No geese a-laying (but all sorts a-cooking in their fat)

When in January does it become too late to be wishing people a Happy New Year? A fortnight in? Three weeks? Burns Night? We've already gone past all those points, and February is nearly upon us, so I suppose it must now be time to go back to just a plain old hello. Seeing as this is my first post since December though, I'm going to do it anyway - happy new year to you all, and I hope 2016 is a good one for you.

It definitely feels too late to be talking about what you got up to over Christmas, as that feels like an eternity ago now, but sod it, I'm going to do that too, as otherwise my festive tinned shenanigans will go unwritten and unread for another eleven or so months, going against my aim to be more productive this year. Which I'm not doing too well on so far.

Avid readers of this blog (yes, both of you) may remember that last year I attempted a Christmas dinner made entirely from tinned goods, the elements of which ranged from the surprisingly delicious to the frankly revolting. Lingering somewhere in the bottom half of that scale were the somewhat disappointing roast potatoes, which some would say are the backbone of any half decent roast dinner, but my tinned new potatoes cooked in olive oil were far from that - pale, lacking any crispness, crunch or much flavour, they were nothing to write home about.

At home for Christmas this year, I had no inclination therefore to subject my family to anything similar for our big festive meal - but I did happen to have in my possession a tin of goose fat, which as everyone knows is the perfect cooking medium for creating a truly great roastie. I had only ever seen it sold in jars before - would the tinned version be as good?

On opening it up, it looked, well, much like the goose fat I'd bought in jars previously, in that it was whitish, slightly translucent, and rather gloopy. I had neglected the instructions on the tin to refrigerate for two hours before use, which presumably would have made it solid and hence eradicated the risk of dripping the stuff everywhere when spooning it out.


Curiously, the company who make the product, La Truffe Cendrée, also produce goose and duck fat in jars; ostensibly exactly the same product, but in different packaging. Dare I say it, but having it in a tin doesn't actually make much sense, since the instructions on the side advise decanting any unused contents into a "clean, resealable jar" and keeping it in the fridge. So unless you're using the whole lot in one go, the tin seems like a rather pointless middle man.

But never mind - to the taters! I went for the method now considered fairly standard for a decent roastie, parboiling the potatoes, draining, and then giving them a good shake back in the pan to rough up the edges so they soak up even more of the delicious fat and crisp up better. Here I was slightly worried that my spuds were going to let me known, as although sold as all-rounders, they were more waxy in texture than is ideal, so their edges didn't rough up as well as a more floury variety. I need not have worried though - rolled in copious amounts of the fat (I erred on the side of caution and used plenty) and given a good long roasting followed by a blast at a higher temperature once the bird had come out of the oven, the end result ranked pretty highly among roasties I've has in the past.

There certainly weren't many left over at the end (but there rarely are in our house) - and I think it was only the fact that we were so stuffed with everything else that the few remaining didn't get eaten too. Although when clearing up afterwards, there is always room for one more not-quite-cold roast potato, plus the delicious crunchy scrapings from the pan.

But what to do with all that leftover goose fat? The answer came in the form of a Christmas present - a copy of Kitchen Diaries III: A Year of Good Eating, the latest book from Nigel Slater, whose writing and recipes I admire greatly. None of his characteristic down-to-earth style of cooking is missing from this latest work, with four sections of very short, snappy recipes (many featuring tinned pulses, fish and so on, I was delighted to note) punctuating the more extended prose of his chronological record of the meals he cooked over the course of a year.

Looking at the index, there were two recipes featuring the fat: Goose-Fat Roast Chicken with Garlic Roast Potatoes from the start of his diaries, and the extraordinary-sounding Pork and Onion Pies with Goose-Fat Pastry in the final few days of the year. The first was essentially a whole chicken slathered in the white stuff and then roasted, allowing he fat and juices to run off onto the garlicky potatoes beneath. Wow! Still working my way through the leftovers of the Christmas bird at the time though, I decided to put off the roast chicken until another time, but to proceed with the potatoes, which sounded like they would be amazing anyway.

By his own assertion, when making this the first time, Nigel had accidentally given the potatoes a full cooking rather than a par-boiling, so they were on the point of collapsing into an almost-mash when they went into the oven. Far from being a disaster though, he found that the smaller, softer pieces of potato had crisped up to give a result that was "more golden crust than fluffy interior, everything I want a roast potato to be", and so replicated his mistake in the recipe that features in the book.

I can wholeheartedly agree with his feelings about them - it was almost like having an entire pan of the little crisp, crunchy leftover scrapings (with the delicious addition of roasted garlic and herbs too), which is no bad thing at all.

Not having these with a goose-fat-slathered chicken might seem abstemious on my part, but in fact it wasn't at all, as I served them alongside the goose-fat pies instead. Nigel says it was the fat's "lard-like whiteness" that made him think of using it in pastry, "in particular a hot water crust, the sort you might use for a pork pie".

His method is the very much the same as for that kind of pastry; rather than rubbing the fat into your flour as you do with butter for shortcrust, instead the goose fat, water and a little milk are heated together, and then the flour mixed in to make a thick paste, leaving it to cool before rolling it out and cutting into rounds the size of a mince pie. One round is then topped with a tablespoon of the filling - onions softened in butter, leftover ham (and sausagemeat, which I didn't have), a little flour, stock and parsley - and another placed on top, the edges crimped to make a neat little pie.

Nigel warns that the pastry would be very fragile, and indeed the top round started to crack as I shaped it down over the pie filling, making me wonder whether there was any chance it would be cooked before the filling bubbled out. Amazingly, it stayed more or less intact throughout its half hour in a hot oven, coming out looking exactly as Nigel described - "nut brown and softly crisp". He also advised allowing the pies to cool and serving them warm rather than hot, but they smelled so good I couldn't wait that long.

The filling was delicious - rich and deeply savoury, its saltiness well countered by the sweet redcurrant jelly that Nigel suggested to accompany it. But of course the real star was the pastry itself, which somehow managed to be crisp, soft and crumbly all at once, delightfully rich in flavour and almost melting in the mouth - as good as any pork pie I've ever tasted. With a hearty portion of those fabulous potatoes, I could only manage one pie, so had the other the next day. I tried a little slice cold, which was also very good, then briefly heated the rest in the oven to try it slightly warm as per Nigel's suggestion.

I had the pie with a jacket potato this time, its skin rubbed not with olive oil and salt as I often do, but, of course, with goose fat instead. For some reason I decided to see what would happen if I cooked it in the oven in the original goose fat tin rather than on a baking tray; it possibly wasn't the best idea in hindsight, as the skin didn't crisp up as much as I'd have liked - I don't think that "tater in a tin" is going to be the next big food sensation, sadly. But these things must be tried, if only once. Nigel's goose-fat recipes, by contrast, I shall definitely be trying again and again.

I still had (and indeed still have) a fair old bit of the fat left over, but given that it keeps for an age if kept cool, I wasn't too concerned about using it up. However, after finding myself in a bookshop flicking through the pages of "Do-Ahead Christmas" by the also-brilliant James Ramsden (despite it actually already being January by that point), and spotting his recipe for "Goose-Fat Fried Christmas Cake with Stilton", the jar came back out of the fridge again the moment I got home.

This probably isn't the sort of recipe for anyone attempting a health kick after the excesses of the festive period. I, however, had been quite ill in the lead up to Christmas, and not really able to enjoy the delights of the season's fare quite as much as I usually would. I felt it was only right therefore that I should go 'all out' with the leftovers as my appetite started to return to normal.

So I felt no guilt whatsoever about melting a spoonful of fat in a pan, chucking in a good slab of Christmas cake (icing and marzipan removed for this recipe, but no thrown away - perish the thought!) and frying it for a minute or so on each side until its edges were darkened, caramelised, and with the odd crispy bit where a raisin had caught on the pan and started to char.

With a slice of stilton alongside, and some toasted walnuts on top, it made for a pretty amazing combination of flavours and textures: sweet, savoury and salty all at once, nutty and fruity, crunchy and chewy, with the gently warming spices in the cake somehow still holding their own against the rich creamy tang of the stilton - sheer brilliance.



Perhaps a slice or two of pear would have been a nice addition too, as it goes so well with both walnuts and blue cheese. Or, even better, a glass port? Or some brandy poured over the top and ignited? Frankly, when you're frying Christmas cake in goose fat, you might as well push the boat out as far as it will go. James suggests that you could also try this recipe with leftover Christmas pudding. You could well do so, and equally tasty it would be - but I had other plans for my remaining Xmas pud. All this just stands as proof, if ever it was needed, that leftovers can often be even better than the main event itself.