Fannie's Last Supper (17 page)

AUGUST 2009. AFTER THE VAST MAJORITY OF FANNIE FARMER
recipes we had tested turned out close to inedible or a country mile from being enjoyable, I was getting the feeling that Americans had almost no discerning palates whatsoever in the nineteenth century and that food was, for the most part, fuel rather than pleasure. Sure, Fannie was on solid ground when dealing with simple roasts, chops, puddings, and the like, but once she tried to tart up a dish or had to cook more delicate items such as vegetables or fish—well, the modern cook would find the food more compost than compelling. (To be generous, there is often something lost in translation, as when we made Fannie’s plum pudding which calls for “½ pound chopped suet.” It was inedible. Of course, we soon realized that the suet had to be rendered first, which improved the dish considerably, although it was still second-rate.)

I am not, however, throwing out the baby with the bath water. The nineteenth century did have some great food, including much of the food at Delmonico’s in New York, and a whole range of fruit desserts, including pies, cobblers, pandowdies, betties, and grunts. Plus, Fannie did know how to roast a chicken and make Canton sorbet. A few of her more unusual desserts—orange snow, for example—were actually rather good. But taken as a whole, the recipes in
The Boston Cooking
-
School Cook Book
were a mediocre, middle-class lot at best. So here was the obvious question that I was going to have to answer by the end of this project: what had I learned about American cookery by cooking through dozens of Fannie Farmer recipes, reading through an entire year of
Boston Globe
food columns, and thumbing through dozens of nineteenth-century cookbooks?

For starters, we live in a country that always thought of food as necessity rather than art: it was fuel, it was medicine, or it was a social affectation like a new ball gown. In fact, I would state unabashedly that American cooks had little common sense in the kitchen compared to most of their European brethren when it came to good taste and good technique. They simply made the best of whatever was on hand. Cooking for Americans was more a matter of life and death, an issue of taking expensive local ingredients and putting them up for future meals, like squirrels storing nuts. And don’t forget that prior to 1850, the United States was still a rather primitive place, especially in the kitchen, and certainly compared to France or Italy.

Then, as soon as food manufacturers offered easier, quicker solutions to putting food on the table, we rushed to buy what they were selling—from good ideas such as powdered gelatin and compressed yeast, to really bad ideas such as Jell-O ice-cream powder, margarine, and canned vegetables. The Industrial Revolution did two things simultaneously: it deprived home kitchens of inexpensive labor, thus making the preparation of meals more onerous for the woman of the household; and it offered time-saving solutions that were wholeheartedly accepted by this same oppressed mother/cook/household manager. It was a winning combination.

Rather than look at our past as a halcyon culinary age, I conclude that it is simply a matter of different choices. Prior to 1850, the American home cook had no options; everything was local and natural, and therefore the food was probably reasonably healthy, albeit heavy. By the end of the century, American industry had completely changed the culinary landscape and increased the possibilities, from an expanded range of sources (California, Italy, France, Florida), to preparation method (fresh, canned, bottled), to natural versus ersatz (ice-cream powder versus homemade ice cream), to high quality versus adulterated (manufacturers using food coloring, some of it outright poisonous, to make bad food look inviting). The current culinary scene is merely an extension, albeit an exponentially more complex one, of what began in the era of Fannie Farmer. I am quite certain that we are no different from our Victorian ancestors, who would have been standing in line right next to us at McDonald’s. Convenience sells.

Although my admiration for all things Victorian is virtually boundless, I would choose to live in modern times as a food lover. Many of our choices seem to be going in the right direction, toward local, toward quality, toward an appreciation of well-prepared, healthy food. Maybe for the patient to get better, he first had to get sick. The Victorians had no sense of what they were about to lose; we do. Like a second marriage, we now know how good it can be—and how much worse it can get.

Our last savory course was to be game. Goose was our first choice because it is worthy of a fancy dinner party and because it is hard to cook well. I had developed a recipe years ago that involved simmering the goose in water for forty-five minutes and then letting it air-dry in the refrigerator overnight, uncovered, before roasting the next day. This seemed to render much of the excess fat under the skin, but the results were still lackluster. The big problem with goose is that the dark meat and the breast meat need to be cooked quite differently, as we were soon to discover. This meant deconstructing the bird and coming up with a whole new way to cook it.

GEESE WERE POPULAR IN ROME AFTER CAESAR CONQUERED
Gaul, but in this country it wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that they were bred in quantity because wild ducks and geese were so plentiful. However, geese were extremely valuable, not just for the meat, but also for down for comforters, feathers for mattresses and pillows, quills for pens, along with their fat and oil, which were used in cooking as well as in medicine. In fact, early on in American history, the feathers were more prized than the meat. The average goose produces about a pound of feathers per year, so feathers were often picked from live geese, a practice that was considered inhumane and therefore pretty much abandoned by the mid-1900s. Early farmers, mostly because their options were limited, had a more ecologically sound approach to most things, and used geese to control weeds in cotton fields, a major reason why the goose population in the South was much higher than in the North. By 1890, there were 8.5 million geese on American farms, which was only slightly less than the number of turkeys. Yet today, geese are rare and expensive, running up to $100 for a good-sized bird (about $7 a pound). Probably because their meat is less desired by consumers, ducks and geese have not been as refined genetically. The poor turkey has gone from large legs and small breasts to just the opposite—consumers love white meat—and they fatten up quickly and live only eighteen weeks; a “heritage breed” takes thirty weeks to bring to market. Geese are more like heirloom turkeys—they have not been turbocharged and redesigned to meet the needs of the marketplace.

In the nineteenth century, there were a few common approaches to preparing and roasting a goose. First off, a goose was never to be killed and eaten on the same day. It would hang for at least twenty-four hours, but in cold weather it could be hung for up to a week. Onion and sage were two common ingredients for the dressing, but many cooks mixed in mashed potatoes or bread crumbs as well. One particularly interesting recipe called for using sliced fingerling potatoes tossed in goose fat.

Fannie’s recipe from 1896 is as follows: “Stuff, truss, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and lay six thin strips fat salt pork over breast. Place on rack in dripping-pan, put in hot oven and bake two hours. Baste every fifteen minutes with fat in pan. Remove pork last half-hour of cooking. Place on platter, cut string, and remove string and skewers. Garnish with watercress and bright red cranberries, and place Potato Apples between pieces of watercress. Serve with Apple Sauce.”

Having roasted a number of geese over the years, we knew that the large amount of fat under the skin was going to be a problem. We also guessed that since modern birds are fed a fattier diet and are larger than their Victorian brethren, simmering the bird in water first might be a good idea, since it would melt a good deal of the fat and help to render the skin crisper. We tried steaming, air-drying, roasting, and parboiling, but the breast meat was still tough. The more it was cooked, the more it had an unpleasant gamy flavor, as well as being tough and chewy, similar to the taste of a cheap cut of beef from the round. Separating the cooking of the breast meat from the legs worked well; the dark meat, when thoroughly roasted, was tender, moist, almost shredded, while the breast meat was sautéed in a skillet and then finished to medium-rare in the oven. We thought that salting or brining might help, and indeed, we achieved crisp skin, juicy tender meat, and no livery flavor. Overnight salting instead of brining was clearly an improvement.

As for the stuffing, we started with a mashed-potato recipe used by Fannie and many other nineteenth-century cooks, but it was poorly rated by our tasters—too soft and boring. Next, we moved on to bread crumbs (we tested both dried and fresh) and mushrooms and ended up with a damp, mediocre result. Chestnuts were suggested by many nineteenth-century authors, so we included them as well. At first we boiled them in the shell, and then we found that roasting was actually easier and produced a better flavor.

ROAST GOOSE WITH CHESTNUT STUFFING AND JUS

If, once stuffing comes out of oven, the legs and breasts have cooled too much, simply put them on a tray in the oven for 5 minutes to quickly reheat. (
Note:
Legs can stay in longer if necessary, but to keep breasts from overcooking, don’t heat for more than 5 minutes.) We bard the goose, which simply means laying strips of salt pork on top of the legs as they roast. This adds flavor and also helps to protect the meat during the early portion of roasting. Our recipe for Goose Gravy and Goose Stock can be found at www.fannieslastsupper.com.

1 goose (12 to 15 pounds), neck and gizzards reserved for stock, liver reserved for stuffing (recipe follows)

Kosher salt

Ground black pepper

12 ounces salt pork, fatty, partially frozen, sliced into 1/8-inch slices

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 recipe Goose Gravy

1.
To prep the goose:
Remove wing tips; reserve for stock. Remove breasts, trim excess fat and silverskin, and score skin every quarter inch, being careful not to cut into flesh. Sprinkle each breast evenly on both sides with 1 teaspoon kosher salt per pound of meat; wrap tightly and refrigerate overnight. Crack backbone in half; with chef’s knife, cut through backbone at split and cut to remove leg section from remaining carcass; reserve for later use. Trim excess fat from legs, and score entire surface of skin with ¼-inch crosshatch, being careful not to cut into flesh. Wrap and refrigerate leg section and remaining carcass until ready to use.

2. Once goose is broken down, trim carcass of all skin and fat; save along with skin and fat trimmings from leg and breast for rendering. Cut into 2-inch pieces, place in medium saucepan, add ½ cup water, cook slowly over medium-low heat until skin has rendered, become crisp, and turned a light golden brown, 1 to 1½ hours. Strain through fine mesh strainer; discard cracklings and reserve fat for use in gravy and stuffing. Remaining fat can be frozen. One bird can yield up to 3 cups of rendered fat.

3.
To cook the goose:
Set oven rack at lower-middle position. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Unwrap leg section and carcass and pat dry. Place carcass on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet. Pour ½ cup water into pan. Season leg section with 1½ teaspoons kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, then place over carcass. Lay salt pork over surface to cover. Roast for 1½ hours until salt pork is stiff, crisp, and just beginning to brown. Remove salt pork and discard and continue to roast for another 1½ to 2 hours until skin is rendered, crisp, and golden brown and thickest part of thigh reaches 190 degrees, turning pan halfway through. Reduce oven temperature to 250 degrees. Remove legs from oven and let rest 20 to 30 minutes.

4. While legs are resting, pat breasts dry, season with pepper. Heat oil in heavy-bottomed 10-inch ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat until beginning to smoke, about 3 minutes; swirl skillet to coat evenly with oil. Place each goose breast skin side down and cook until skin is fully rendered and golden brown, about 6 to 8 minutes. Flip and brown second side, about 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer skillet to oven and cook until thickest part of breast registers about 125 degrees on instant-read thermometer, about 15 to 25 minutes. Transfer breasts to wire rack and let rest 10 minutes. Slice breasts into 1/8-inch slices; carve legs and thighs and serve with stuffing and gravy.

Serves 12 (small servings).

CHESTNUT STUFFING

Don’t even think about using jarred chestnuts—they tasted moldy and made the stuffing inedible. The only commercial chestnuts we liked were from D’Artagnan.

1 goose liver, patted dry

Kosher salt

Fresh ground black pepper

2 tablespoonfuls rendered goose fat or butter

2 shallots, chopped fine (½ cup)

8 ounces sausage meat

36 chestnuts, roasted, shelled, and peeled; 24 of them chopped into ¼-inch pieces and the remaining 12 pounded in a mortar (
Do not use jarred chestnuts
)

10 ounces mushrooms, chopped finely

3 tablespoons finely chopped sage

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley

2 tablespoons brandy

1 ounce fresh bread crumbs, fine

¼ cup goose broth

1 tablespoon rendered goose fat

4 to 5 drops lemon juice

1. Season liver with salt and pepper. Heat fat in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add liver and cook until well browned on both sides, but not cooked through, about 1 to 2 minutes per side; transfer to plate and refrigerate immediately. Add shallots to skillet and cook, stirring constantly, until just softened, about 1 minute. Add sausage and cook, breaking it up into small pieces (the largest, the size of a large pea), 4 to 5 minutes, until browned and just cooked through. Add chopped chestnuts, stirring constantly until heated through, about 1 to 2 minutes; transfer mixture to bowl.

2. Add mushrooms, ½ teaspoon kosher salt, and ¼ teaspoon black pepper to skillet and cook, stirring occasionally for about 2 minutes until pan begins to deglaze. Add mashed chestnuts and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mixture comes to boil; cook down until mixture is almost dry, about 6 minutes. Add sage and parsley; stir to combine. Add brandy and cook until dry, about 30 to 60 seconds. Transfer to bowl with sausage mixture. Chop liver into ¼-inch pieces. Add liver, bread crumbs, broth, and goose fat to sausage mixture and mix thoroughly to combine. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Transfer to an 8-inch Pyrex pan, cover with foil, bake in 375-degree oven for 15 minutes, remove foil, and bake until heated through and top begins to dry out and darken, another 10 minutes.