Our Version of the $50 Burger

About a week ago, we bought about a half a kilogram of foie gras de canard*, the liver of a fattened duck. I seasoned it with some salt and pepper and marinated it in some Calvados apple brandy. We seared some of it last week when Lynna's parents were here and served it with small toasts, some sliced melon and pistachios. It was pretty delicious. Since we still had some foie gras left over, I invited my friend Justin (also on exchange at HEC from USC's Marshall School of Business) over to help us finish it off.

I had heard of a "$50 burger" that has foie gras in it served at some swanky restaurant in New York and after a little bit of research on Google, I found out that Daniel Boulud serves a $50 burger (db Burger Royale) at his restaurant db Bistro Moderne. Apparently, it is made of ground sirloin, wrapped around braised short rib meat with foie gras and black truffles with slices of black truffle on top.

Feeling much less ambitious and not needing the excess of db's "Royale", we decided to just put some foie gras inside our burgers and a slice of seared foie gras on top. It's hard to find hamburger buns here in Paris, but Lynna was able to find these small brioche buns that would probably do the trick.

So we bought some ground beef and ground veal and seasoned it with shallots and sautéed mushrooms. We then placed a thin slice of foie gras inside the meat patty, seared it in a frying pan and then baked the patties in the oven to cook them through. Meanwhile, we seared another slice of foie gras to go on top of the burger. Once everything was ready, we assembled the burgers with the slightly toasted brioche buns, some mache (lamb's lettuce), a slice or two of tomato, some thinly sliced red onion, and some mayonnaise and mustard.

I don't think that I'd pay $50 for the burger we created, but boy was it tasty! I'm not usually one for messing with a simple formula like the classic American hamburger, but I must say that the addition of foie gras really made the burger nice and moist and gave it a great, luxurious flavor. It was definitely a fun way to polish off the rest of that half kilo of foie gras.

* For those of you who feel that eating foie gras contributes to animal cruelty, I apologize. I do understand your concern that force-feeding ducks and geese in order to grow their livers unusually large is inhumane. We all make our own decisions and I, unfortunately, have decided that foie gras is delicious and no more inhumane than the conditions in the mass factory cattle and hog farms that go to support the fast food industry in America. We will just have to agree to disagree. One last footnote: apparently it is now illegal to produce foie gras in California (or at least it will be in six plus years), which is all the more reason for us to take advantage of its abundance over here in France while we're here.

David's last editorial on the subject: Perhaps the California legislature can also find some time (in addition to worrying about the humane treatment of ducks and geese) to tackle equivalently important issues like healthcare, education, the budget deficit and disaster preparedness.