A House of Bricks...and Meat: Les Trois Petits Cochons

Founded in 1975, Les Trois Petits Cochons was an American pioneer in the sale of French style charcuterie, pate and other meats. For many years, even after the advent of the internet, they stayed small and mostly East Coast focused.  Recently, they have had a change in management and seem to be branching out.

The company sent me a sample pack of pates, sausages, salami, duck confit and cornichon.

Chicken Sausage with Spinach and Gruyere

I'm not usually a huge fan of packaged, gourmet sausage, particularly chicken sausage, but these were great. It's a mild white sausage, sort of weisswurst-like, with a very subtle gruyere flavor. It's tasty and goes well with a nice, seeded mustard.

Saucisson Sec Aux Herbes de Provence

This was a delicious pork salami with a nice balance of spices and a light garlic note. While it's a dry salami, it's juicy and satisfyingly chewy, as opposed to some salamis that are harder.

Duck Confit

These are packaged confit of duck leg and thigh. I'm a big fan of duck confit. These are a little on the salty side but quite rich with great flavor. Shredded and lightly fried to crisp up the fat, the duck was fantastic in a salad, a sour vinaigrette providing a nice contrast to the duck's fat and salt.

Mousse Imperiale is a pork and chicken liver mousse with truffles. There isn't much truffle influence, but the pate itself is fantastic, my favorite of the three.

Terrine de Trois Rois is a terrine with layers of of Armagnac macerated prunes, duck foie gras and some sort of chicken sausage. The foie and macerated figs were great and went perfectly together, but the chicken was like an unwelcome guest at this party, its gelatinous texture a distraction from the creamy foie gras.

Wild Boar Pate is wild boar with pork and chicken liver pate, chestnuts and raisins. This was another great pate with sweet and savory notes.

Cornichons

These were pretty basic but tasty cornichon. Sour pickles are the perfect accompaniment to a charcuterie plate.


The overall quality of these products was outstanding. I would buy pretty much all of it again, and given how much I enjoyed the Trois Petits Cochons mousses, pates and sausages, I will certainly try other varieties.

Many Les Trois Petits Cochons items are available on Amazon, and their website also lists various markets that carry their products.

The Fall of Foie

Beginning today, foie gras, the ancient culinary delicacy consisting of the fattened liver of a duck or goose, is no longer legal in California. We've known this day was coming for a long time now. The ban was passed back in 2004 in a bipartisan effort by a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature. The long period between the law's enactment and its going into effect was intended to give California's one foie gras producer a chance to adapt or find a new line of work. (If you're interested in an engaging treatment of the general controversy around foie gras, I recommend Marc Caro's excellent book, The Foie Gras Wars.)

The law can be found beginning at section 25980 of California's Health & Safety Code. It prohibits two things:

• Force feeding a bird for the purpose of
  enlarging the bird's liver beyond normal size; and
• Selling a product that is made by force feeding a bird.

Force feeding is defined as "a process that causes the bird to
consume more food than a typical bird of the same species would
consume voluntarily. Force feeding methods include, but are not
limited to, delivering feed through a tube or other device inserted
into the bird's esophagus."

Violations are punishable by a fine of $1,000 per violation, per day.

It will be interesting to see if restaurants come up with creative ways around the ban, as they did during the brief period in which foie gras was banned in Chicago. For instance, producing and selling foie gras is illegal, but the law does not prohibit possessing, consuming or giving it away. In Chicago, a number of restaurants provided free foie gras with certain purchases, though my guess is that such schemes would still be interpreted as sales unless the foie could be obtained without any purchase at all.

Who knows what other hijinks or unintended consequences this prohibition might give rise to. Smuggling rings from Las Vegas? Foie gras speakeasys? Clandestine backyard goose farms? Foie gras kingpins? Stay tuned.