|

|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Goose and Plum Pudding: A Traditional British Christmas Feast
| Article
# : |
12088 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1987 |
2,272 Words |
| Author
: |
Adrianne Marcus Adrianne Marcus has published in Food & Wine, Menus, Travel &
Leisure, Good Food, Cooking Light, and other magazines. |
In Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge's arrival with the prize Christmas turkey overjoys Tiny Tim and his family.
But the turkey was an extravagance, for the traditional British Christmas dish was the goose, which is exactly what the Cratchits were enjoying prior to Scrooge's largess. Goose is still a traditional British Christmas dish, and is savored at other times as well, but it has never been upstaged by turkey in the north of England. In Wales, goose is the bird of choice. Dylan Thomas' poem tells us "...that gobbling faces,/their cheeks bulged with goose, would press/ against the tinseled windows, the whole length/of the white echoing street."
A traditional British dinner can be roast goose or turkey, accompanied with chestnuts and apples, or you could make a roast goose pie, in which one fully boned goose is carefully stuffed inside another and baked in a raised pie-crust.
There are many ways to cook a goose. Elizabeth David, the noted English author, advises cooking it stuffed with a side dish of chestnuts and apples, her reason being if you are going to have your goose cold, the stuffing will have too much goose fat in it to be appealing. She instructs: "Put the goose on a rack in the largest baking tin that will fit into the oven (a lot of fat runs out of the bird while cooking). Cover an 8 lb. drawn and dressed goose with oiled paper or foil, and bake it for 2 ½ to 3 hours. During the final half hour, turn the heat every low and remove the paper so that the skin turns golden." One presumes the oven is set at 350
... (1898 of 12467 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|