Foie Gras with Black Truffles

I was recently given the gift of a jar of extraordinary foie gras with summer truffles…

The foie gras was mi-cuit, meaning it was just partially cooked (to between 175°F and 200°F, or 80°C to 90°C), which is considered the best way to preserve foie gras, so only the finest quality livers are used. Once sealed in jars, the foie gras needs to be eaten within a few weeks, it’s so fresh and delicate.

So what does one do with a whole, entire jar of foie gras?

This was a very special jar of foie gras indeed, and perhaps the best in the world.
It was preserved by Monsieur Pebeyre, a forth-generation truffle hunter in the Dordogne (we used to have him ship black truffles to us at Chez Panisse). As you can see, he generously overloaded it with fragrant and elusive black summer truffle slices that he hunted and bits of tasty, yellow-gold duck fat.

I didn’t hesitate a moment to decide that this was the special occasion I’d been waiting for and popped open a special bottle of wine that I had been saving from California; a Navarro Late-Harvest Gewürtztraminer (from one of my favorite California winemakers)…spicy, fruity, and complex. Served very cold, it was the ideal companion to the rich duck liver, which we simply spread on toasted baguette slices, sprinkled with a few flecks of fleur de sel, and savored as an accompaniment to the nectar-like wine, which we enjoyed as an apéritif.