St. Martin's Day is celebrated on the evening of November 11 in Flanders, parts of the Netherlands and the Catholic areas of Germany and Austria. Children go from door to door with paper lanterns and candles and sing songs about St. Martin and about their lantern, and in return they get a treat. It is very similar to the American tradition of Halloween.
When I started school at the age of six, our family lived in Germany. Until I read the article on St. Martin's Day in Wikipedia, I thought the evening lantern parade I took part in with my schoolmates in 1982 was a Halloween celebration. Live and learn.
Some time ago my aunt told me about the goose roast that is traditionally eaten on St. Martin's Day. According to legend, Martin (316-397 AD) was reluctant to become a bishop, which is why he hid in a stable full of geese. The noise the geese made gave his hiding place away to the people looking for him. Martin did not forgive the poor geese, and ordered them to be slaughtered every year on that day.
I wanted to cook something nice for Father's Day, and then I remembered the goose roast, which sounded really yummy to me. I found a fresh goose at my favourite butcher shop, Reinin Liha, although at €14.99 a kilo ($8.70/lb) it definitely isn't something I'm planning to cook regularly.
The bird looks like a longish, small turkey, but its meat is dark like duck. There is also a really thick layer of fat under the skin, which fortunately melts in the oven. Just as with whole turkeys, the giblets were left inside the body cavity in a small plastic bag. I roasted the neck, heart and gizzard with the bird, but saved the big liver for later. Mmm, fried goose liver!
The wing tips and the extra, fatty flaps of skin are cut away before stuffing and roasting.
It's said there are as many recipes for the St. Martin's goose as there are cooks. I checked a few trusty books for reference, Joy of Cooking and Nigella's How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food, but after some googling I found a tasty-looking recipe by Jeffrey Steingarten, originally from his book It Must've Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything. The recipe is super long, so instead of rewriting it in my own words I've given it below more or less as it stands.
My family really enjoyed the bird, and especially the pears and apples that the same recipe describes. My roasting pan wasn't big enough to hold both the pears and the goose, so I baked the pears separately in a dish of their own. I simply divided the chicken stock and the wine into two equal parts, and used the other half to baste the bird.
In addition to the pears, apples and vegetables, I served the roast with mashed potatoes and gravy made from the drippings.
Recipe card
Alsatian Goose Roast With Cardamom & Orange Pears
- Serves 6-8
- Start at least a day ahead
- Oven 220 °C, then 175 °C, finally 200 °C
- Browning on the stove 20-30 min
- In the oven about 2 h 15 min
- Resting 20 min
- Done thigh at 75 °C (170 °F)
You will need
| 4.5 kg (10 lb) | young fresh goose |
| 1 kg (2 lb) | sweet apples, peeled and cubed |
| 250 ml (1 cup) | carrots, chopped |
| 250 ml (1 cup) | celery, chopped |
| 250 ml (1 cup) | celery root, chopped |
| 6-8 | pears (one per person), peeled but with stems left intact |
| zest of 2 organic oranges | |
| 1/2 tsp | ground cardamom |
| 700 ml (3 cups) | chicken stock |
| 1 bottle | white Alsatian wine, e.g. Gewürztraminer |
| all-purpose flour to thicken the gravy | |
| salt and pepper |
Method
A day ahead
- At least one day in advance, wash the goose inside and out. With a cleaver, chop off the first joint of both wings and reserve them along with the neck, the heart and the gizzard.
- Save the liver for another use. Pull all the excess white fat from the goose's cavity and reserve it. Cut off the neck skin flap, leaving only a few inches (5-8 cm) of it.
- Brine and pierce the goose.
On the day
- Preheat the oven to 220 °C (425 °F).
- Choose a heavy roasting pan just large enough to hold the goose comfortably on the diagonal. Cut half the reserved fat into small pieces and melt it in the roasting pan over medium-high heat on the stove.
- Rub a little fresh black pepper and salt into the cavity and the skin of the goose. Add the cubed apples, but do not crowd them. Pull together the 2 skin flaps at the opening, push short skewers or even toothpicks through them, and secure the skin by lacing with string. Wrap and tie 2 separate lengths of string around the goose's body, 1 around the breast to keep the wing joints close to the body, the other around the fattest part of the drumsticks.
- Remove the solids from the melted fat and brown the goose on all sides, regulating the heat to avoid burning the fat. This will take between 20 minutes and half an hour. Balance the goose on the sides of the roasting pan or hold it by the drumsticks to get at irregular surfaces. Meanwhile, chop the reserved neck, wing tips and innards into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces.
- When the goose is nicely browned, remove it from the heat, set it on its back and scatter the pieces of neck and wing around it. Slide the roasting pan into the preheated oven and roast for half an hour, basting after 10 and 20 minutes. Pour and spoon off the fat into a bowl. Scatter the vegetables and pears around the goose, moisten them with a little of the goose fat you have just removed and roast for 15 minutes. Using a bulb baster or a spoon, remove as much of the fat from the pan as you can.
- Sprinkle the orange zest and ground cardamom over the pears, pour half the stock and half the wine over them, and return to the oven for 15 minutes. Lower the heat to 175 °C (300 °F), pour the rest of the wine and stock over the goose, and roast for about an hour longer (moving the pears to a baking dish after half an hour), until the thighs reach 75 °C (170 °F) on an instant-read thermometer thrust into the thickest part of the meat.
- Remove the roasting pan from the oven and turn the heat up to 200 °C (400 °F) again. Lift the goose onto a plate and immediately move the apple stuffing to the baking dish holding the pears. Strain the roasting liquid into a saucepan, skim off most of the fat, and reduce it to about 250 ml (1 cup) on the stove. Wipe out the roasting pan and put the goose back into the oven for 15 minutes to crisp its skin. Spoon a little goose fat and some of the half-reduced roasting liquid over the pears and the apple stuffing and put them in the oven with the goose to rewarm and brown slightly.
- Let the goose rest for 20 minutes and serve it on a large platter, surrounded by the little roast pears and the apple stuffing.
11 comments
Kiitos päärynäreseptistä, ne olivat elämää suurempia. Haluatko että kontribuoin hanhen hintaa vai aiotko hakea luomukiitospäiväkalkkunan Reinistä mun laskuun 😉
Merhabalar, blogunuz ve tarifleriniz çok güzel, ancak türkçe olarak ta eklerseniz çok sevinirim, teşekkürler.
http://www.blogcu.com/pembeli
merhabalar; sitenizi bugün gördüm ve inceledim çok güzel tarifleriniz var ellerine sağlık
Hi pembeli! Unfortunately I don't understand what you're saying, but I'm delighted to know we also have Turkish readers 🙂
Wow! What a production! But by the look of that goose the effort was all well worth it 🙂 I have never tried goose in my life...isn't that strange? We don't really have it readily available here...Anyhoo, it looks wonderfully good!
Wonderful goose, Antti! I knew that "mardipäev" was on November 10th and that I was supposed to eat goose ("mardihani") on that day, but I was way too lazy. After reading about your beautiful goose dish, I feel embarrassed _and_ lazy..
Joey: Thanks! I wish I had had time to prepare the skin the day before and dry it like the Chinese do with their famous ducks, i.e. crispy and yummy... Next time, definitely! 🙂
Pille: long time no see!!! Good to have you back 🙂 Now I'm gearing up for Thanksgiving... We're not going to celebrate it on Thursday as the Americans do, but I'm going to cook a nice turkey on Sunday for the family. Hope it'll be moist this time 🙂
Hi ! Joey recommended your site to me after seeing my own roasted goose production on my blog. I was looking for a fool proof way to cook a goose since mine turned out a bit dry on the outer breast. I shall try your recipe next!
i'm tired of goose! 🙂 come back!
Veron: welcome! Hope you enjoy the goose as much as I had fun preparing it. Say hi to Joey, her blog rocks! I'm really happy to have found yours too 🙂
fiordizucca: I'm back 🙂 Hope you like big birds since next I'm gonna blog about my juicy turkey recipe 🙂 Meanwhile, enjoy the brownies!