Boxing Day Soup
Waitrose do ready-trimmed veg and fruit at exorbitant prices, and one of the packs is a mix of butternut squash and sweet potato cubes. Just not having to cut and peel the squash is worth the extravagance. I'd made the gravy for the goose yesterday with goose fat, plain flour, the juice from the roasting tin, giblet stock, seasoning including allspice, some cooking port and a big dollop of redcurrant jelly.
Today I got a big pan, tipped in the gravy, topped it up with boiling water, and added 2 packs of orange veg. Simmered for a few hours, pureed it, leaving some lumps for interest's sake, tasted and added more allspice and some pepper. No extra salt, as when I served it I stirred tiny lumps of fresh creamy stilton into the bowl, so it went soft but not too melty.
Just what we needed this evening, rich but subtle, almost bland but very moreish, gentle on the tummy and nicely filling without being fatty or sweet.
Comments
Ooooooh, yes. Tons of the stuff. If you roast a goose, you need to drain the fat off about three times, and you'll end up with a litre or so. Plus when you clean a goose out anyway, there are thick pads of fat inside the body cavity that you pull out and melt down. It sets fairly solid, a beautiful off-white colour. It's the best thing on the planet for roasting potatoes in, and makes an excellent base for herbal rubs for chesty coughs. You can buy it in jars from delis and some supermarkets if you can't be bothered to deal with the whole goose.
You can make goose confit, too, like duck, where you simmer parts of the bird in the fat, and let the whole thing cool down. The fat will cover everything and preserve it, you just take out a bit at a time and reheat it.