Sherry Chapmanby Sherry Chapman
First published in Fall, 2009, Volume 6, Issue 2, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
‘Tis holiday thyme again! I’m not complainin’. ‘Tis my favorite thyme of the year. If ennyone asked me last week how long I thought it’d be till the holidays, I’da said 11 more months, cuz it seems they were just here a scant month ago.
Ev’ryone in the house is in a good mood, compared to the usual. Even Miss Lizzie is talkin’ to Mrs. Borrden. At least, Mrs. Borrden asked Miss Lizzie what she wanted for Christmas and she rattled off a big long list, Miss Lizzie did. After that she went back to talkin’ little if at all. And I thought my eyes were playin’ tricks on me when I saw Miss Emma smile th’other day. ‘Course it was over a nasty remark Miss Lizzie had made about Mrs. Borrden, but it was still a smile and rare as goin’ thru a whole Friday the 13th without so much as breakin’ a dish.
Holidays with the Borrdens are pretty quiet, what with the girls upstairs and the Mister and Missus downstairs. They do eat holiday meals together. Usually the girls don’t eat enny meals with them if they don’t have to, but they’re smart and they know that our holiday dinners just ain’t the same warmed over – and over, and over.
Me, I mostly look forward to havin’ the rest of the day off once the cookin’ is done. The parties at my cousin’s house are lively with lots of our favorite Irish holiday dishes and plenty of drink to wash it down with. Games and dancin’ follow, with even the wee ones stayin’ up till late in the night with the rest of us.
Today I’m gonna teach you how to cook a real old recipe my cousin, Mary Katharine, gave to me, which comes to her from our dear old grandmother, which comes from her mother Bridget, handed down from her Aunt Mary, and from her great aunt Colleen, and the farthest back we can track it back to is from her Uncle Otis. Aparently it goes back even further than old Uncle Otis, but just knowin’ I got it from my cousin Mary is fine enough for me.
Let’s go to the kitchen. This is called, simple enough:
ROAST GOOSE WITH PRUNE AND APPLE STUFFING
Yer gonna need:
A goose, and keep the giblets
A little less than a pound of prunes. Soak ‘em overnight in water.
A lemon
Salt & pepper
And about a pound of apples, meant for cookin’
Take the giblets outta the goose. Put ‘em in a pan with almost 3 pints of water, bring that to a boil and simmer till the water is half gone. Strain it and keep the giblet stock set aside.
Ya wanna start out with yer oven pretty hot. Mary Katharine says it be 450 degrees. And ya cook the goose for 20 minutes for ev’ry pound, so be sure to ask the grocer how many pounds it weighs. If yer bad at arithmetic, ask the grocer how long to cook it. And if he don’t know, ask the next kind lookin’, pretty good dressed lady you see at the store.
Take off the extra fat (usually around the goose’s vent). Rinse it inside and take yer lemon and salt and pepper and rub it all on the skin.
Drain the water out of the prunes you been soakin’ and take out the pits. Chop ‘em up kinda coarsely into a bowl. Peel and core the apples and chop them up and put ‘em in with the prunes in that bowl. Give ‘em a few dashes of salt and pepper. Then stuff the goose with this.
Mary Katharine never told me what to do with the pan of giblet water. So I just make it like she told me and leave it on the top of the stove and it sits there. This year I need to ask her if I should make a gravy out of it, or if I should add it to the stuffing.
Now it’s time for the goose to go in the oven in a roasting pan. Now you wanna lower the oven degrees to 350. Cook the goose for however long you figured out what 20 minutes a pound turned out to be. Drain the fat sometimes while it’s cooking but keep the juices.
Here I heat a serving platter up and put the goose on that to put on the dining room table.
It’ll be interestin’ to see how many times Mr. Borrden has me re-warmin’ that goose in the days to come.
A blessed Noel to ya all.
