[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks digest, Vol 1 #2981 - / free range geese

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> 13. Re: cooking geese (Phlip)
>
> I wouldn't think geese would taste 'fishy', at least
> not like a ducks, geese are by and large vegatarians,
> grazers of grass and such, not likely to eat fish or
> such, course eating aquatic plants might give you that
> taste too, so that might be it!! Ducks, like chickens
> are omnivores! Not very good at pecking, but quite
> adapt at sieving and chomping for snails, slugs and
> such!!
>
> Johann von Metten

You're probably right, Marcus, but I'm remembering a couple of incidents
across the years. One was a goose we had as a kid, who would fight the cats
for the cat food. Don't know if maybe that goose was fighting for the food,
or just being it's usual aggressive goosey self, but we had to build a
special pen so the cats could eat in peace. (Yes, she was a goose- she laid
eggs occasionally- and they were pretty fishy tasting, for some reason).

Also, a few years ago, I was given some goose breasts from a Canadian hunt
some friends had gone on, and some of them were a bit fishy. Now, I know
these people well enough to know the geese were fairly quickly and properly
dressed and frozen, so I don't think it was a butchering problem- dunno what
they'd been eating, and I don't remember now what breed they were. Soaking
in salt water, then sauteeing with onions and apples put them right.

The soaking in salt water (and, I've heard, milk) and either sauteeing with
apples and onions, or, if you have a whole carcass, stuffing them loosely
with quartered onions and apples is the usual method for getting rid of the
fishy taste, just in caseanyone runs into that problem.

Phlip

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....