January 21, 2013
Amuse-Bouche
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gésier de canard confit
(preserved duck gizzard)
In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side-dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.
 [Thus an] enraptured Ichabod [Crane] fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow-lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burthened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel…
When I when looking for literary references to gizzards, I expected to find doggerel by Ogden Nash rather than Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Gizzard is a word that just sounds like you want to write poems about. Or maybe at least to shout “gizzard” over and over on an empty, big city, business district street early on a Sunday morning. Gizzard, gizzard, gizzard.
Although the gizzard is technically a thick-muscled organ—we only eat the muscle portion—in some animals used to grind up foods, sometimes with the aid of small stones, in literature it often refers to an imaginary organ in the human gut from which unpleasant things or thoughts emanate.
As in this quote from Samuel Pepys Diary, dated 17 June 1668.
I find my wife hath something in her gizzard that only waits an opportunity of being provoked to bring up.
Ask ten Americans, especially young ones, what a gizzard is and you’ll get eleven wrong answers. Occasionally, respondant will know it as one of the pieces of meat that comes in the paper bag inside the Thanksgiving turkey and that maybe winds up in a giblet gravy. (Most don’t know what giblets are either.) Ethnic grocery stores will sell gizzards in their meat sections, but it’s much harder to find these little delicacies in the mainstream markets that most Americans patronize.
One exception may be Potterville, Michigan. This is the location of Joe’s Gizzard City [http:⁄⁄www.gizzardcity.com⁄] where for $9.99 you can get Joe’s Famous Chicken Gizzards. These are described on the menu as “what has made Joe’s what it is today! We guarantee they’re so tender you can cut them with a spoon! Try them Original, Cajun, Garlic & Herb, Tex Mex, Naked Fried, or Naked Nuked.” If you can’t decide which sounds the best, there’s also a sampler plate for the same price.
In France, a common, meal-size salad is a salade verte aux gésiers confits, a green salad topped with warm, preserved duck gizzards. One day recently I found myself blessed with both a large package of duck gizzards and a can of goose fat. Normally, I would confit the gizzards in fresh lard, but the availability of the goose fat was an opportunity too good to pass up. Once they were finished cooking, I separated some of the gizzards to use as an amuse-bouche and ate the rest that night for dinner. The amuse-bouche gizzards were vacuum-packed and frozen until needed.
Since gésiers confits are traditionally served warm on a bed of salad greens and topped with a vinaigrette, I felt obliged to prepare the amuse-bouche in a similar manner. Individual gésiers confits were fried in a little goose fat until slightly brown, cut into two pieces, and served on a piece of very young butter lettuce that had first been lightly sprayed with a good quality olive oil. A couple grains of salt finished the presentation.
I think the best way to eat these is to wrap the lettuce around the gizzard, pick up the package with my fingers, and devour the whole combination in one bite. My more dainty guests use a fork or chopsticks.

© 2013 Peter Hertzmann. All rights reserved.