It is unlikely that the Wearside forebears of Kate Middleton had strong views on whether it was appropriate for a prince's bride-to-be and probable future Queen of England, or anyone else come to that, to eat foie gras.
But there was strong rent-a-quote response the other day to news - news? - that young Kate had chosen to eat the delicacy at a lunch that included Camilla Parker Bowles among the guests so was always bound to provide plenty of scraps, if not a great deal of meat, for people in my trade. It was a case of Middle England, and the prohibitionist food lobby, on the warpath
My purpose is not to stick up for everything that happens in the name of putting tasty food on our plates, but to pledge solidarity for once with a member of the royal entourage. As observant readers of Salut! may have noticed, I am also fond of foie gras and have said so publicly on more than one occasion.
So this little posting from the site's history is dedicated to young Kate, little though she may feel in need of my defence of her right to select freely from a menu placed before her eyes at Koffmann's Restaurant. Some of it has no direct relevance to the present controversy, but the first part certainly does and I think it kinder to the reader to leave the piece intact ...
Plenty of people find the whole concept of foie gras utterly objectionable. Witness the prohibition movement sweeping parts of the western world, notably America.
For every person who says le gavage, the feeding - or gorging - of ducks and geese to fatten their livers, is painless, there is another to denounce the process as an indefensibly cruel farming method that should have no place in humane society.
In France, which has Europe's largest Muslim population (pending a successful Turkish bid for EU membership), there is a new dimension to debate about the acceptability or otherwise of foie gras: sales of the halal variety have risen sharply in recent years. Last week, I went to Paris to write about this for The National, Abu Dhabi.
Now I am no scientist - ask any biology or physics master who ever tried to teach me - so have no worthwhile view on whether Muslim authorities are correct in claiming that slaughter by halal means is painless.
I am against cruelty to animals. Livestock is bred in order to provide us, during life or upon death (or both), with food and other needs. Regarding that as natural, which is itself a controversial view as far as animal welfare campaigners are concerned, is not the same as condoning the infliction of pain with a view to pleasing our palates.
But yes, I like foie gras. My own convenient absolution came with a visit to a farm in the Dordogne where ducks and geese lined up with obvious enthusiasm to be fed. It would have been inaccurate to apply the term force-feed to what I saw; no suffering or even protest was evident as the tubes were inserted into throats. (That does not mean that every duck farm is run with such decency; I once visited another, much larger one where I was refused permission to watch le gavage, which instantly aroused my suspicion).
So what of halal foie gras? Since I claim no expertise on its production, beyond pointing out that it differs only in terms of how the birds die, I will limit myself to saying the taste seems indistinguishable from that of classic varieties of the delicacy.
And where did I go in Paris to report on its commercial success? Well, not to supermarkets in the Carrefour or Leclerc chains, where sales have been - in areas with fair-sized immigrant populations - particularly strong. I do not know what kind of rapport French journalists have with the press offices of each company, but I found the stonewalling techniques of Mme Vaudron (Carrefour) and Mme Kramer (Leclerc), expertly deployed even as they promised sweetly to supply the modest help I sought, unbreachable.
Instead of heading out to a superstore, then, I ended up wandering around the densely north African quarter of Barbès-Rochechouart, a short way from the Gare du Nord. Inside this Algerian-owned butcher's shop, I found what I was looking for.
Aziz Hamdane, who has lived in France for half a century, sold me his last remaining jar, for the princely sum of €14.90. They go, he informed me, comme let petits pains. Think hot cakes if you don't understand French.
Now for the road test. It did not seem prudent to accost a Muslim mother, with children in tow, and offer them a slice, so I bought a baguette and presented my new possessions to the owner of a little restaurant.
He turned out to be Aziz's grandson. It still took all my powers of persuasion to get him to try it as a pre-lunch snack. Not because it was halal, of course, but because it was foie gras.
"Ça, c'est pour la bourgeoisie," said Yassin with admirable republican spirit. In the end he tasted a little, but only enough to enable him to pull a face and confirm his impulsive first reaction.
Never mind. By pure chance, the Hamdane family had given me quite enough for the top and tail of my article. The Vaudron-Kramer pincer movement no longer mattered.
And don't let on to grandfather or grandson but I was able to write my piece and tuck in, before the flight home, to a sublime dish of andouillettes au champagne at my favourite brasserie opposite Gare du Nord.
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