the breville up to temperature, place some foie gras, skinned pear and a touch of basil onto the bread taking note of the way it will be sliced by the sandwich maker. No matter how you prepare your foie gras, never spread it; slice it carefully as much of the subtlety is in the texture.

Cook for a minimum of time - just enough to make the bread golden and, if possible use the pear to insulate the liver so that it remains at the centre of the sandwich and doesn't get cooked too much. It's delicious (in the words of a very traditional former french restaurant owner). "I'd never have thought of doing that," said Nathalie's mum. Ah the delights of the Breville. I will say that you really need to get the bread as finely sliced as possible and preferably use a bread that toasts very quickly. I think that using chollah might be just what this requires to elevate this into something even more special. Find a chollah that will slice to fit into a breville and give it a go. We accompanied this dish with a 1998 Sauternes but a Montbazillac or a Muscat de Rivesaltes or even a white Banyuls are all great alternatives. Perhaps even a Rivesaltes Ambre is worth trying too.