I am very happy with Mayor Daley's goal to become the "greenest" city in the nation. We've made such progress in promoting sustainable agriculture, with the Green City Market and other farmer's markets providing convenient outlets for purchasing humanely-raised, sustainable food. Chicago hosted Farm Aid two years ago with events around the city, where I first met Sadhu Johnston, Commissioner, Chicago Department of Environment. We are also the host city of the annual FamilyFarmed.org conference and the All Things Organic conference.
Last year, the Chicago City Council passed a ban on foie gras, which is a product created by force feeding young ducks and geese with a metal pipe in order for them to develop fatty liver disease. You can see for yourself at www.banfoiegras.org to understand why this inhumane practice is not allowed in sustainable agriculture under certified organic guidelines. Foie gras is already banned in many European countries and a Zogby International poll found that 77% of people in the U.S. think that foie gras should be banned.
Since the ban was passed last year, many chefs have developed more humane alternatives (faux gras) to traditional foie gras that Phil Vettel, the Chicago Tribune food critic, has raved about (see article below).
Good for Chicago, for truly walking the "green" talk and putting our foot down in a step to promote humane and sustainable agriculture in Chicago. Let's be proud of this step. With Sheila O'Grady, Mayor Daley's former chief-of-staff, recently becoming the Executive Director of the Illinois Restaurant Association, I am hoping to see Chicago take on even more humane and sustainable agriculture initiatives to truly moves us towards Mayor Daley's goal of making Chicago the most sustainable and "greenest" city in the nation.
****************************************************************
DINING
How does faux foie gras taste? Our critic knows
Spiaggia, Tru rise to the creative challenge
By Phil Vettel
Tribune restaurant critic
Published September 21, 2006
I never thought I'd be saying this, but let's hear it for Joe Moore!
Were it not for the good alderman's sponsorship of the highly controversial foie-gras ban (still the law in Chicago as of this writing), two outstanding contributions to gastronomy might never have been invented.
Taking the ban as a personal challenge, four-star restaurants Spiaggia and Tru have come up with substitute dishes that, in distinctly different ways, echo the rich indulgence that characterizes the forbidden foie (which is made from the engorged livers of ducks and, less commonly, geese).
So naturally, I had to sample them. Line of duty and all that. So we purchased two samples (which Tru and Spiaggia were nice enough to deliver and set up) and tested them side-by-side in a state-of-the-art, um, cubicle.
At Spiaggia, the unwieldy title terrina de fagato grasso vegetariano is chef Tony Mantuano's molto Italiano way of saying "vegetarian foie-gras terrine." As the name suggests, no animals were harmed in the preparation of this dish; indeed, no animals were even mildly inconvenienced, except perhaps for the cow that gave the milk that made the butter.
At first glance it looks like a vague blob of pure duck fat, right town to the yellowish tinge, but it tastes considerably lighter, soft in the mouth but with a fine-grain texture in the finish. It tastes like liver, and though it lacks the characteristic foie-gras intensity, it's undeniably rich and indulgent.
"It's made with ceci beans, which are garbanzos," says Mantuano, "with caramelized onions, vin santo, butter and some other things I'm not going to tell you."
The inspiration, Mantuano says, came from a dish he ate in Milan 10 years ago. "It was a vegetarian foie-gras dish, and they called it such," he says. "I remembered about three of the ingredients, and described it to Effy [sous chef Efrain Medrano]. The next day he sat it down in front of me, I tasted it and it was pretty darn close. Amazing, really."
And now the dish, flanked by sliced figs and dribbles of balsamico alongside a plate of oven-toasted fruit bread, is part of Spiaggia's $135, seven-course tasting. "It's actually an amuse that's not listed on the menu," says Mantuano. "We do offer it a la carte for $17."
The interesting thing about the "Faux Gras," a $16 dish served at Tru, is that chef/partner Rick Tramonto didn't particularly want to develop it.
"I pushed back on this big time," he says. "When the ban came down, I didn't want to deal with it; I was just going to forget that foie gras ever existed. But Laurent [famed chef Laurent Gras, with whom Tramonto has partnered in the past] and I went back and forth, and this is the dish we came up with. But it's really Laurent's dish; I was the pooh-poohing American."
Tru's "Faux Gras" looks very much like the real thing, at least to those familiar with foie-gras torchon (in which the liver is salt-cured and poached to a uniformly smooth texture). That's because it's made of sauteed chicken livers and rendered pork fat ("like a chicken liver mousse with way more fat," Tramonto says). It's dusted with a little cocoa (which mimics some of the vein patterns in the real thing) and wrapped in a clear sheet of gelatin, agar-agar and sauternes. A little sprinkling of sea salt finishes the dish.
The result is amazing. The liver's cloudlike texture (without the gelatin binding, it would form a puddle) is creamy where foie gras is more dense, but the deep and rich flavor is spot on, right down to the almost-metallic aftertaste. The gelatin coating (don't even think of discarding that part) gives the Faux Gras the slow, melt-in-mouth sensation that the best torchons provide.
Served with dehydrated plums, peppery baby arugula and dots of cocoa oil, the dish looks as indulgent as it tastes.
In sum, if you're looking for a fat-liver fix that's so close to the real thing that it almost doesn't matter that it's imitation, head on over to Tru. But for an eye-opening demonstration that vegetarian eating can be a lot of fun, you've got to try the Spiaggia terrine.
Spiaggia, 980 N. Michigan Ave., 312-280-2750.
Tru, 676 N. St. Clair St., 312-202-0001.
----------
pvettel@tribune.com
*************************
With an MBA in Sustainable Management, Janice Neitzel, a principal of Sustainable Solutions Group, is facilitating sustainability strategy and innovative supply chain solutions while blogging on environmental, social, and animal-related business practices.
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.triplepundit.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1938
November 21
November 21
November 21
November 21
November 20
November 20
November 20
November 20
