When Your Goose Is Cooked

Our nieces and nephews call us "Weird Uncle Neil and Aunt Sue". It seems to stem from our reputation for eating just about anything. I suppose that's why our friend offered us her geese. She had too many and couldn't afford to feed them through the winter. As it was mid-December, we couldn't get the thought of Christmas goose out of our heads. The problem was: Geese not Goose. Oh yeah, and the fact that we had never cooked one, eaten one, or butchered one before. While we weren't quite up to eating all eight, we figured we could help our friend by pawning a couple off on friends and family. Giddy with holiday spirit, we generously volunteered to deliver cleaned birds to all who wanted them. This, we found out, was an exceptionally bad idea.

The deal was, we were chiefs-in-charge of catching, killing, and plucking and dressing these beauties ourselves. No time like the present for a crash course on butchering fowl! So we caught a quick primer from our indispensable copy of "The Encyclopedia of Country Living"by Carla Emery. The day arrived and we butchered the geese and hung them. This part went pretty smooth. After the geese were thoroughly bled, we brought them up to the barn where we had prepared a hot water bath to scald the birds before plucking. Here's where things got tougher. Turns out geese are impossible to pluck! Given their naturally water repellent nature, it seems the hot water doesn't easily permeate the feathers down to the skin. This was a messy, hard, process that took many hours. Our friend, who thankfully helped us, had heard skinning was easier, and since she was keeping some of the older geese for her dogs Xmas dinner, we decided to try this. After we were through, we really couldn't tell if it had even been any sort of bird let alone the kind you might want to eat. So save yourself the trouble and don't skin a goose! Since we were unsure of the ages of all these geese we decided to hang them for a week to see if that tenderized them a bit. Actually, you really shouldn't eat a goose that's more than 9 months old, but we were willing to gamble. It was pretty strange to see eight goose carcasses strung up in the garage! We silently hoped none of our neighbors were comming by unannounced to borrow yard tools! I wish I had a photo, but this was B. B. (before blog).

In the end, our Christmas goose very tasty, but a little on the tough side. I think we lost the younggoose/old goose lottery. Our friends and family seemed to have better luck. The true reward though, wasn't the warm fuzzy feeling of doling out fresh Xmas geese to our friends- it was actually the eight ultra fresh and juicy goose livers!!! Now, I have tried foie gras, but I don't think that it's much better than plain old goose liver. I know there are French folk and foodies scowling as I write this, but the process by which foie gras is produced is really at the border of what seems fair to do to an animal. At our holiday get-togethers we featured fresh goose liver pate which turned out to be absolutely divine. It was rich and creamy with a surprisingly mild liver taste. I'm not one to gnash on a big ol' hunk of liver, but this pate is really good! Even Madame Yum Yum (who claims that pate gives her the shivers) had a bite!

Anyhow, if you are ever faced an over-abundance of goose liver, here's what you should do with it: http://www.roastgoose.com/recipes/goose_liver_pate.htm

The only part of this recipe we skipped was the port syrup. We felt the pate didn't need any accompaniment- save crusty pieces of bread. Port syrup does sound really good though. This recipe is from Shiltz Goose Farm. They have a great site for goose and goose products including livers, and cruelty-free fattened goose liver if you just can't hang up that craving for foie gras.