We ate goose on Friday. A lot of geese. A veritable gaggle.
Course 1: Toast with foie gras.
The temptation to put foie gras in italics is huge. I assume this is because it is foreign, but may also be because it is so nice that it needs to be marked out. This course marked the only faux pas (more italics?) of the otherwise magnificent St John’s restaurant where we were short two bits of bread for the fifteen of us, leaving odd toast halving problems. Other mistakes were made in the evening, but mainly along the line of me almost ordering the wrong wine. Though it was worth getting the Muscadet just for the Quentin Blake designed wine label.
Course 2: Confit Of Goose Salad
Simple: watercress, cornichons, capers and little silverskin pickled onions with gobbets and gobbets of shredded fatty goose leg. I fear I may have started my decline into uncouthness at this level eating all and any fat left over and wiping the serving plate with bread.
Course 3: Roast Goose Breast with rosemary mash
Thick cut, juicy as anything – the goose breasts were tremendous. More than enough blood slopping around as well to make the mash pleasantly marbled and pink. This would have been more than enough for a bravo, but on the side were some fantastic spring greens and new potatoes. I have a feeling those potatoes were done stovie style (basically steamed and gently fried at the same time) but however they were done, they kept me eating well after the goose was gone and indeed well after everyone was full.
Course 4: Lemon sorbet & vodka
No goose here, though a squint could have made these snowballs of sorbet into balls of goose fat. Just as well they were not. Vodka went down the hatch, sorbet freshened the palate.
I would like to say this sated us for the evening. And indeed for some of us it did. There were bad people amongst us however who went and had a few more beers, regrouped in a London Bootleg Orchestra style at someone else Christmas Party before retiring to south London to play Singstar and drink two thirds of a bottle of port.
It’s Christmas y’know!!!