RSS

Contact us

Friday 22 August 2008

My goose is cooked

My goose was cooked — and it wasn’t very good

What's so good about these indigestible birds?

Now if goose were really so good, why is it that do we not eat it at other times of year? We are not very keen these days on self-denying ordinances, so the idea that we save up something delicious just for a single glorious treat once a year isn’t very plausible. If something is good we want it all the time, in and out of season, and are prepared to import it at the greatest expense from Ultima Thule if need be. So why does goose so rarely appear on menus, other than in the slightly modified form of foie gras? I do not think its size can explain everything. If it were really so splendid, we could cook half, a quarter or even an eighth of a goose. The fact that we don’t eat goose all the time, or even more than once a year, tells us, or ought to tell us, something.

However, I disregard these sceptical and dissenting thoughts each year, putting them to the back of my mind, which oddly enough feels as though it really is located at the back of my head, somewhere in my occipital lobe. I take no notice of the small, mocking voice that worms its way forward and tells me it, the goose, will be no good, it will be dry and stringy despite all the fat it exudes, and that duck or even chicken would have been better. No, I tell myself, as a man whistling in the dark, this time the goose will be delicious.

The first and most serious problem with roasting a goose is the fat. There is so much of it that normal dishes cannot contain it all, and one has repeatedly to empty the fat into various containers. And while goose fat has long been thought by grandmothers to have medicinal and preventive properties when rubbed into the chest, and is indeed excellent and perhaps even incomparable for roasting potatoes, yet there is far more of it than you can possibly want or use in a year. You put several bowls of it in the fridge, and then about three weeks later you throw it away. In this respect it is rather like Edward Lear’s recipe for amblongus pie, according to which a great deal of effort goes into the preparation of something that is so disgusting that it is ejected though the window.

Goose fat does not keep to itself, either. Goose fat vapour (or, I suppose it would be more scientific to say, droplets) soon spreads through the whole house, which begins to smells like a vast roast goose, and remains roasted for a few days thereafter. The size of the house makes hardly any difference; I have roasted geese in large and small houses, but the effect is the same. One goose perfumes all.

The greasiness of goose has to be counteracted with apples, red cabbage and the like, but there is no escaping the un-pleasantness of the washing-up afterwards. Mere soap and hot water are powerless against the insidious invasion of goose fat. And it is not even as if the goose was so delicious that it was worth all that it brought with it. The meat of goose tends to be dense and not easily digestible. It seems to sink directly into special receptacles in the thighs, where it settles like a lead weight and saps the will to movement for at least two days.

More articles from: Theodore Dalrymple | this section

Print this article  |  Email to a friend  |  Permalink  |   Comments (7)

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Advertisement

Spectator Business | Apollo Magazine

Corporate | Advertising | Privacy | Terms

Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London, SW1H 9HP

All Articles and Content Copyright ©2008 by The Spectator | All Rights Reserved