Fluffernutter avec foie gras

At ABV in New York, you can order a $17 Foie Gras Fluffernutter, a Wonderbread sandwich that combines peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, and foie gras. Evidently a dessert, it's topped with hazelnut crumble and sour apple.

Foie Gras Fluffernutter

(Photo: Cornerstone Communications) (Thanks, @JamesLosey!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: carbs • Food • not food • nyc • Weird

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pKp

Foie gras as a dessert ? Ferchrissakes…
- robdobbs
  
  So that’s what santorum looks like.
- Paul Renault
  
  Just the thing to follow your poutine au foie gras.
  http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Duck/recipe.html?dishid=8697
  
  Martin Picard is a god!
VicqRuiz

Hooo-boy, need the gustatory equivalent of a unicorn pic, stat.

Nice use of “evidently” there, Cory.
http://www.epinardscaramel.com TokenFrenchDude

This means war.
eldritch

I’d rather have steak flavored ice cream. They’ve pulled off bacon, I’m sure they can manage steak.
Robert Cruickshank

I’ve found, when making open-faced sandwiches, that it’s helpful to pick one side of the bread for the insides to live on. Generally, the top side is the one I go with, but maybe that’s just me.
donovan acree

Yay Fluffernutter! I adore fluffernutters but they also have a real power to them. Next time someone starts talking to you about something you would not like to hear, just say “I sure would love a fluffernutter right now.”
The other person will either ask “What’s a fluffernutter?” in which case you can describe what a fluffernutter is or they will already know and tell you how much they love or hate fluffernutters. Either way the topic has been changed and they will be derailed by the magic of the fluffernutter.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  I have a cat named Fluffernutter. Mostly we just call her Fluffy, but Fluffernutter is her whole name. Your comment tickles me quite a bit.
EarthtoGeoff

I was surprised to have some foie gras served with chocolate sauce once — the sweet and savory combo was better than you might think. And by better I mean the stuff was f#cking delicious.
Wes Sweat

I worked at a restaurant in Taos, NM that served foie on a piece of brioche french toast, topped with cherry chutney and maple syrup. The sweet and savory really works well with that particular liver. It was delicious!
Lobster

I bet it’s more expensive because they’re using Wonderbread. It’s difficult to prepare food ironically.
gsilas

One of the most incomprehensibly amazing dishes I ever had was the foie gras maple sausage biscuit at ANIMAL in Los Angeles. Fresh biscuit, slice of seared foie gras, sausage gravy, and a dash of maple syrup. HEAVEN.
Guest

I think the seat on my fixie is set too high to reach the table
- OoerictoO
  
  wrong type of hipster. nice try, though.
GyroMagician

I’ll eat most things, but Foie Gras is just a step too far. I’ll pass, thanks.
http://www.facebook.com/jon.trew1 Jon Trew

Hey Boing Boing – you are usually one of the good guys, so why are you advertising Foie Gras? It’s barbaric. Geese are force fed with a tube rammed down their throats. Don’t promote it please!
- blueelm
  
  Does this count as promoting? Because this sounds really amazingly gross. The fact that some people apparently like it doesn’t make it seem less gross to me. You can find a market for eating just about anything.
  - OoerictoO
    
    15 year vegetarian say: this sounds goddamn delicious.
    it was possibly meant as non-promotion, considering BB’s previous anti-foie articles.
    but to anyone who enjoys food as a hobby or job, this is pure promotion.
    i’d never eat this, and i’m anti-animal cruelty and therefor against foie-gras, but i constantly fight with my chef friends about it.
    it’s like fighting against religion. people think they NEED it, despite any perceive harms to society, environment, etc
- http://twitter.com/bbum Bill Bumgarner
  
  You’ve been fed a bunch of nonsense by animal rights fundamentalists.
  
  The reality with meat — any meat — is that good quality meat only comes from animals that are treated well and are not under stress.
  
  Foie gras is exactly the same way. If the geese were stressed, the quality of the foie gras that resulted would be inedible.
  
  If you have ever been to a quality foie gras farm (which I have), the geese are not stressed at all. In fact, the geese are generally quite excited to be fed and will often crane their necks to receive the feeding tube.
  
  Sure, the notion that the geese are purposefully overfed and overweight does belie a bit of a “playing god” syndrome, but the claim that it is somehow torture for the animals is utter bollocks.
  
  Certainly, there are probably unethical foie gras producers that do stress the crap out of their flocks in the name of maximizing production. Those kinds of assholes exist in every industry and, hopefully, through factual awareness they will be eliminated from the market by either market forces or legal enforcement.
- retepslluerb
  
  I’m actually not very fond of force feeding, but by all accounts it’s not that discomforting to the birds, due to the different design of windpipe and esophagus.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Who says it’s goose and not banker?
- EnglebertFlaptyback
  
  “Foie gras? A bit cruel to the geese, isn’t it?”
  “Fuck ‘em. You can’t care about every damn thing.”
Teller

Fly away home, little friends. And hit the foodie’s bike seat on your way.
greebo

I was going to say there ought to be a law against that type of thing, but it turns out the Californians have beaten me to it. Goes into effect from July: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_foie_gras_law
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_RHG2QORT54PKZY4LHHVHBOZBZY Abe Lincoln
  
  “California State statute enacted in 2004 that prohibits the “force feed[ing of] a bird for the purpose of enlarging the bird’s liver beyond normal size” as well as the sale of products that are a result of this process.”
  
  Fine. I’ll force feed the goose to increase the size of it’s wings/feet/eyeballs/whatever. According to this statute that’s perfectly legal. I wish legislators would actually read the legislation they propose. This says that so long as I’m force feeding the goose to engorge something other than it’s liver then that is perfectly cool. They just passed a statute that is completely impotent to do what they actually want. Why not just say you can’t force feed geese regardless of the reason?
- OoerictoO
  
  thanks for the reminder. it’s also illegal in Chicago. There were some attempts in NYC that failed, IIRC
  - gsilas
    
    The Chicago ban has been repealed:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/us/15liver.html
- retepslluerb
  
  I see. Slowly working up to the important stuff, like declawing and cutting horse whiskers.
Kristyn S

I only like my food force fed
- OoerictoO
  
  doesn’t the tube make you gag when they pull it out?
  is your liver tender to the touch yet?
  how long do the doctors say you have to live?
http://www.facebook.com/people/Andy-Murdock/783770273 Andy Murdock

Watch this before you enjoy your next tortured to death goose liver.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiZmZvHoX4I
- publicuum
  
  read my post below. Stop living in fear and acting out of anger. Hope and love will get us fair results, which still taste good. (force-feeding should still be banned, IMO)
  - OoerictoO
    
    ah perception. i perceive the effect of this video being most impactful on people whom have LOVE (or at least sympathy) for these sentient creatures. i HOPE negative imagery will have a positive impact on our society and understand that it goes hand in hand with purely positive messages, which unfortunately do not impact all…
piminnowcheez

(replying to jon trew)

Does this post — the point of which I see as highlighting an unlikely food combination — really qualify as advertising or promotion of foie gras? If the post were about, say, peanut butter hamburgers, would you consider it advertising for meat-eating?

The morality of eating meat in general or foie gras in particular is a perfectly good subject to argue about, but it seems like you’ve got to acknowledge that lots of people eat both and outrage at their mere mention isn’t going to win you a lot of converts. And must be kind of exhausting, I’d think.
publicuum

replying to jon trew:

not necessarily true. There is “free-range” foie-gras. The fattening of the liver is something geese do naturally, in preparation for their long migration flights. just catch ‘em right after they’re done gorging. In fact, this method was used recently to win a major foie-gras competition.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/free-range-foie-gras-50091809

let’s look for answers instead of just hating on gastronomer’s past mistakes.
- piminnowcheez
  
  That’s a great article at your link, thanks for that.
- OoerictoO
  
  while this is true, it’s still very rare w/ regards to the foie found in restaurants. California’s ban on the sale of force-fed bird livers will go a long way in preventing this hateful and cheap process in the region… i hope.
- gsilas
  
  Here’s another:
  http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-18/news/is-foie-gras-torture/
  
  There’s another article I read awhile back where the foie gras farm was observed to be humane as well. Factually, the geese have no nerves in their neck, so they don’t feel pain due to the apparatus going down their neck. They also willingly go to the feeding chamber. Finally, abusing the duck will bruise the tender liver, which reduces the grade of the foie gras and correspondingly the price per pound that it is sold for, so there is economic incentive for the farmers to treat the ducks gently.
  
  I see no difference between foie gras and regular animal farming, in fact I would expect the geese to be treated better than at your average chicken farm.
  
  (and it’s delicious)
  - greebo
    
    I dunno about “no nerves in their necks”, but I do know it takes a lot of nerve to try to argue there’s a humane way of fattening up geese and then slaughtering them to eat their livers.
    Look, I understand some people like to eat dead animals. But please don’t kid yourself that killing things for food can be “humane”. If you’re going to eat meat, you really ought to acknowledge that someone had to kill it for you first.
    - EnglebertFlaptyback
      
      You don’t think it’s possible to treat animals well while they’re being made ready for their demise? Is it not possible or desirable to slaughter them in a manner as quick and painless as possible?
    - Guest
      
      Chances are a machine did that part.
piminnowcheez

I really like the concept of highbrow meets lowbrow cuisine, although I’m not completely sold on the execution so far. Do or Dine in Bed-Stuy and Momofuku Milk Bar are just two recently-celebrated examples of this approach in New York (Do or Dine features foie gras donuts, for instance), both places that, imho, have great *sounding* menus full of things that don’t actually taste that good.

I did once go to a very fancy restaurant in Florida that featured a local-fare-dressed-up menu and had pimento cheese on house-made saltine-style crackers. That was a pretty successful example of highbrow+lowbrow, but then again, come on: saltines. How can they be bad?
- VicqRuiz
  
  The only such place I ever ate at featured flavors that were indistinguishable from lowbrow and prices that were indistinguishable from highbrow.
manicbassman

Sorry, but Foie Gras is just beyong the pale… the method of production is cruel beyond belief…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras_controversy#Legal_status
- mccrum
  
  *typically* beyond the pale. If there are any high end New York restaurants not getting their foie gras from some local, humane supplier like the one mentioned earlier http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-02-18/news/is-foie-gras-torture/ they have failed as a restaurant and likely will not be here long.
  
  Cruel beyond belief might also apply to the clothes you wear, the electronics you use, the vehicles you drive and pretty much everything you consume. One has to be aware, however, that not everything is done the same way and there are humane ways of raising animals for food supplies the same way there are ways to have worker’s rights.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Rev-Ian-Carroll/505005266 Rev. Ian Carroll

ITS NOT A DESSERT, ITS ON ABV’S MENU AS AN APPETIZER. DUH
http://twitter.com/andyinindy andyinindy

On the subject of free-range/humane foie gras, don’t miss the amazing tale of Eduardo Sousa: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3
frozenintime

I’ll take one, but please hold the fois gras and marshmellow fluff.
Bad Juju

Successful Troll is Successful. Good job, Cory.
http://profile.yahoo.com/OMHO6ER5QJE3SIZ35VAXIRCLYM Stephan

I love Foie Grass.
Thank you Geese/Ducks.