Nochebuena feasting

We're in Florida for Christmas, and it's great to spend the holiday in a warm and sunny climate. Flip-flops, bathing suits and guayaberas are the proper attire, and the holiday menu is influenced by local culture.

In many Catholic cultures, it's customary to eat fish on Christmas Eve, or Nochebuena in Tampa's Cuban community. This city's rich cultural heritage includes 19th Century Cuban and Italian-American communities, more recent Caribbean immigrants, and a Greek-American community on the Gulf Coast. The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico teem with abundance of fish and shellfish - making Tampa Bay one of the best places to be for anyone who loves seafood.

Welcome to February

Happy February!  Today we shopped at the Saturday Santa Monica Farmers Market, and brought back a huge haul of delicious produce.

I'm working hard in the kitchen, preparing to serve brunch tomorrow to some guests. There's a banana bread fresh out of the oven, and some vegetables already chopped in the fridge, ready for cooking tomorrow.

A few branches of Acacia in a vase and a bowl of oranges looks nice on the table..

Cooking our goose - Part Five

Christmas day, and the goose came out of the fridge. We had blanched it in boiling water the day before, and allowed it to dry in the fridge overnight. We stuffed its body cavity with an onion, a quartered lemon, some quartered apples, and a branch of rosemary.

The legendary five-hour cabbage was done, and the oven thermostat kicked up to 425. The goose was gently laid breast-up into the roasting pan on top of a lattice of celery stalks, and in it went.

The recipe said roast for 15 minutes at 425, then reduce the heat to 350. Then we were to turn it onto its side. Every 25 minutes we were supposed to baste it with a ladle full of boiling water, so we kept a saucepan on the stove. It's hard to balance a goose on its side. The lattice of celery stalks, which were supposed to keep it out of the fat, softened and slithered to the side of the pan. We wedged a quarter lemon against its hip to keep the thing in position.


By the second 15 minute basting time, it was surprising to see how much fat was in the base of the roasting pan. [The Man I Love] tilted the pan while I sucked the fat up with a bulb-baster. This happened two more times before we were told to turn the goose on its other side.


By this time, I was busy with the pie - an open-faced French pear tart. The tart pan with the shell had been in the fridge since morning. Between goose-fat suckage, I chopped dark, semi-sweet chocolate that went in a layer at the bottom of the shell, then I sliced pears and arranged them in a pinwheel pattern. Then I mixed up a custard with eggs and cream and a touch of kirsch, and poured it over the fruit.

For the last 20 minutes we laid the goose on its back again, and [The Man I Love] mixed us a Kir Royale, a glass of champagne or sparkling wine with a dollop of creme de cassis - a Burgundian cocktail. The goose came out, I cranked the oven up to 400 degrees, and put in the pie.


Then, time to set the table. I used my Great Aunt Louie Boyd's china, and polished three place settings of her silver.


We had bought this bottle of wine home with us from France, and had saved it for this occasion.

The goose? Oh, so you wanted some pictures of the roasted goose? The sad fact is - I just plain forgot to snap a shot of the bird in all its triumph. Is that lame, or what?

Here is its pitiful carcass after being carved. I was busy making gravy and steaming beans.

And then it was time for the pie to come out.

Here's our meal. The goose breast was succulent and rich, and not greasy at all. I used someof the poaching liquid from the prunes to add a touch of flavor to the gravy. The stuffing was perfect, and the cabbage was intense. The simple steamed green beans were a nice contrast to the complex flavors of everything else.

Will I cook a goose again? I'm not sure. On the one hand, it was fun and I got some goose fat out of the deal. On the other hand, the bony carcass didn't leave much in the way of leftovers. Would a duck be easier, or just as much work?

I hope you all had a very wonderful holiday!

Cooking our goose - Part Four: Well-stuffed

The goose recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" called for stuffing the goose's body cavity with prunes - prunes being a classic accompaniment to roast goose in the Alsace region of France. The prunes in turn are stuffed with a mixture of bread-crumbs and herbs and chopped cooked goose liver and fois gras - the controversial French delicacy of livers from geese that have been force-fed to increase the size and fat of their livers.

We did not choose to use fois gras. We couldn't afford it, for one thing. I figured we'd use the normal liver from our goose, and that would be enough. We got some lovely dried prunes from the Farmer's Market, and following the recipe, we soaked them in hot water for five minutes.


Our prunes had pits in them, so we tried to pit them. It was a hopeless task. The pits clung to the inside flesh, and the soaked skins were so fragile the prunes just came apart. I couldn't imagine them holding together to be stuffed.

It was a mess. And it was obvious that there was no way I could stuff these prunes with breadcrumbs and herbs.

So I changed the plan. I made a bread stuffing instead. I had some corn bread in the freezer, and a day-old baguette. I cut the bread into cubes about 1/2 inch in size.

Then I chopped some onions and celery, and melted some of that amazing goose fat in the skillet and sauted them. I chopped up some of the mangled prunes - about 1/2 cup, since they were very intense (I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of them - I'll think of something)

I cooked the goose liver in the fat, too, and then chopped it up into bits. I stirred the sauted vegetables, the prunes and the goose liver into the mixed bread cubes and moistened it all with goose broth. Then I put it into a casserole dish with a cover, and baked it in the oven alongside the goose.

There was enough stuffing to fill a second casserole dish, which I sealed and put in the freezer. I have a whole chicken in there, too, which I can thaw and roast this week - the stuffing will go great with it.

Meanwhile, the goose - see Part Five to come.

Cooking our goose - Part Three: Five Hour Cabbage

M.F. K. Fisher once wrote of "vegetable snobbism" - the idea that some foods were tied to social class. In her essay "The Social Status of a Vegetable" she wrote of a middle-class American lady who was intrigued at the look and smell of a dish, until she was told that it was cabbage, and she immediately changed her mind about the quality of the restaurant, since cooking cabbage was something one only found in "the slums." It was hardly a vegetable one would consider serving at a festive, holiday meal.

Yet I love vegetables in the cabbage family. I like cole slaw, cabbage soup, sauteed cabbage; I love the pickled cabbage condiment curtida that's served with pupusas. I love stir-fried Chinese cabbage and its relative, bok choy. I like corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. I even like to eat chunks of raw sweet cabbage along with carrot and celery sticks for crudites (try it sometime!).

And, seriously, look at these beautiful red cabbages I got at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market the Wednesday before Christmas. They're so pretty and perfect for a holiday table.

I wanted to make braised red cabbage as an accompaniment to our Christmas goose, and the recipe I used was the one Julia Child recommended in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." According to her directions, you braised the cabbage in a slow oven for between four and five hours!!!

That seems like a lot of work, but really, once you put it in the oven, you don't have to do anything but wait.


I sauteed bacon, onions, and carrots in the wonderful goose fat we rendered out the day before. Then I added the shredded cabbage, and rolled it around in the fat and wilted it over the heat for about 10 minutes.

Then I added 2 cups of red wine - I had an open bottle of Syrah that seemed to have the right kind of fruitiness the cabbage needed. The recipe called for 2 cups of beef broth, but I had broth on hand from the goose neck and giblets, so I used that instead.

I added a cup of chopped tart apple, a couple of smashed cloves of garlic, some bay leaf, allspice and a good vigorous grating of fresh nutmeg.

Then I brought it to a boil on the stove-top before covering it with a lid and putting it in the oven at 325 degrees.

And then I let it cook for five hours. The recipe in the book adds chestnuts to it in the third hour, but we couldn't find chestnuts in our market, and probably wouldn't have wanted to mess with them if we had.

The smell of the cabbage cooking perfumed the house throughout the afternoon. It was just amazing - even Mrs. Fisher's acquaintence would have been tempted by it. It was rich, winey, fruity, with a deep bacony undertone and not a hint of the sulferous fumes cabbage is sometimes accused of.

By the time we were ready to put the goose in, the cabbage and the vegetables had reduced down to this amazing dark, concentrated rich vegetable mass.

This is what five hours does to cabbage - reduces it down to its very essence. It ain't pretty, but it's darn good. It's worth the time it takes.

Cooking our goose - Part Two: Schmaltz

[The Man I Love] decided that he wanted to cook a goose for our Christmas dinner. See Part One for how we started the project.

The day before Christmas, we prepared the raw bird for cooking. As I started reading about cooking a goose, I discovered that one of the characteristics of goose is that they have a lot of fat.

It's quite a chore to de-fat the goose so that the resulting meal isn't disgustingly greasy. But one of the secret benefits of goose-cooking is that, if you're careful you end up with a lot of goose fat for cooking.

Goose fat is prized for cooking - it's quite common in French cuisine. Potatoes roasted in goose fat are said to be sublime. You can buy imported French goose fat for around $10 a pound. Or you can save the fat when you cook a goose.

I pulled off the fat I could, and, following recipes online and in cookbooks, put it in a saucepan. You're supposed to put the fat with water in a pan and slowly simmer it until the water evaporates.

Many of the instructions I read cautioned against letting the fat get too brown, or it would be spoiled. Yet it was hard to figure out when the water was all gone.


One recipe described the sputtering sound it would make as the last of the water boiled away and the leftover bits fried to cracklings in the fat.

After about an hour, I finally heard this sound, and - following the recipe - took the pan off the heat after the sputtering dwindled to almost nothing.


After perhaps 90 minutes, I ended up with a bit less than a cup of clear golden liquid.


I strained this and put it in a jar. I capped the jar and put it into the fridge after it had completely cooled.


The next day when it was time to start cooking the braised red cabbage served with the goose, I got the jar of fat out of the fridge. It was actually beautiful - pure white.


It smelled rich and savory, yet not at all strong. When I melted it in the Dutch oven for the vegetables, it ran clear and didn't sputter at all.

There will be more goose fat to save from the bird while it cooks. It will be more strongly flavored, and require more straining, but it will still be worth saving. Later this week, we'll roast some potatoes in it!

Next? The five hour cabbage.

Cooking our goose - Part One

[The Man I Love] decided that he wanted to cook a goose for our Christmas dinner.

Goose was a popular choice for Christmas dinner in northern Europe - it was a favorite in England and in the Alsace region of France. St. Martin was the patron saint of geese, and roast goose was a traditional meal on his feast day, Martinmas, in November. St. Michael's Day is also a traditional time for feasting on roast goose.

In "A Christmas Carol," Charles Dickens describes the goose dinner the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Bob Cratchit's family enjoying in Scrooge's dream.

The Cratchits' kitchen is inadequate for cooking such a large bird - so like many in their neighborhood, they take it to a baker down the street to cook while they are at church, and fetch it home when it is done. Despite the fact that the poor Cratchits' goose is cheap and bony, it's a rare treat for them, making the smaller children so excited they can barely contain themselves.

Mrs. Cratchit makes the gravy, son Peter mashes the potatoes, the girls sweeten the apple sauce and set the table, and then the goose is set on the table and grace is said. As Mrs. Cratchit makes the first slice

"one murmur of delight rose all around the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!... There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by the applesauce and the mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone on the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eybrows!"

The Cratchits' real Christmas dinner, which they received after Scrooge's redemption, wasn't goose, it was turkey - the prize one hanging in the butcher's window. Turkey was becoming fashionable, and it was expensive. Apparently, few in the Cratchit's neighborhood can afford turkey, since it is still hanging there on the real Christmas morning.

Dickens' tale in England and America boosted the popularity of turkey for Christmas dinner, causing bony, greasy, inexpensive roast goose to become even less fashionable than it already was.


The French have a greater appreciation of roast goose. After our visit there this summer, I had been meaning to re-read my copy of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and seeing the movie "Julie & Julia" only made it more tempting.

I pulled my old book off the shelf. We were going to have Roast Goose stuffed with prunes, and accompanied by braised red cabbage.

We started to prepare the bird the day before we roasted it. Like duck, goose is notoriously fatty, and various methods have been devised to avoid having a greasy meal. When I opened the plastic warp and started to pry the bird's still-frosty limbs away from its body, it was easy to see that there was a lot of fat in this bird. There was fat beneath the skin and big globules of fat around the body cavity. The carcass was actually greasy to the touch - a very unsettling feeling. I found myself reaching for a piece of paper towel after handling it.

I pulled as much of the globs of fat out as I could, and then pulled the packet of giblets out of the cavity. I saved out the goose liver from the rest of the giblets - the heart and gizzard. I cut off the wings at the elbow joint. The gizzard, the heart, the neck and the wing-tips went into a pot of water with onion, celery, carrot and bay leaf to make broth.

I second-guessed Julia to try a de-fatting method I'd seen online - you blanch the bird for a minute in boiling water, and then let it air-dry in the fridge overnight.


Even though ours was a relatively small bird, at about 9 pounds, it was still bigger than any pot we had, so we dunked it in head-first for a minute, and then pulled it out and flipped it upside down and let it stand feet-first for another minute.


When we pulled it out, it was astonishing how much fat was in the water. We put the bird on a platter and let it sit uncovered in the fridge overnight.

See Part Two for what happens next.