As the video will relate this has to do with a dish I created and I named, “My Down Island French Toast”.
When I was a young chef coming up the French lauded delicacy of foie gras was not allowed in fresh form in the United States. This created a frustrating situation for us who wanted to offer the types of fare on menus in Europe. Canned foie gras was simply not going to do. The laws changed and by 1985 or so we not only could import it better yet we could obtain directly from purveyors like ‘Hudson Valley Foie Gras’. I am sure I had a number of trials with methods of cooking the duck livers before I came up with this one. I have been flattered that a number of chefs have made it from my recipe. The most powerful story about this however came to me from my friend and original business partner in NORMAN’s, Marsha Talianoff. She related how she’d recently been to a restaurant in Philadelphia run by James Beard award winning chef Michael Solomonov. He visited her table and told her how when he was a culinary student he did a stage at our restaurant. He was quite impressed with my “Down Island”. I hope you will hit the link and watch the video where I tell this story which touches me deeply.
