Don’t Cook This Goose Categorically
I have Marty McFly Syndrome. Someone says that something cannot be done, and I had already looked through three books on how to do it by the time they took the next breath. So when a Lifehacker reader commented on a recent duck article and asked about raising the level to goose, it could very well be a court order. I was making a goose.
Geese are damn expensive. The nine pound goose cost me nearly $ 100. This raised the stakes: seriously, are these things much better than duck?
Am I happy with the fact that I just popped the goose in the oven and roasted it, which almost guaranteed victory? No, of course not. (Seriously, are you paying attention at all? I spent the summer studying French just to be able to read a book about baking. Oh yeah, bastards.)
Enter Gala Goose, kitchen destroyer and dream killer.
Unlike anti-masking theorists, the internet isn’t flooded with goose recipes, but after a bit of searching and scrolling, I saw it: it had 30 ingredients, two pages of steps, not a damn picture or video to show you how to accomplish it. It was a siren of inefficiency.
I dived deep. The Gala Goose recipe appeared in several places, most notably MarthaStewart.com , but none of the links featured a video or image.
So I found the real golden goose – an undocumented recipe on the Internet. So, a rational person would assume that such a thing could only exist if no one ever did the damn thing. But in the dismay of excitement, I mentally made a shopping list and a very polite note instead. “Dear Martha, let’s dance.”
Honestly, Martha’s recipe is an interpretation of the Gala Goose from the Cookbook of D’Artagnan’s Glorious Game , which, spoiler alert, is sold out and impossible to get hold of. However, there are no photographs in the book.
Tl version; dr is that you cook / boil any goose delight for a long time in stock, give it a reverse stir fry, and then drown it in a sauce in which each ingredient seemed promising, albeit attractive in combination: porcini mushrooms, cherries and cognac. It was like a badly put together dinner party hosted by someone who was sure the cost was equal to the class.
As someone with a love for old cookbooks, I should have known better. If you’ve ever cooked up a Julia Child tome or a classic New York Times cookbook , you’ll notice the theme. Many 1940s and 70s recipes are heavily based on myropois, flour, and overcooking. We now exist in a reality where many home chefs have deep fat fryers, dryers and really really good thermometers. But there were no home cooks in the 50s.
More importantly, our palettes have evolved since then – we have access to spices from around the world and an understanding of how each culture uses acid. We discover new flavors, food combinations and ingredients weekly through an unimaginable array of restaurants, recipe blogs, and access to raw ingredients.
The Gala Goose was clearly a bird stuck in the Truman administration.
Gala goose recipe
Since the first step is to boil a baby-sized bird on the stove, I had to use a very large pot. Luckily a friend had a Staub, “so big we haven’t used it since we made paella for 20 years.”
With a comically large bowl, you fry the vegetables, wings, neck, and offal together in a “large” skillet. It was then, readers, that I received the revelation: there are no photographs, because in fact no one has ever prepared this recipe . Jose Andrés doesn’t even have such a large frying pan, so I kneaded it. This was followed by no drama, which meant it was time to prick the goose bumps to release the fat. I used a corncob stand, gently feeding the goose wherever I could reach.
The next step promised to end in the emergency room: dipping the goose in a parchment paper bandage into a boiling bath of broth. Cook for an hour and then turn over without damaging the skin. I mean, I love challenges, but it felt like a straightforward troll. “Here’s a new razor, just in the balls!”
The paper ripped immediately because the goose has a lot of protruding parts, and that’s when my revolutionary idea came to me: Shibari goose! I tied the goose in front and back until it looked like an illustration of the Kama Sutra and immersed it in liquid. Perfection.
An hour later, I turned it over with the help of the farm and began to collect the sauce, being complacent. The hours passed and my boredom grew. By then, I knew. This goose was not going to any ball.
While I was waiting, I googled the original author, a “cooking instructor and author” named Sally Kofke. I thought about writing her an email: “I think it’s a bluff lady! No one has ever tasted this hot recipe dream, amyrit? TELL ME.”
The bird roasted beautifully in the oven, which gave me hope. Despite the fact that I missed midnight, I carved my Cinderella bird and got a snack.
Readers … I’ve done a few stupid things in my life. Sometimes I look back and just amazed that I got there without losing a finger, not being arrested, or not getting at least one tattoo on my face. But in the pantheon of mistakes I made, Gala Goose gets into the top 20.
The goose made the intellectual decision to give up any taste in the bulk liquid. It has rubber properties that must be scientifically researched for production. The poultry tasted exactly as one would expect from a poultry that had been boiled for so long, only in broth and soft vegetables to taste. The sauce was more interesting than it tasted better, and choosing cherries or mushrooms would have been good, but nothing would have saved this recipe.
Annoyed and now in the face of a kitchen full of crockery, I cut out enough for the fridge to keep it from going to waste, and tried to assess where something had gone, very, very wrong.
As with most of the older recipes, the more ambitious chef can easily upgrade this recipe. Season the goose well, sauté it, and make another sauce. Perhaps this is not “Gala-goose”, but it will be edible, half of the dishes will be prepared from it, and its cost will be much lower.
Or you can just make a duck. In fact, ignore everything else – I support the statement made last month. Just do a fucking duck. (Or, if you want a goose, just bake it like a fucking duck.)
Have I learned my lesson? Well…
And now, in the name of history and search engine optimization, I present the only Gala Goose photos in existence, along with a recipe you shouldn’t try. (Again, just roast it as described on the duck blog, or watch it if you like. Either option will taste much tastier than the next.)
Gala Goose (based on the novel by Sally Kofke, “The Cookbook of Great Games” by D’artagnan )
- 1 goose, 9-11 lbs
- 3 tablespoons melted goose fat
- 1 1/2 cups each coarsely chopped carrots, onions, and celery
- 6 tablespoons flour
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 2 glasses of dry white wine
- 4 sprigs of flat parsley
- Peels from 1 green apple
- 6 whole carnations
- 1 large bay leaf
- 30 grams of dried porcini mushrooms, soaked, peeled and coarsely chopped.
- ½ cup dried cherries
- 2 tablespoons of Armagnac
- Salt and pepper
Remove everything from the goose cavity. Cut off the first two wing joints and any loose fat. Pierce the skin of the goose all over the body.
Place this crumbly goose fat in the largest saucepan you have and bring the fat to a liquid state. If you don’t have enough fat, you can add some fat from the freezer or use olive oil, duck fat, or schmalz.
Use the corncob holder to pierce the skin and then the goose shibari.
If there is room in the skillet, add all the offal, wings, neck, and chopped vegetables. If not, do this step in two batches. Sauté until the vegetables are lightly browned, 7-8 minutes, turning frequently. Sprinkle with flour, set to medium heat, and continue cooking until the flour is slightly brown, 6-7 minutes, stirring frequently.
Pour the chicken stock and white wine into a roasting pan large enough to support the goose with the lid closed. Place a wire rack in the bottom of the skillet and lower the goose, breast side down, on a parchment paper bandage. It is helpful here to tie the bird so that it is compact and has handles on both the chest and thigh.
Add toasted giblets and vegetables, parsley, apple peel, cloves and bay leaves to the liquid. Pour enough water to cover two-thirds of the goose’s body and bring to a boil.
Remove the cup of this liquid, add it to the saucepan used in step 2, and remove the frosting. Pour the thickened liquid back into the broiler. Cover the skillet with a lid and cook very gently, adjusting the temperature if necessary to keep it simmering.
After an hour, turn the goose over, being careful not to damage the skin. Rubber gloves are recommended and at this point you can completely remove the parchment paper.
Cook the goose for two to three hours, or until the meat is tender if pierced with a fork.
Preheat oven to 450 ℉.
Remove the goose from the liquid, strain and place on a wire rack, breast side up in a skillet. Cook until the skin is brown and crispy, about 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest for about 15-20 minutes before slicing.
Take the liquid from the frypot and remove the fat and everything else so that you only have liquid left. Avoid bites of goose and seasonings. Mashed vegetables and add again to the skillet with strained liquid. Boil quickly to reduce the amount of liquid by about half.
Add porcini mushrooms and their strained soaking liquid, cherries, armagnac, and red currant jelly. Season the sauce to taste with salt and pepper and keep warm until needed. (This will never be needed because – again – you should never do this goose.)