The last weeks before Christmas are always hectic, and this year is only more so..
Like on any holiday, food is important. In this regard my preparations are on target: my favorite supermarket is expecting a shipment of Christmas geese, frozen. I would have preferred a
fresh bird, but we have to take what we can get.
My mother was a marvel of organization and skill, a wonderful cook and unsurpassed baker, and justly proud of it. The only thing we ever had for Christmas was a goose. She embarked on an intense search for the right breed and provenance (an indication of what the bird would be fed). The bird was ordered weeks ahead and arrived fresh, meaning
freshly killed, with feathers and the head still on.
Plucking the feathers took forever, I recall. Any remaining stubble was singed over an open flame. The next important task was taking out the innards, and mother was an expert. It was a part that fascinated me and, though she preferred to reign alone in the kitchen, she let me watch a few times. special care should be taken, she said, in removing the gall bladder without lacerating it -- for obvious reasons.
When everything was done, the goose was hung in the pantry by the open window for a few days.
The innards were used in various inventive ways, yes, even the head, I remember. The goose liver,
foie gras as the French call it, is delicious beyond words when sauteed with onions and sliced apple. An inventive cook, my mother experimented with countless kinds of stuffings - clearly an important ingredient for any bird, I agree. She pleased our palates, she delighted us every year, and still she went on searching. The tradition ended in WW II, and that is a different story.
Here's my answer to an earlier post comparing a duck and a goose, and I apologize for not getting to it sooner.
My mother was the ultimate authority in the kitchen and a perfectionist. We understood that she did not like ducks, we never asked why. As a result, we never had one. That stuck with me and, years later out of curiosity perhaps?, I tried duck, not once but several times in different presentations. None ever tasted even remotely like goose.
My mother had been right all along
One of the not readily evident benefits of making a goose is its fat. The visible fat in the cavity must be removed, of course, rendered and collected., because it's marvelous. We used it as spread on our rye bread with a little salt. There was a
topical application: my older sister had frequent chest colds, and my mother would heat goose fat. rub it on her chest, then apply a poultice. It never failed.
Before the advent of Bayer Aspirin and long before Sir Alexander Fleming invented penicillin, my mother knew the timeless benefits of camomile (camomile tea - and more), and our copper hot water bottle. Bless her.
Living in New England as I do, where the Pilgrims landed in 1620, I paid homage to them on Thanksgiving, as always. Christmas will be old world style all the way in honor of my mother, who's way up on an unreachable pedestal.
Gumtree, the description of your holidays is just wonderful, even if difficult to imagine just now on the opposite side of the globe. From here and now, it looks like paradise. And how gratifying to see your tradition continue so effortlessly. Isn't it true that, as I read somewhere, we grow where we are planted -- or re-planted, as the vase may be?
