Geese of Christmas past
Pâté de foie gras (the real goose liver) is one of the treats very popular during the festive season in France and all over the rest of the world where Christmas is celebrated. Xmas just happens to fall in the very boring start of the winter and the period surrounding the 25th of December is set aside for forced rejoicing for no other reason than breaking a very depressing season. Ask any drunk in the street around that time why he/she is being sick in the gutter and the answer is bound to be:" 'Tis Xmas ain't it?" Yes, indeed, and why is it that December 25th is called like it is and why are the Michaelmas daisies named like that?
The geese are forced to rejoice all year round to give us that taste of luxury Christmas seems to be associated with. They are force-fed through an apparatus resembling a vegetable mouli connected with a funnel and a long tube that reaches the inner part of the goose's stomach that only that heavenly mixture of goodies can get into. And what a mixture: Hard-boiled eggs, the best beef mince money can buy, green peppercorns, various spices and brandy. This mixture given three times a day to any human being would induce cirrhosis of the liver before the next of kin could scrounge around enough money from the elusive relatives to line the coffin with velvet.
(C) Farm Sanctuary
This is exactly what happens to the geese. Apart from the velvet lined coffin. Their liver weighing at the best something around four kilos takes them to the slaughterhouse. Their flesh is not edible but their livers travel around the world to adorn the tables of fools like myself (an animal lover) and many others at the time of forgiveness and rejoicing. If we could sell our own human livers (let's face it a few years in Spain turn this essential organ into the same state as the geese's) at that price our inheritors would be millionaires.
The other goose, bred for its flesh and fat, used to be the Christmas treat. Not that insipid and boring turkey that arrived like most gastronomic horrors with the trade winds from across the big pond. The reason turkey became popular is, I suspect, because it goes a long way and it is believed to be cheap. Not that cheap when you consider that nobody wants the dark meat of the thighs, nobody wants to struggle with the legs that are a spaghetti junction of tendons and bones. Everybody asks for the white meat that tastes of wet flannel whatever anybody says. I wonder why nobody is breeding a legless turkey. It would solve the problem of leftovers, from dried up turkey meat sandwiches liberally smothered with bottle mayonnaise to the endless curries put together with a jar of vindaloo paste. After the excess of the festive season the only thing an overworked stomach won't accept kindly is a bucket full of industrially mixed spices and a shovel of overcooked rice.
The geese of yesteryears were not farmed. They grazed freely on meadows and in the autumn gobbled up the rotten cider apples left in a corner of the yard. That pile of decaying apples attracted all sorts of rodents and birds and neither the geese nor the cider press sorted out what was what. The cider was superb and the geese built up a gorgeous padding of flesh for the Christmas cull. In those days a goose could feed at least eight guests and provide enough fat to roast the potatoes for the rest of the winter.
Geese would not breed naturally in our part of Spain. The only grass we have is confined to the ever-thirsty golf courses and the lawns outside five star hotels. I can imagine a flock of geese being let loose on the first tee and the ganders chasing the bums of the diamond designed sweater-clad brigade. Geese are fierce and Mount Olympus was well guarded in those days. Come to think of it there could be a solution to the overcrowding of our coastline. Geese ahoy!!! As for the rotten cider apples even the Asturias, a province that produces a kind of cider tasting of cough syrup, is too busy pressing the apples when they are still on the trees. Letting them fall on the ground to acquire a few mice and magpies and give taste to any goose would be a waste of time.
Andalucians are not in geese although they are in ostriches. But then the new generation of Spaniards think big. So the Christmas geese we can buy at a vast price are imported. They come from battery farms in Holland (they think big for a small country), Germany (they think hard for a big country) or Tchecoslovakia where they think sometimes that it would be nice to be back in the old days of intrigue and fat geese.
One fat goose I remember well is the one that fed a very extended family in a small hotel in the Alps, on the French/Swiss border on a long gone Christmas Eve.. My aunt was the owner and a Bismarck of a woman. She was from the Italian side of the family. It sounds very strange but we had ramifications in the whole of Europe and I am the only one who stood like one of those Normandy cows you see on postcards and calendars; blond, placid and sporting child bearing hips. The others were dark, red hair, ash blond, tall, slim with a kind of exotic flavour in their bodies. I can only assume that our forbearers had been busy during the early part of the 20th century.
We, at the time, had made the mistake to taste the apple too early from the tree. My various cousins and I had set the trend for the future generations. As late teenagers we had acquired a posse of babies and had been thrown in disgrace out of parents houses.
The pill had not been invented yet.
In my Italian aunt we found refuge, food for the babies and food for us. We had to work very hard for it. I did some horrendous shifts in the kitchen with my cousin Colin who was also interested in cooking. The attic had been transformed into a wall to wall mattress for us and the babies. There was an old potbelly wood fire that had to be kept in logs all night long. We took it in turn to feed it.
That Christmas the little hotel had been very busy. Still, at 11pm on Xmas eve my aunt barked orders to all of us. One of the boys got the pony out of the stable, managed to harness it in the dim light of an oil lamp, and hitched the big sleigh and dragged pony and sleigh to the front door. It had been snowing heavily.
The huge goose was in the oven roasting very slowly, covered with honey from the mountains and lashings of butter.
All the children were wrapped up in blankets, sheepskins covered us all. My aunt took the reins and in no uncertain terms commanded the pony to get on with it.
Our sleigh was joined up by other sleighs. We climbed and climbed. The ponies bells, the candles, the oil lamps, the smell of the pine trees and being together in adversity was like being drunk on the best champagne.
We arrived at the little chapel where the midnight mass was celebrated. The children woke up and started howling. All the other children joined in. It did not matter. Everybody was singing louder and the priest was ecstatic at the turn out. May be he had got to the communion wine before anybody reached the chapel.
In the meantime the goose was looked after by an old retainer who was too old to ride up the hill to mass. In fact the dear old girl died when we were there but that is another story.
On the way down the babies fell blissfully asleep. My aunt was concentrating on getting the brakes on the sleigh in the right position. She was also shouting orders to all of us for what we had to do when we got home.
We put the children altogether on the mattress in the corner of the attic like a litter of puppies, fully dressed. We threw all the sheepskins on top of them, checked the fire and went down.
The old retainer had set the table, my aunt was carving that wonderful goose, there were jugs of local wine everywhere. We sang Christmas carols (no TV or radio), we toasted my aunt who cried, we took it in turn to check the upstairs brood.
All of them had peed in their pants and through the mattresses. We finished that wonderful goose, kissed that incredibly generous woman, took the last jug of plonk with us, changed all nappies, got thoroughly drunk and crashed, each one of us cradling an infant. It did not matter if it was not your own. Somebody else was loving him or her.
It was in 1958.
When geese were what they are supposed to be.
Happy festive season
JOCELYNE
