This dish, which I've learned from the late Jean-Louis Palladin, is one of the most popular I have presented in my classes. Many other versions have cropped up elsewhere since I began teaching it in 1978, but this is the original.
You can substitute chicken livers for duck livers, or mix duck, goose, and chicken livers together. Do not be tempted to mix the eggs, milk, and cream in a food processor; the resulting flans will not be as silky and tender.
For mildness, the livers are soaked in milk for at least several hours, so plan your time accordingly.
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Trim the livers to remove any green bile, fat, and sinews. Soak them in the milk in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. Drain the livers and rinse under cold running water until the water runs clear; pat dry.
Marinate the livers in the Armagnac seasoned with ¼ teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper for 1 to 2 hours.
Lightly butter 5 or 6 four-ounce porcelain ramekins or molds. Arrange them in a shallow roasting pan lined with 2 or 3 layers of newspaper (slit the newspaper in the center to avoid swelling when wet). Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a food processor, combine the duck livers, demi-glace, garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, ¾ teaspoon pepper, and a sprinkling of nutmeg. Process for 2 minutes. Transfer to a strainer set over a bowl; add the whole eggs, egg yolk, warm milk, and cream. Strain, pressing with a rubber spatula; discard stringy egg albumen and any liver strands.
Carefully ladle equal amounts of the flan mixture into the ramekins, stirring the contents in the bowl; the molds should be not quite filled. Place the roasting pan in the center oven rack. Carefully pour enough boiling water into the roasting pan to reach halfway up the sides of the molds.
Bake for 20 minutes, or until the flans feel firm when lightly prodded with two fingers. If the flans are not set, turn off the heat and let stand in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes longer. Remove the water bath from the oven and let the molds stand in the water for 10 minutes longer before turning out.
While the flans are baking, make the Caramel Vinegar Sauce. Season the sauce to taste with pepper and an extra shot or two of red wine vinegar, if necessary; the balance should be more acidic and peppery than sweet. Spoon the hot sauce around the turned-out flans and serve at once.
In a heavy, nonreactive 2½-quart saucepan, combine the vinegar and sugar. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Continue to cook over moderate heat until the vinegar is reduced to a thick syrup.
Swirl in the demi-glace and bring to a boil. Add the cream but do not stir; the cream will be “swallowed up” by the sauce. Boil vigorously for 5 minutes, or until the surface is full of tight bubbles.
Then stir gently until you can catch a glimpse of the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat at once.
Chinese and Hungarian markets sell duck livers loose. Look for the palest ones, since color indicates how they were fed. I was once shown a chicken that had been fed only rice; its liver was almost white. In the Southwest, where chickens and ducks are fed primarily on corn, their livers are “blond.”
To turn out all the molds onto a single warmed serving platter, place a wide spatula over the first mold; with spatula holding the flan in place, invert the mold over serving dish. Slip the spatula from underneath, leaving the flan and mold in place. Lift off the mold. Repeat with remaining molds. Serve warm.
The sauce can be made ahead and warmed gently in a double boiler.
Making Sauces by Stratification
The concept of stratification was developed by the late brilliant teacher-chef André Guillot. Stratification is easy, and with it you can make sauces without the usual thickening agents (flour, arrowroot, or egg yolk) by a series of rapid reductions.
You start off with an acid—as, for example, the red wine vinegar in the Caramel Vinegar Sauce—which you reduce in a deep saucepan to intensify flavor. Then you add a protein-rich stock, deep in flavor, that will harmonize with the acid. In the case of the caramelized vinegar, you add a duck-flavored demi-glace with a background hint of red wine. Next you add heavy cream and, without whisking, allow the sauce to boil vigorously until lots of bubbles appear on the surface. From time to time you stir this bubbling mixture with a wooden spoon until you catch a glimpse of the bottom of the pan. When you see the bottom, your sauce is finished and will adhere lightly to meat or fish (in this case to duck liver flans).
Basically, what has happened is this: The water in the cream has evaporated, allowing the remaining butterfat, in the presence of protein and acid, to bind the sauce and make it silky.
“The faster the evaporation, the better the emulsification” is the rule for creating a sauce by stratification. It takes less than 10 minutes to complete the entire process in a heavy-bottomed pan, and the sauce will hold for quite a while.
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