What to do on the third day of using up leftover roast goose (or turkey or chicken)? Make a risotto of course! Easy leftover using-up strategy.
The prep is key here, so start by roasting a peeled and cubed squash until soft along with a handful of chestnuts, and chopping up your goose meat into small peices.
If you have leftover squash then use that, you could also use half of a vacuum pack of pre-prepared chestnuts if you like. Depends what you've got handy! Keep them hot in the switched-off oven if making the risotto right away, otherwise be prepared to reheat them before adding to the risotto.
As with so many recipes, kick off the risotto by finely dicing an onion, a couple of celery sticks and a fat clove of garlic or two. Warm up a splosh of oil and a big hunk of butter in a deep frying pan and gently saute them until soft.
At the same time, put a pint / 500ml stock in a saucepan on the heat to stay hot.
Add half a bag of risotto rice, about 250g, (to serve 4 people or 2 with leftovers) stir it in and let it sizzle for a few minutes before adding a wine glass of vermouth (or white wine). Stir until all the wine has been absorbed. Then, a ladle at a time, add the stock to the rice, stirring and stirring each time until it's all been absorbed into the rice. One thing I've found is that this goes much faster and works better if you keep the pan pretty hot, the stock should bubble a little when you add it to the pan.
Just as you finish the last ladleful of stock, add the squash, chestnuts, goose and lots of thyme leaves. Stir through to mix and then grate a load of parmesan into the dish, along with a few knobs of butter, some fresh chopped parsley, a squeeze of lemon juice, ground pepper and salt if needed.
Serve with a smile of satisfaction at thriftiness well executed.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't get disproportionately excited about christmas and christmas food. I've been hosting xmas at my house for 3 years and cooking the food for several years prior to that, having inherited the duty due to my enthusiasm for the task. I haven't had any disasters but I don't think anyone would disagree if I said that each year I'm getting a bit better at it.
The ideal is to get the entire meal to the table, hot, before 3pm and without a single frustrated outburst or stress-induced teary argument. Difficult, but not impossible.
This post is to tie together all the other ones, each relating to an element of xmas dinner or xmas in general. You might think there are a few things missing, each family has their own traditional accompaniments, but partly that's because we had a small scale xmas this year so I didn't bother with stuffing or redcurrant sauce. I bought the pigs-in-blankets ready made too.
Spicy Glazed Ham
Roast Goose
Rich Gravy
Perfect Roast Potatoes
Bread Sauce
Vegetables
Trifle
Bubble and Squeak
I've got my inspiration from various cookbooks, from my family, friends and just from doing it year on year. Below is a list of the books I've turned to time and again in recent Christmasses:
Nigella Christmas ~ Nigella Lawson
The Good Housekeeping Cookbook (1998)
Sunday Lunch ~ Gordon Ramsay
Mmm, gravy. You could use granules. You could use a pot or sachet from the supermarket. You could rely on deglazing the pan with stock made from a cube. But this is christmas and the absolute best thing to have on the table is lots and lots of rich, deeply flavoured, piping hot gravy, made from scratch (and from happy birds).
Hopefully, you've got some giblets from your goose / chicken / turkey / other christmas birdie. Take the liver out and put aside, you can eat it separately pan fried on toast but it makes gravy bitter so don't include it (it looks like this).
Along with the giblets, put a few chicken wings, necks or even just old carcasses, into a large saucepan. Most butchers will sell you wings and necks for gravy, abel and cole also sells them, I also keep a load of bones in the freezer for use in stocks.
To these, add a quartered onion, a couple of bay leaves, some parsley stalks, a couple of broken carrots, a couple of broken celery sticks and about 10 peppercorns. Cover with cold water (a couple of pints / a litre) and pop on the hob. Bring to the boil then turn down and simmer for a good couple of hours. Keep tasting it, and don't take it off the heat until it has reduced down and has a good flavour (remembering that there's no salt in it yet though, so don't expect it to taste "finished").
Strain it into a jug and either skim off the fat or use a fat separator jug - I found one in the kleeneze catalogue and found it really useful. Leave it to cool and pop in the fridge, covered with clingfilm, until ready to make your gravy.
When you get your bird out of the oven and put it aside to rest, pop the roasting tray on the hob and add the stock to it (if it's been in the fridge it will be jellified, that's a good thing!). To this add a slosh of wine (red or white, your choice) and a spoonful of redcurrant jelly. Get it bubbling and burn off the booze, scraping the bottom of the tin to get all the caramelised bird juices into the mix. Result = awesome gravy.
Serve piping hot in a really twee gravy boat.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
Both turkeys and geese have featured as traditional British Christmas fare, at least for those who could afford to eat them, for about 500 years. I'm not a big fan of the turkey myself, I mean, it's ok but it's not quite delicious enough for me to consider it an amazing treat. It's the goose that makes me dribble in anticipation, and so it's the goose I prefer to cook for our feast.
Unlike turkeys, which really do require brining and all the other associated work to ensure their moistness, goose is easy to prepare as it requires so little fussing. I ordered a "small" goose. Hahaha. Small means around 13 lbs / 5.5 kgs and would happily have fed six or more hungry guests, even without an extravagant number of side dishes.
For the perfect roast goose, here's what you need to do:
- Leave your goose out to come up to room temperature for a couple of hours.
- Pop her in a big baking tray on top of a trivet and preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
- Trim off any excess fat and put to one side (for your roasties).
- Use a fork to prick the skin all over.
- Dribble a tiny amount of olive oil over the skin, sprinkle salt over and then massage in with your hands.
- Tightly wrap the legs with tin foil.
- Loosely wrap the whole bird with tin foil.
- Bung her in the oven for 15 mins per lb (450g) + a further 15 mins. Drain off some or all of the fat about halfway through, and take the main peice of foil off for the last 15-30 minutes.
- Take her out of the oven and leave to rest, covered in foil, for at least half an hour and preferably for a full hour (though not longer) before taking to the table as a glorious centerpeice.
- Make the gravy.
A final tip: after the christmas meal get someone to remove all the meat from the carcass and store this in a shallow dish with the leftover gravy, topped up with stock if needed. Overnight the juices keep the goose really moist, giving you the best bubble and squeak the next day.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
