a roast goose on a friday night

If you read this regularly you’ll see I am running on a theme.  If you were impressed with what I could do with a chicken you are about to find out what I did with a goose.  I also will be giving you another dinner party menu.

For dinner this week we had some dear friends that bought with them a list of intolerances, good job I embrace a culinary challenge.  What I did do was cook a three course balanced  dinner (perhaps a touch wintry for spring) without using any substitute allergy ingredients and of course it was all Elizabeth David.  To start we had an onion soup, followed by a roast goose then pears in red wine.

It did feel a little excessive to cook a goose on a friday night but it did mean a another tick in the French Provincial cooking book.  First of all the legs were removed from the bird to confit.  The legless bird was then roasted and served with goose fat roast potatoes, watercress and hard boiled eggs a la Elizabeth.  I panicked there was no sauce but the flavours and textures worked so well and it was so juicy it didn’t matter.  The next goose dinner was inspired by our son who had been asking about chinese food.  I made a goose and vegetable stir fry with a chinese  sauce of five spice, honey, rice wine, soy and lime.

I used the carcasse to make a stock. This stock became a nettle soup and also featured in the rather alarming, goose giblet stew.  Sometimes Elizabeth is a bit stingy on her instructions and with the giblet stew there was some guessing.  It was a stew of the goose giblets, onion, carrots, tomatoes and I added some merguez sausage and haricot beans.  I decided to use my common sense and remove the giblets and what was left was a tasty enough stew. 

Next I had my first attempt at rillettes, these are a slow cooked combination of pork and goose cooked in their fat.  This is a way of preserving meat and is great served on toast or with a salad.  I also confit the goose legs, another great way to preserve meat, these will become a cassoulet.  What I love about preserving meat in these ways is that you can have a long lasting back up meal waiting in the fridge. This is particularly useful when you’ve got four increasingly hungry children that are hectic enough that just popping to the shops isn’t always an option.