Chapter 33
Cooking your goose

Email To: Marty and Jim
From: Leslie Ann
Date: 25 November
Subject: Homesick

Dear Marty and Jim,

I’m always so tender at this time of year; Halloween and my birthday are behind me, Thanksgiving is upon me and Christmas and New Year is ahead of me. Bill makes a fuss over me for my birthday, but Halloween doesn’t really exist here, Thanksgiving is always a joke about losing the colonies and Christmas is one long heathen holiday, as reportedly only 44 per cent of the population believes in a God while in a recent poll a significant minority listed their religious preference as Klingon.

It was a bit easier in London because there were so many Americans with whom we could celebrate and carry on the traditions. Can you send over a few goblins, a marching band, some football players, a turkey, dressing and some pumpkin pie … hold the Cool Whip.

Love,
A lonely ex-pat

Over the past year a portion of every day and evening, in fact more than I’d like to acknowledge, has been spent staring mindlessly at the Friesians gathered in the fields outside our drawing room windows. At first I felt guilty and a bit embarrassed for just sitting and ogling. I tried reading, but the view was always more compelling. As pretty as the naked hillsides were, they came alive when the cows were put out to graze.

Using the many fields circling the Hall, the farmer would rotate the herd from one to the other, allowing the grass time to rejuvenate before the next munching. We grew to love the cows, understand them and need them. Their daily postulating and prancing, jockeying for herd position was always a source of amusement. Nevertheless, as the days grew shorter, we knew our time together was ending. The soil had become too muddy and the nights too chilly for them to remain outside any longer. We knew the day would soon come when the Pied Piper’s song would lead them into the barn for the long winter. It was a day we dreaded; one for which we would gladly have paid a ransom to keep the cattle in our fields. Nevertheless, it is nature that dictates the terms, not us.

We have become more respectful of the countryside and have learned to honour the custodians who maintain the balance and beauty for all to enjoy. These caretakers come in many guises. Some are rosy-cheeked farmers who lovingly attend their flock, gently tucking them into their cots at night. Others are artisans who create specialty cheeses and wines, syrups and cordials. Championing local producers has become big business, whether by word of mouth or on the internet. Reportedly, if one were to Google the words ‘mail order’ followed by the word ‘turkey’ over 233,000 UK hits would appear. Armed with this kind of local knowledge, I made it my mission to source festive holiday food suppliers as an alternative to shopping in highly regulated and overrated superstores. No longer a prisoner of the giant chains, I was free to explore Rutland’s markets and farms for plump turkeys, snow white geese, pheasants and cockerels, a pugnacious youth as yet unfamiliar to my palate.

I can still remember days past in Charlotte when turkeys were delivered in brown paper bags, freshly killed and ready for the Thanksgiving plucking. Almost seamlessly over time, the paper bag was replaced by plastic and the feathers exchanged for some yellowy-white goo inserted up the backside of the bird that miraculously transformed it into a ‘Butter Ball’. Now, it was payback time for messing with Mother Nature.

There is a perverse excitement about selecting a live bird all the while knowing he is preordained to be the tureen in which the sage and sausage stuffing is to be placed. Thanks to extensive travel over the years, I am somewhat desensitized to seeing exposed carcasses lying in a meat merchant’s window or a plump, shiny mulberry-red pillow of liver hanging from a hook in Alan Wyman’s local butcher shop. Caravanning through the deserts of the Middle East over the years has contributed much to my understanding of the meat to menu sequence. Nevertheless, whenever I need a reality top-up I find a visit to the Djemaa el Fna more than helpful. This vast exotic square in Marrakech houses a menagerie of humanity. It is here that my grocery store mentality is accosted and a sense of authenticity restored. With little effort you can savour the hypnotic atmosphere and mouth-watering aromas that emerge from large oil drums boiling up succulent entrails, sheep’s heads and the most prized slithery eyeballs. Little in my English world can offend me after such a barrage, so it was with pleasure that I prepared to stalk the local poultry population in search of just the right guest for our holiday table.

Unaccustomed as I was to cooking a goose, not to be confused with ‘cooking my own goose’, for which I am most talented, we elected to serve this seasonal bird for Thanksgiving dinner. With so much welcome attention placed on organic and free-range products these days, we decided to investigate a local business, the Seldom Seen Farm, famous for their home-reared geese. Taking our customary route over minor roads and gated single tracks, we headed west 15 miles through the soft, grey fog which was now our daily companion. What we failed to understand at first glance was the irony of the farm’s name. Seldom Seen means exactly what it says. Unless you know what you are looking for you would be better advised to contact said farm via the internet rather than drive the pitted road which, by the way, bumps and grinds better than a Las Vegas showgirl. The net would certainly have been quicker, but it would have lacked that sense of hands-on living to which we had become accustomed.

In my mind’s eye, I expected the farm to resemble a giant eiderdown of snow-white geese. To our dismay only two birds were to be found strutting around the pond in the front garden as the Christmas carnage had already taken place, filling the farm’s freezers with naked, plucked bodies sealed in plastic. As we were to learn later, the two surviving birds had been given long ago to owner, Claire Symington, as pets for her birthday. Sort of a geese starter set. From that pair the colony swelled to 300, 600, 1800 and beyond. Today, Claire and her husband Robert supervise the plucking, wrapping and readying of 4000 geese for collecting and shipping. So successful have they become that London restaurants clamour for their stock—this is in addition to enjoying a healthy mail order business on the side. After twenty-six years in farming, fourteen of which involved rearing geese, there is little they don’t know about their playful fowl.

It seems the tradition of the holiday goose fell out of favour years ago in England when the turkey, first domesticated by the Aztecs, was imported to England in 1524. This interloper grew faster, took up less room and was more cost effective to raise. Today, goose on the table is again catching on thanks to local farmers and talented chefs like Claire, who can prepare a magnificent ‘three bird roast’. Taking a freshly killed goose, she stuffs it with chicken, which is stuffed with pheasant meat. The entire roast is finally layered with homemade spiced port and orange for a tangy flavour. It is a great investment in holiday dining.

As thrilled as we were to be taking home our first goose, we were also giddy at the sight of hundreds of metre-high, freshly cut stalks of Brussels sprouts standing proudly upright against the side of their barn. Having recently discovered the benefits of sprouts on the stem over those sold in plastic bags in supermarkets, we filled the back seat of our car with the little green cabbages. The stalks made clever and welcome hostess gifts when tied with red satin ribbon accompanied by a recipe card. Sprouts often get a bum rap in England, but you can’t go wrong if you shred them first, then toss them in butter together with tender leeks, ginger, garlic and parsley. Allow them to gently brown until golden and glistening with juice. Perfect on any dinner table, they are one of winter’s unheralded little treasures.

Thanksgiving was always a sacrosanct occasion in my home as I was growing up thanks to my mentors, Mom and Dad. Year after year, from toddler to pimply-faced teenager to a rebellious know-it-all, our table was laid for family and friends. Bill and I try to carry on the custom in England, but in truth it is not as exciting to stage an almost theatrical culinary performance on a Thursday night when everyone has to go back to work the following day. Not to mention the fact that there’s no Macy’s Parade from New York City or a Dallas Cowboy football game on television to inspire you to build up a sweat in the kitchen. We’ve come to the conclusion that Thanksgiving is one tradition best enjoyed on American soil with friends. Happy as we are to continue to make the effort, I wouldn’t be disappointed if next year Bill suggested we went to the Bombay Cottage in Stamford for pappadums and curry. The gracious Bangladeshi owners always make us feel welcome and after all, isn’t the spirit of the holiday about sharing with your friends?