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Old 12-30-2007, 12:14 AM   #14
decolady
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So Morpheus, did you cook your geese? Here's my family recipe that was cooked since before 1900 down in DeSoto Parish by my great-grandmother and continued by my grandmother till she passed some 20 years ago. (I wrote it down the way my grandmother told me and continue to cook it this way over here in Alabama.) My great-grandmother raised geese and this was their standard Christmas dinner. My Mom told me she never knew people ate something other than goose for Christmas until she went off to college.

To Cook A Goose

7 to 9 pound goose
salt and pepper
1 apple, quartered
4 to 6 celery tops
1 onion, quartered, optional


"Get a nice goose and cut off all the fat you can see. Wash body cavity real good and drain. Cut off skin up at neck. Dry off real good after he drips awhile. Put salt and pepper inside him and put the apple and celery tops in the cavity.

"You need a roasting pan with a rack. Every so often lift him out and put him in the lid. Drain off all the fat. Put him back in the oven baking at 350°F for 18-20 minutes per pound. You have to prick the skin around the groin to let the fat drain. Be careful! It'll pop out at you. Can raise the temperature at the end to brown him good. Let him sit awhile before carving.

"Get out the brown drippings to put in gravy. Make Sage Cornbread Dressing (recipe follows) and put it in the roaster to cook. You'll need more broth than the goose produces so use chicken. Probably the dressing will need basting. You don't want it stiff.

"You can save the fat to use later for chicken and dumplings instead of butter. Louise (her mother) always put apple in the goose, but the onion is good too, either with or without the apple."

Sage Cornbread Dressing

First make:
SKILLET BREAD
3 eggs, beaten
1½ cups milk
1/3 cup melted goose fat or oil
1½ cups flour
1½ cups corn meal
4 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp crumbled dry sage leaves
1 tsp thyme leaves
2½ tsp salt
1½ cups chopped onion
1½ cups chopped celery
¼ cup chopped pimento

Combine eggs, milk & oil. Mix with remaining ingredients stirring only until blended. Pour into large greased iron skillet and bake at 400°F for 35-45 minutes.

to make the dressing:
3 to 4 raw eggs
goose and chicken broth
3 hard cooked eggs, chopped
1 to 2 bunches green onions, chopped

Crumble up the Skillet Bread and add the raw eggs. Stir in enough broth to make it look like thick pancake batter. The goose probably doesn't have enough broth so use chicken. Add the hard cooked eggs and green onions. Bake until set in the pan you used to cook the goose.



If you have access to a cookbook called Spirit of the Harvest, there's a recipe in it called Grilled Canada Goose which we've made several times. It's stuffed with a dried fruit/ginger mixture and smoked using either apple wood or alder wood. Goose can be domestic or wild.

Becky
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