I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Someone once said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."¹ I would like to nominate goose fat as another divine proof. It is a wonderful cooking medium, adds flavor to everything, cures the plague, keeps leather supple and will improve your life. ² Given all that, I am at a loss to explain why roast goose has fallen out of favour in the US. I mean, it's lovely dark meat, cooked in goose fat!

Goose isn't hard to cook. You do have to be careful since it can be a little messy. A 12-lb goose will give you a quart or more of goose fat (which is a good thing), so you need to be ready to keep taking the grease out of the roasting dish.

Roast Goose

• 1 goose
• salt
• pepper

Rinse the goose, rub with salt and truss the wings and legs. Put in a roasting dish, on a rack, with some water below. Put into a hot, 425F, oven for 15 minutes. Flip the goose and give it another 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350F, flip the goose again, baste with some of the goose grease which will have already begun to accumulate, remove most of the rest of the grease and save it - it's culinary gold, I tell you. Roast the goose for 15 minutes per pound, flipping and basting every half hour, and removing (and saving) the rendered fat.

When done, let it rest for a few moments, carve and enjoy. This year, and most years, I serve it with Yorkshire Pudding and gravy.

Yorkshire Pudding

Yorkshire Pudding is another simple dish, but one that goes so well with the goose. The texture is chewy and the flavor mild, so it really absorbs the taste of the goose and gravy.

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup flour
• pinch of salt
• a tablespoon or two of goose grease (or some other fat, if you've got no goose grease)

The only tricky bit about the Pudding is the high temperature it needs to brown up and puff up. What I will sometimes do is cheat on both the goose and the Pudding, and set the oven up to 375F or 380F for the last twenty minutes while they are both in the oven. To be honest, though, the goose could easily rest for twenty minutes while the Pudding goes in at high heat (with roasted brusselsprouts if you are so inclined.)

Gravy
For the sake of completeness, here's the way I make gravy for this meal.

Put a few tablespoons of goose grease into a pan and toss in a tablespoon or so of flour. Cook until browning a bit, but still a light color. Add 1 1/2 to 2 cups of the stock which has been simmering with your goose giblets. Stir or whisk and bring up to a simmer again. Meanwhile, scrape out all the bits that have accumulated on the bottom of your roasting pan and add them to the gravy. Taste, and add salt and pepper, if needed and to taste.