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Goose Fat-Fried Pommes Frites

Kirsten — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:27:00 +0000

(First things first – here is my photographic tribute to the Hawkeyes – Orange Bowl Bound! The bear used to wear an Iowa Hawkeyes sweater, but that was replaced by the turtle shell that he now sports. No, I did not eat that particular turtle, but that gives me an idea for a future post…)

In their early greatness, by the shores of Gitche Gumee by the shining Big-Sea-Water, the native Americans are said to have let no scrap of their buffalo victims go to waste. While not exactly inspired by this noble ideal so much as by my taste for worldly excess, I would like to describe my Thanksgiving tribute to the ancient Iowans whose culture was obviously more humane and evolved than our own… NOT.

This discussion will dovetail nicely with my sister’s record of our recent post-Thanksgiving goose – that description being deficient in this key point: THAT GOOSE WAS ONE FAT HONKER. I don’t think the picture of the whole goose in her post realistically depicts the sheer volume of grease (oil, fat, lard, blubber, tallow!) that graced the roasting pan when it was time for me to make the gravy. Now, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that most people would not have thought twice about decanting this syrupy mess and throwing it away, but I was under the influence of at least two trains of thought that made me, at that particular moment, unlike most people.

Number 1 – as soon as we decided we were going to cook a goose, I had been looking forward to cooking the goose liver. Fate intervened, however, and the liver was thrown in a pot of boiling water along with the other offal only to end up not being used at all! No!

Number 2 – since moving to Chicagoland, I have re-watched several cooking shows where the hosts sample various Chicago eateries and, in the pertinent episode of No Reservations with (pompous douchebag) Anthony Bourdain, what do they feature at a haute dog joint called Hot Doug’s but duck-fat french fries? Hmmm…

Today, I’ll be talking about cooking potatoes in goose fat. The plan is simple – heat the goose gut in a deep pan until it is really hot. Slice up some potatoes into french fry-shaped strips. Fry.

Let’s begin at the beginning – after the goose was done cooking last week, I poured off the crystal clear goose fat into a couple salsa jars and let it cool to room temp before storing it in the fridge, where it turned solid and milky white. [And a week elapses...]

Let’s face it, my wife ain’t the fried-in-goose-fat type, so I waited until my mom was in town to give these a try. For the record, my mom turns out not to be the fried-in-goose-fat type either and made that clear.

To go with the potatoes, I cooked a corned beef brisket in my slow cooker (recipe: put corned beef in cooker with fatty side up; almost cover with water; add pickling spices that usually come with the beef; turn on low for hours and hours – I find, having 4 or 5 of these figuratively under my belt, that if the fat is above the water you get better results).

Back to the fries. I spooned out of one of the jars into a deep saucepan and set it to low to liquify the fat.

Once it was all melted, I turned the heat up to medium-high.

While it was heating up, I sliced a couple russet potatoes. I prefer the dark, rich flavor of russet potatoes over the creaminess of something like a Yukon gold. According to my mom, I sliced the potatoes thinly enough for me to call them “pommes frites,” but I like the original French term “frites de liberté.”

Testing the fat:

I added the potatoes and cooked them until they were browned. With these russets, they might look like they are burned, but they were perfect when the outsides were fairly dark brown like the bottom picture. As I mentioned above, my mother was skeptical of my plan, but after trying the fries, she told me “I admit it when I am wrong, and I was wrong about these.” I have to say that they certainly are the best fries I’ve ever made at home, but that’s out of a total of maybe 3 attempts. The corned beef was melt-in-your-mouth amazing. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of any of the salads and fresh, healthy, vegetable nonsense that Caryn put together to go along with my decadent 8-hour-cooked meat and meat-flavored vegetables.

Stay tuned for future goose-fat gastronomy. I have another fresh jar plus the leftovers from the fries. I’m at least going to make a pot of beans using the stuff, and I’d be willing to try other recipes if people have ideas.

Posted in Sides

Grandma’s Cranberry Jello Salad

Kirsten — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:57:00 +0000

Hello, everyone! I started writing this post last week, but then finals caught up to me and I finally got around to finishing it today. Along with the recipe for my dad’s favorite Thanksgiving dish, my grandma’s cranberry jello salad, there are some pictures at the end of the post of our second Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, we had a second Thanksgiving dinner. I easily could have gone for a third and a fourth because I love Thanksgiving so very much, but I had to settle for just two.

The menu for our second dinner was pretty standard turkey day stuff, except there was no turkey. We went for a goose instead, and we were all pleasantly surprised by it. This was my first time having goose, unless you count the force-fed liver variety, and it was really good! It’s comparable to the dark meat of a chicken or turkey. When I walk past all the geese in the park I now think “mmm…lunch” instead of “quit pooping everywhere.” In other exciting goose news, my brother took the fat home with him to make fries. I’ve been told that he took pictures and that they were delicious, so hopefully he’ll share those one of these days.

For now, here is my grandma’s recipe for cranberry jello salad. Also, Happy Birthday, Grandma!

Cranberry Jello Salad

1 lb. cranberries

1 cup sugar

1 large can crushed pineapple

2 envelopes Knox plain gelatin

1 cup frozen orange juice concentrate

1/2-1 cup pecans, chopped

16 oz. container sour half & half

2 1/2 cups mini marshmallows

Here’s the actual recipe card that my Grandma gave to my mom. I wish I could still write in cursive. Dang!

Cheers!

Rinse the cranberries and pick out any bad seeds.

My mom (and I’m assuming my grandma) always uses the KitchenAid grinder attachment to grind the cranberries. You can probably pulverize them by other means as well – maybe a food processor or your really strong fists. Just kidding about the fists. Unless you are indeed really, really strong.

Grind the cranberries into a large bowl, stir in the sugar, and set it aside.

While the sugar and cranberries mix, measure out the orange juice concentrate.

Pour the packets of gelatin into 1/2 cup of cool water.

Drain the pineapple, but reserve the juice in a measuring cup.

Add water to the pineapple juice until you have 1 1/2 cups liquid. Bring it to a boil, and then add the gelatin mixture. Add the orange juice and gelatin mixture to the cranberries.

Add the chopped pecans.

As well as the pineapple.

Stir everything together and pour it into a large dish – either a large, round dish or a 9×13″ dish. Refrigerate until set.

Once the gelatin mixture is made, combine the sour half & half with the marshmallows and refrigerate it. It’s best to do this several hours before you’re going to eat, but if you forget it is fine if eaten right away.

As you can see, it’s not your typical jello mold with random objects suspended in it. It’s a far more sophisticated dish that can only be achieved with the holy trinity of gourmet ingredients: canned pineapple, orange juice concentrate, and gelatin.

Here is the rest of our Thanksgiving #2 menu:

Dill mashed potatoes.

Boil a bunch of potatoes until fork-tender. Mash with any combination of butter, cream, milk, sour cream, plain yogurt, and cream cheese. Season with salt and pepper, and add as much chopped fresh dill as you can handle.

Southwest Corn, Chili and Cumin Saute from Bon Appetit, November 2002

Goose with Port Sauce and Chestnut Stuffing from Saveur.

More goose.

My brother’s pretty plate.

My brother’s plan to make a pumpkin pie for dessert fell through, so we ate some of these amazing mint-filled brownies from Noble Pig.

Delicious.

Posted in Fruit, Salad, Sides

Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Kirsten — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:21:00 +0000

Oven roasted tomatoes have been popping up all over the place on food blogs lately, and I’ve been dying to try them. The only problem was I didn’t have a bunch of tomatoes sitting around that I needed to use up. Until last week. Matt came back from a week at home with a huge box of veggies from his mom’s garden, largely composed of Roma tomatoes. I was thrilled. If I would have known how simple slow roasting tomatoes was and how delicious the results are, I would have been roasting them all summer long. I guess now I just have to put my tomato consumption into overdrive until the season is over.

I have yet to use the giant zucchini, and I can’t decide what to do with it. Zucchini bread is out since I still have half a loaf in my freezer from when I made it a month or so ago. Any ideas?

Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Slightly adapted from Orangette

Roma tomatoes
Olive oil
Salt

Rinse the tomatoes, cut out the stems, and slice them in half lengthwise.

Place them skin side down on a baking sheet and drizzle lightly with olive oil. You can also brush the oil on with a pastry brush, which makes it a little easier to control the amount that goes on.

Sprinkle with a little salt. You can sprinkle on some herbs or spices as well, but I stuck with just salt figuring they could be used more universally if they weren’t seasoned.

Bake at 200 for at least 4 hours or at 225 for at least 3 hours. Since the temperature is pretty low you don’t have to worry about making your kitchen insanely hot for several hours.

Some recipes call for roasting the tomatoes until they’re a little more dry and shriveled, but I took them out when they were still moderately juicy. They ended up being in the oven for about 5 hours.

Eat them plain, throw them on a sandwich, toss them with pasta, add them to a salad, or anything else that tickles your fancy. If you don’t use them right away you can store them in an airtight container in the fridge.

Posted in Appetizer, Sides, Snacks, Vegetarian

Chicken Wings + Mashed Parsnips

Kirsten — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:55:00 +0000

Last night for dinner Matt wanted buffalo wings. The last time we tried to make them we failed miserably. I thought it would be ok to use drumsticks instead of wings, and we just baked them and rolled them in buffalo sauce when the came out of the oven. The sauce barely stuck to the meat, and they were just kind of blah. This time around Matt spent a while looking up recipes until he found one that sounded more promising, so we gave wings another shot.

First of all, here is what happens when you send your boyfriend to the grocery store with a shopping list that contains options he can choose from. He buys everything on the list.

Along with our wings we had brussels sprouts and mashed parsnips. I’ve never made parsnips before, so I looked up a few recipes and then kind of made it up as I went.

I started out by peeling them and chopping off the ends.

Then cut them up so they were relatively the same size.

Then I boiled them, just like you would with potatoes, until they were fork tender.

I stopped taking pictures of the parsnips at this point, but I basically just mashed them up with some skim milk, butter, and light sour cream. I didn’t measure the amounts or anything. Not really my style. I just added stuff until they were an acceptable consistency. And did a little taste testing. And threw in some salt and pepper. That was that.

For the brussies, I chopped them up like so:

Then steamed them until they softened up a bit. As simple as that.

All the while Matt was dealing with the wings. He knows that I usually buy Smart Chicken, so he did the same. Isn’t he nice? I think so.

The wings baked at 375 for 20 minutes with nothing on them, and then they came out for sauce. We had a bottle of buffalo sauce that Matt mixed with some melted butter. I wasn’t paying very close attention, but I think it was about 3/4 cup sauce and 1/4 cup butter. We’re health fiends, can’t you tell? For the first dose of sauce Matt brushed it onto one side, and then stuck them back in the oven for 10 more minutes. They were then flipped over, the other side got a nice dose of sauce, and they went back in for about 5 minutes. Here’s a picture of the very precise sauce application. And I won’t even get into how awesome the shirt is.

Here’s the finished product – buffalo on the left and barbeque on the right.

And here it is all together.

While the wings were much better than the last time, I think we both agreed that there is still room for improvement. The sauce did stick a little better this time and using wings instead of drumsticks was helpful, but I think it might be necessary to deep fry wings to get the full effect. I’m not ready to give up on making wings without the frying part, though. Maybe marinating them overnight would help.

As for the rest of the meal, the barbeque wings were good. I definitely liked those better than the buffalo ones. The mashed parsnips were good, and they were a very easy side dish. Matt really liked them, so I’m sure we’ll be making them again. The brussels sprouts were, of course, fantastic.

Now I have to decide what to eat to warm up on this bitter cold night. The temperature did not get above zero today, and it is currently at -4. If there’s anything I am grateful for, it is the fact that I do not live further north.

Posted in Chicken, Sides