Oie Rôtie aux Pruneaux

Roasting a goose sounded like quite an adventure, especially considering I’ve never even eaten goose before! I love duck and truly wanted to cook a duck instead, but they were nowhere to be found at any of my local grocery stores, so goose it was. This recipe calls for the goose to be stuffed with prunes that have been stuffed with foie gras. First, the prunes are soaked in vermouth and bouillon and then the liquid is reserved for the sauce. Since I was unable to find liver paste, foie gras, at the grocery store, I simply sautéed the goose liver with shallots and skipped the step of blending it with the liver paste. The liver was then stuffed into the prunes.

The most difficult part of roasting the goose was defrosting it. I was on a short timeline and placed the bird under cold running water for about four hours. I could tell as soon as I opened the package that this was going to be a greasy adventure. Geese have a lot of fat on them including a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. Once the bird was defrosted enough to extract the neck and innards, I cut out as much of the extra fat as possible from around the openings. The cavity of the goose was really quite large and the 40 or so prunes only lined the bottom. The recipe then instructs that the bird be trussed much like the whole chicken from a prior post. I felt quite efficacious completing this step from memory, especially since the needle was much more slippery given oily goose. Unlike the chicken, MAFC instructs the cook to prick the skin all over the goose before drying it and placing it in the roasting pan. There is no explanation for this step, but my guess is that it has something to do with helping to dissolve the layer of fat under the skin during basting. The authors also instruct basting with boiling water instead of with the juices from the bird to help with the dissolution of the fat. In fact, the excess fat that accumulates in the pan during roasting should be suctioned out with a bulb baster and discarded. There was so much fat that I filled two empty olive jars!

The goose was roasted in the pan for about two and a half hours with basting every 15 minutes and turning the goose to a new side every once in a while. After the bird finished cooking and was moved to a platter, the rest of the fat was extracted from the pan leaving the brown roasting juices. The next step is where I made my first major mistake of this blog. The instructions indicate that the pan should be placed on the stove, the prune juices added, and the mixture brought to a boil. However, I do not have a metal roasting pan and had been using a ceramic lasagna dish which immediately cracked when placed on the hot burner. I was able to salvage the juices in a sauce pan, but the dish had to be discarded. I knew better than to put that dish on the hot stove, but in my hurry and focus on the literal instructions of the recipe, I ignored my common sense. Anyway, the sauce finished boiling down in the pot with some additional port wine and butter. Quite delicious!

Whole 9lb goose!

The wings do not have much meat

Never much of a bird carver (see previous post about quartering a raw chicken), slicing the meat was one of the most challenging aspects of this meal.  In my defense, the ligaments were quite tight and taking off the legs was rather difficult. Somewhat as expected, the goose tasted like duck but slightly tougher and oilier. The prunes were an excellent paring with the meat.

To accompany the goose, I made frozen peas – a dish I did not expect in such a fine French cookbook! The peas were simply thawed and boiled in a pot with a little butter, shallots, chicken stock, and salt and pepper. The result was sweet and savory.

I also made Julia’s recipe for Purée de Pommes de Terre à l’Ail, or garlic mashed potatoes. I’ve made garlic mashed potatoes numerous times as it is one of my all-time favorite dishes. Usually, I roast the whole head (or two) of garlic in olive oil in the oven and then extract the cloves, a process which gives them a rich flavor. MAFC offered a different technique. The authors instruct the cook to separate the garlic cloves (two heads worth), boil them in water for a couple minutes, and then peel them and cook the cloves in butter on low heat for about 20 minutes. Flour is then added to the cooked garlic until it “froths with the butter” and then boiling milk is beaten into the mixture. The recipe suggests blending the garlic and milk or pressing it through a sieve, but I felt my fork mashing was sufficient to break apart the garlic.

 

Mashed potatoes with bits of parsley

I must admit that I became a little lazy with the boiled potato portion of this recipe. After the quartered potatoes boiled down, I was supposed to put the potatoes through a ricer, beat the purée over moderate heat for a few minutes, and then beat in more butter, salt, and pepper. I understand that the reason for beating the potatoes over heat once they've been mashed is to evaporate the water left in them, but I've learned from other cooks that simply placing the potatoes back in the hot pot after they have been drained and mashing them on the turned off burner works just as well. So, that’s what I did. Finally, the garlic sauce was mixed into the potatoes along with some parsley before serving. The recipe also called for adding cream to the potatoes, but since I did not have any on hand, a little butter and milk was substituted. This recipe involved more modifications to the MAFC instructions than I usually like to make, but I’m so stuck in my own ways of making garlic mashed potatoes that I felt like taking a number of liberties. I don’t think these potatoes had quite as much flavor as I would have expected, perhaps because of the way the garlic was prepared, or it may have been due to the lack of cream. Regardless, the goose gravy certainly helped compensate for any blandness.

The whole meal!

Plated with prunes

My friends Jennifer, Jason, and Xinying joined me to help consume this 9lb goose. Jennifer and Jason went to great lengths to find plum wine to accompany the meal. I have never been a huge fan of sweet wines but this wine was perfectly delicious and well paired with the goose and prunes. We finished the meal with a serving of moose tracks ice cream – distinctively not French but one of my favorites. We had a wonderful time with this meal and as you may expect from three psychology graduate students and a prosecuting attorney, the conversation often turned to issues related to the practice of forensic psychology. Also, the DSM 5 may or may not have made an appearance at the table to discuss nuances of the changes made to our diagnostic system of mental illnesses…

We ate a good amount of the bird for dinner, but the next day I was able to extract even more meat from the crevices of the goose. With the leftover meat (after I had my fill of nibbling), I made a modified version of cassoulet, a bean and meat stew from the south of France. I first tasted this dish on a day trip to Toulouse when I was studying in Montpellier. A friend and I made the trip and spent the day wandering the city just to wait for dinner time when we could try the duck and cassoulet famous to that town.  The version in MAFC is much more complicated than I was prepared for and included bacon fat (I don’t eat pork products). So, I simply cooked down some onions, carrot, and garlic and then simmered the mixture in white wine and vegetable stock. Then, I added canned white beans and the goose and seasoned with thyme. I ate a little of the result, but saved most of it in the freezer for later. I can’t wait for an occasion to eat the leftovers – the cassoulet turned out to be the perfect warm, hearty dish I love!

I'm afraid cassoulet does not look as attractive as it tastes

Due to a later dinner, I was forced to rely on artificial light this week for the photographs. As previously mentioned, I find poultry difficult to photograph well and this bird did not brown evenly on the back (but I assure you it was fully cooked) making it look even less attractive. Next week I’m back to the land of lakes!