Delicious roast goose.

Plucking geese and a hangover do not mix

IF you are having goose this Christmas I hope you purchased it oven-ready, writes Tom Gillespie. Don’t make the mistake I made many moons ago when I got three geese from the late Jimmy Lavelle from Ballintubber.

I collected the gaggle from Jimmy’s farm on the eve of Christmas Eve. They had been killed the day before and I told Jimmy, who was an outstanding correspondent for The Connaught Telegraph for several decades, I would pluck them myself.

A bad move. A very bad move.

It was tradition in The Connaught that we had 'a few’ Christmas drinks on December 23 as we always had Christmas Eve off.

I brought the three birds home and hung them up in the outside shed before departing to meet my colleagues in the pub.

As always, a Connaught Telegraph seasonal celebration lasted until closing time. In those days there was no such sensible thing as having a meal on the night out.

So needless to say I was the worst for wear the following morning. I knew I had the task of plucking the geese. I proceeded to the shed and saw three pairs of glassy eyes staring back at me.

I tackled the first goose, starting on the breast and working my way around to the back, neck and the wings. By this time the sweat was dropping off me and I knew I had another two to de-feather.

But extracting the pin feathers from the wings was like pulling teeth with a tweezers. An hour went by and still the first goose was anything but plucked.

Eventually number one was featherless and it was time to tackle number two.

A short break and a pint of water cooled me down. But goose number two proved every bit as difficult as the first.

Again the wings were the most difficult but as the second hour passed progress was slowly made.

Tackling number three was done with anything but enthusiasm. My hangover was kicking in and the air was blue as I cursed every waterfowl that graced the earth.

Eventually, the three geese were plucked. Some down remained which I removed by lighting a piece of newspaper and burning it off the plucked bodies. The smell of the burning down was not conducive to my post-Christmas party condition. So after another cooling down period it was time to remove the innards.

This does not present a problem for me as I have cleaned out all kinds of fowl and fish down the years, though the goose can be a bit more challenging. But, in my hungover state, I tackled it will gusto.

I had to reach in to the cavity at the bottom of the goose and pull out all of the innards – heart, gizzard, wind pipe, liver, stomach, etcetera, until the geese were completely hollow.

This part can be very messy, so you may want to consider wearing gloves to keep your hands clean.

The heart, gizzard and liver can be retained if desired. But the gizzard has to be cut open and cleaned out of the remains of the goose’s last meal and this can be a bit smelly, so be prepared.

When the job was complete both myself and the shed were covered in feathers. This took another 20 minutes to clean up but traces of the feathers were to be found in the shed for months.

With the three geese oven-ready I washed them out in the kitchen and delivered two of them to friends as a Christmas present.

Little did they know of the blood, sweat and tears I went through to make the geese presentable.

Despite my laborious effort, with a self-inflicted hangover, it was still worth the effort as there is nothing to beat roast goose, far superior in my view to turkey, though I do like the dark turkey meat.

However the dark goose meat is delicious and the secret in cooking it is to place the goose in a roasting tray on top of a trivet. The resulting grease should be poured off regularly, and once cooled retained in a jar in the fridge and used in the months ahead to make proper roast potatoes.

I have a recipe for the stuffing which is hard to beat.

Six ozs. of fresh breadcrumbs.

One bunch of spring onions -

chopped.

Four ozs. dried pears - soaked.

Four ozs. dried apricots - soaked.

Parsley, sage, two eggs and the

zest of a lemon.

Suggestion: Use butter instead of eggs and fresh fruit instead of dried. I prefer to cook the stuffing separately rather than putting it in the goose cavity.

 

Fresh geese are not cheap - up to €75 - but look out for the frozen Lidl ones which, at €19.99, are good value, and were in plentiful stock at the time writing. In fact, I purchased two when I first saw them in the freezer unit back at the beginning of November.

For the record, the term goose applies to the female in particular, while gander applies to the male. Young birds, before fledging, are called goslings.

The collective noun for a group of geese on the ground is a gaggle; when in flight, they are called a skein, a team, or a wedge; and when flying close together, they are called a plump.

Another delicacy on the menu in our house this Christmas is a tin of foie gras de canard - duck pate - which I purchased in France at a wine fair last April.