Lerida Estate and Roast Goose

When your friend is a chef and he offers to cook a roast goose for a Christmas dinner, all you do is make the stuffing and bring the wine. This roast goose was brined overnight with salt, sugar and aromatics, such as bay, all spice berries and fresh herbs. It was stuffed with more fresh herbs and a lemon and then roasted for 5 hours at 90 degrees, pushing the temp up to high to get a good bronzing for the last 20 minutes. The fat was drained off during cooking so that we could roast our potatoes in the goose fat. Par boil potatoes in salted water until just tender. Let them steam dry in a strainer and then rough them up in the roasting pan so you get fluffy edges, if little bits break off, that’s good, cooks treat!

When your goose is cooked, pour off the fat and pour into the potato roasting pan, cook the potatoes on high heat while your goose rests in a foil tent for all least 30 minutes. 

The stuffing:

• large onion
• zest and juice of a lime
• 1 egg, lightly whisked
• Half a bunch of fresh thyme leaves
• a few sprigs of oregano
• 1/2c macadamia nuts
• 1/2c dried cranberries 
• 1c dried breadcrumbs

Chop the onion and fry with a little olive oil until it’s translucent. In a blender, blitz the breadcrumbs, lime zest, herbs and the egg until well combined but still chunky. Add the nuts and cranberries and blitz a few times, you want the mixture to be quite textural, not a fine mince. Add the bread mixture to a bowl and combine with the cooked onions. Add a TB of lime juice and check for seasoning. Add salt and pepper if needed. Pop into a greased cake loaf tin and cook alongside the potatoes so it can served hot at the same time as the goose.

Serve the goose with steamed green beans, roast potatoes, slices of the stuffing, some gravy and a very large glass or two of Lerida Estate Pinot Noir.