Food
Foie and Grits
Lesson time 12:52 min
Mashama explains the importance of beef liver and grits to the American South and the origins of her use of foie gras in the dish from her time studying in France. She demonstrates the preparation of foie gras, grits, and gravy.
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Topics include: Foie · Gravy · Plating
Teaches Southern Cooking
James Beard Award–winning chef Mashama Bailey teaches you techniques and recipes for nutritious, flavorful Southern dishes—from grits to gumbo.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] CHEF: A very popular southern dish is beef liver and grits. So during a special event at The Grey, I really was thinking about that dish and really longing for it and trying to figure out how to incorporate it in our menu. And because I spent some time in France, and it was really a formative time in my career, I got to experience a fatty duck liver, which is called foie gras. And it's really one of my favorite ingredients. I thought incorporating it over grits would make sense. And we did this dish at The Grey. And it's just been a hit ever since. This dish is a really good example of my evolution it takes a childhood memory, infuses it with some life experiences, and it gives you an end result that is very unique and in your own voice. For me, this dish, foie and grits with onion gravy represents that. This is our lobe of foie. It's usually about a pound, maybe a pound and a half. It has a very fatty texture. And so as it heats up, you know, you start to render some of the fat. So you want to keep it as cold as possible. Because it's so cold, it doesn't really slice as evenly as you would want it to. So a very easy trick to do is to have your knife in a hot water bain. Or have a blow torch in order to heat up whatever tool you're going to use to slice through it. It really gives you a clean slice. And I'll demonstrate that now. This foie lobe is irregularly shaped. And really what needs to be cleaned is what's inside of it. There are some veins that run through and across the sections. And sometimes while you're slicing it, you may expose one. And that's ultimately what you need to clean out of this foie, because that vein is really not pleasant to eat, and it's a little chewy, and the texture is very different. So you just want to remove that. And that's really the extent of cleaning it. We like to portion it and make sure it's even sized and things like that for presentation, so we end up with scraps that we turn into a mousse and we may put into another dish. But you can eat the foie as is. But normally, you really want to remove the veins that are within the lobe. So I have my knife and warm water. I'm just going to dry it. And whenever I'm portioning something, I like to break it down to a manageable size. So the first thing I'm going to do is cut this lobe right down the center. If your knife gets stuck, you can stick it right back in the water to heat it up again. Wipe it clean. And start where you left off. There are different layers in the foie loaf. And this, we will clean up as we portion it. But I really just wanted to slice it in half. If my knife was warmer toward the bottom, I would have gotten a cleaner slice like up at the top. You don't have to worry about it. This is a very forgiving piece of protein. You can smooth that out if you want. Remove these parts, and save them, and put them into a filling for a ravioli, or mix it with butter. You can put i...
About the Instructor
Through her award-winning Savannah restaurant, The Grey, Chef Mashama Bailey has brought worldwide acclaim to the rich, layered traditions of African American Southern cooking. Now the James Beard Award–winning chef shows you traditional and reimagined techniques and recipes for nutritious, flavorful Southern dishes. From pork shank and collard greens to gumbo and grits, explore a world of history, texture, and taste.
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Mashama Bailey
James Beard Award–winning chef Mashama Bailey teaches you techniques and recipes for nutritious, flavorful Southern dishes—from grits to gumbo.
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