They’ve sold them to restaurants, wholesale to grocery markets, and direct to consumers, but Sadauckas says would-be goose eaters are often scared off by unfamiliarity and the price point — she and Galle sell theirs for $12 per pound, while non-locally raised geese are available for half that. Because of this — and a paucity of processors handling waterfowl — Apple Creek is one of just a handful of Maine farms to raise them.
Sadauckas and Galle send their goose buyers home with a recipe booklet for bird, fat, and carcass — some Jamie Oliver, some Julia Child, a pho made from leftovers. They offer fresh geese Christmas week but have a few regular customers who prefer to freeze them for their New Year’s Eve goose tradition. “Any reason to eat goose,” Galle says, “is a good reason.”
My family started roasting a Christmas goose a few years ago for lack of any other Yuletide food tradition. On Thanksgiving, it’s turkey. On Hanukkah, latkes. On New Year’s, chocolate mousse. But when it came to Christmas, we were uncommitted, with nothing to consistently look forward to. So, we figured, why not get all Dickensian?
The Old World tradition of the holiday goose once had as much purchase in New England as anyplace on this side of the pond, but it’s lost a lot of cachet. “They’re the hardest thing that we market,” says Abby Sadauckas, who runs Apple Creek Farm, in Bowdoinham, with her husband, Jake Galle. Sadauckas and Galle have raised Emden geese off and on throughout their farming career. At Apple Creek, they also raise cows, goats, lambs, chickens, and turkeys, and they initially brought geese into the fold thinking the feisty birds might help guard other poultry — Galle remembers the gander on his parents’ farm chasing off a fox once.
But hear me out: It’d be a honking shame if holiday geese phase out of Maine farms altogether, because they make for an excellent dinner-table splurge. All dark meat, geese are luscious, richer and gamier than turkey. They’re also trickier to cook and a real bear to carve, on account of the absolute parka of fat the birds are swaddled in. But this is a selling point: Much of that fat comes streaming out while the bird cooks. Slurp it up with a baster, filter it, and stick it in the fridge in a mason jar. That liquid gold will last you a year, improving your potatoes and savory crusts and pretty much anything you fry — and helping justify a goose’s price tag.
-According to Dumas, a French chemist “saw a goose turning a spit on which a turkey was roasting. She was holding the end of the spit in her beak; and by sticking out and pulling back her neck, produced the same effect as the use of an arm. All she needed was to be given a drink from time to time.”
Though its a prized turkey that Scrooge sends an urchin to buy at the end of A Christmas Carol, goose was the original centerpiece on the Cratchits menu. As shown to Scrooge by the Ghost of Christmas Present: “There never was such a goose…Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration.” The modern day American family will sit down to a meal of turkey or ham or beef this Christmas, but goose remains the traditional Christmas meat of choice for many and was long before Dickens wrote of its succulence.
The goose has been perfectly created to make for the ideal Christmas feast. Geese are ready to be eaten twice a year. Once when they are young or “green” in the early summer and again when they are at their fattest and ripest toward the end of the year after having feasted on fallen corn. It also has the softest fat in its category of animal. The fat turns to liquid at 111 degrees Fahrenheit (compared to duck fat, which liquefies at 126 degrees) making it easier to cook and its fat easier to consume – try it on pancakes (were serious). They were thus used as the centerpiece at Michaelmas, a feast day celebrated during the Middle Ages, which fell on the winter solstice and honored the end of the harvest and the change in season. Earlier than that roast goose was an offering to Odin and Thor in thanks for the harvest. It was also ritually eaten in ancient Greek culture in order to insure the crops in the months to come. It was only natural for goose to become the roast of choice for the Christmas, which eventually took the place of other winter solstice festivities. For the American settlers, turkey took gooses place because thats what happened to be living on their new home soil and it too followed the same pattern of maturation.
Here are some other fun facts about the majestic goose to chat about while you dine on its deliciously dark, rich meat:
Have you ever dined on the glory of goose? Whats your preparation of choice? And have you ever seen a goose walk under an archway? We want to know if the stories are true!
Gordon Ramsay – Spiced christmas goose
FAQ
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