The Ultimate Valentine's Day Meal
Ready to sacrifice cholesterol and cost constraints on the altar of romance next Thursday? Then reserve a table for two at Astor Center, where Gascon chef and specialty foods purveyor Ariane Daguin will prepare a five-course, foie gras dinner to be accompanied by nine vintages of the iconic Sauternes, Chateau d'Yquem. The tab for this ultimately sensual alliance of food and liquid is $1,295 per couple.
"As one who's never been big on Valentine's Day, I tried to think of what would be the most ridiculously decadent dinner we could do," Astor Center director Lesley Townsend said one day last week, as she showed off the center's spacious kitchen one floor above Astor Wines on Lafayette Street.
Her idea: "I decided to ask Ariane to come here to prepare foie gras in as many ways as she possibly could. Obviously, that would call for some great wine. So I asked Astor's wine buyer if she could rustle up a bunch of vintages of Yquem, and she said, 'Sure.'"
Ms. Daguin's foie gras pedigree is impeccable. Seven generations of her family have been involved with foie gras production in Gascony. As a 10-year-old, Ms. Daguin was already adept at cutting up a duck, thanks to instruction by her father, owner and chef of the Hôtel de France in the village of Auch. Ms. Daguin arrived in New York as a Barnard student in 1977 intending to study journalism, but instead reverted to her ancestral calling and now owns New Jersey-based D'Artagnan, a purveyor of foie gras to restaurants, retailers, and the public. Her well-received Gascon restaurant D'Artagnan had a four-year run in Midtown, beginning just before September 11, 2001. "It was a lot of work for small rewards," she said.
How to make multiple courses of foie gras not seem repetitive? "That's easy to do," she said, "because whether it's served hot or cold, seared or cooked slowly in a terrine, foie gras tastes like a different animal each time."
The dinner opens with "three or four" kinds of duck foie canapés, including one she calls "French kiss" — "prune marinated for two days in Armagnac, and then the prune is stuffed with foie gras, then wrapped in mille-feuille pastry and baked." The inspiration for French kiss came from a terrine her father made, in which sliced lobes of foie gras were alternated with layers of Armagnac-infused dark prune. "The sweetness of prune and acidity of Armagnac enhance each other," she said. This first course will be served with Yquem's dry white wine, called Ygrec.
After that amuse-bouche comes a cold terrine of foie gras with quince chutney, accompanied by 1979 and 1994 Yquem. "I chose this chutney because there are quince aromas in Yquem," Ms. Daguin said. "Quince is also an indigenous fruit in Gascony. When you mark off your farm from that of your neighbors, you traditionally do it by planting a border of quince trees." The third course is pan-seared foie gras drizzled with port wine "reduced almost to a syrup," and partnered with Yquem 1980 and 1987.
After that course, Ms. Daguin will call a Gascon version of timeout — inserting a glass of white, unaged Armagnac. Called a trou Gascon or "Gascon hole," "it's just to make a little room after three rich dishes."
Into that trou will go the next dish: boned quail stuffed with foie gras and wild mushrooms, with black truffle shavings and a grape-and-black truffle sauce, to be washed down with Yquem 1986 and1995. "I know the 1986 Yquem, which still has all the vitality of a young wine, but also has the fortitude and character of an older wine," she said. Dessert will be foie gras beignets, dusted with sugar and cinnamon, followed by a fruit tart, accompanied by the youngest Yquem of the evening, vintage 2000.
Will the glories of this dinner push thoughts of romance out of mind? Ms. Daguin responds without hesitation: "In Gascony, we always thought of foie gras as an aphrodisiac."
Perfect Pairings: D'Artagnan Foie Gras & Chateau d'Yquem, the Gallery at Astor Center, 399 Lafayette St. at 4th Street, reservations at 212-674-7501 or at astorcenternyc.com, $1,295 a couple.
