Goochickant, aka vaguely ridiculous meals I have enjoyed

For Christmas Marie and I drove up to Edinburgh, in the hope of our first Christmas away from New Zealand being a white one. Sadly this did not eventuate, so we consoled ourselves by attacking a goochickant. That is, a deboned goose stuffed with a deboned chicken stuffed with a deboned pheasant. Who dreams this kind of roast up, I want to know. As per the photo, you serve this by slicing vertically through the roast to yield a serving of layered poultry.

Overall verdict: strongly positive.
Pros: very tasty, and I somehow managed to cook the innermost pheasant without drying out the outermost goose.
Cons: It is not the kind of thing you want to eat every day, as the sheer size is vaguely ridiculous. Especially for three people, haha. More thoughts and the cooking techniques below the fold.




The roast prior to cooking, just to give you some idea of how big this was. Also, these birds have been mostly deboned so it is 5kg of pure meat. Mmmm bird flu.

We roasted the megabird covered in foil for a total of five hours (followed by resting of 20 mins), with basting every hour. The liquid I used for basting was the poultry fat which came off the bird, so I was basting with pure fat. At least goose fat is the good type of fat (is the good one hydrogenated or unhydrogenated? I forget). Temperature of roasting: 180 for the first hour, 150 after that.
I used the Nigel Slater technique for vegetables of putting the roast on an oven rack and the vegetables underneath, so the fat from the roast dripped onto the vegetables (potatoes, kumara, garlic, onions, parsnips, carrots). As there was a lot of fat coming off the roast the vegetables started to caramelise due to the combination of low heat, much fat, and long cooking time.
In fact, every time I basted I took more liquid from the vegetable tray than I replaced, so by the end of the roast I had a pint glass full of excess meat juices. And this was after I used some of the excess meat juices for the gravy, which was adulterated by 300 grams of cranberries which Brendan had procured from somewhere and red wine. Purple gravy is good.



The goochickant was served with the aforementioned vegetables and gravy, and also some brussel sprouts to put some green on our plates.
We didn't manage to polish the entire roast off on Christmas day. We got about halfway through, so the menu for the next few days is goochickant sandwhiches, goochickant salad, goochickant insert method of eating cold meat here.

I had previously heard that three bird roasts sometimes dried out the outer bird. I think the way we avoided this fate here was a combination of a)covering the bird, b) cooking at a low temperature for a long period, and c) frequent basting. I have had goose once before, and it was a little tough. In the goochickant the goose was nice and tender, so crisis averted here.

While I enjoyed this roast immensely, I don't think I would have it again next year in the same iteration. Part of this is the novelty value of a three bird roast, which is now gone. Also, I think I would like to make my own version next time. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame has a recipe for a ten bird roast. For this he doesn't stuff nine whole birds into the tenth one, rather he takes the breasts from the nine smallest birds and puts them into the largest bird. Rather than ten birds, I could strip the meat off a couple of smaller birds, and put them into a goose. Britons like their birds, you can procure everything from partridges to pheasants at the numerous farmers' markets, so getting hold of exotic poultry is not really an issue.

London calling (Simon)

I haven't written here for a wee while. This is not because I have been cowed into a socially disengaged coma by the sheer size of London. Although it is enormous.
Rather, London has been great thus far, and I am trying to take it all in. Because we are going to be here for the medium term I am trying to re-establish a routine, and so far it is working out mighty fine. More below the fold.

In terms of the obvious (flat and job), our arrival was helped immensely by our friends Katherine and Daniel -well mostly Katherine- finding a fantastic two bedroom apartment for the four of us to share. The move in date was a week after our arrival in London, and it is within three minutes walk of Kings Cross St Pancras tube/train station. There is an alcove off the lounge which is ideal for friends to doss in, so if you are coming over to London for a visit (say from your house just outside Greytown) you should look us up.
In terms of our immediate surrounds, there are a number of takeaways, bars and a supermarket within a couple of minutes walk.

I found a job fairly quickly working for an IT recruitment company (where I don't have to wear a suit or tie), and Marie has just started as a conference researcher for a publishing company. I am on a four month contract at the moment and Marie has a permanent role, so from here on in we should be pretty sweet. Both Marie and I are able to walk to work in 20 minutes, so we don't have to endure the indignity of rush hour Tube trips.

For a month on the ground I think that is pretty good going. The only tourist attraction we have done thus far is the London Eye, on the grounds that we will have time to see the rest of them next year. I have signed up for the waiting list to climb up inside Big Ben, hopefully we can do that in the new year...

One thing I have noticed about London is the anonymity. I have been walking most places for a month, and I have seen one person I knew. I think this is one of the things which makes NZ appealing- yes in NZ I saw people I knew when I was hungover in the supermarket looking for orange juice, but this is reassuring in hindsight. I don't know why.

A large advantage of living beside Kings Cross is that there are direct trains to Paris in just over two hours, not to mention the rest of continental Europe and all of the United Kingdom. I have already made a booking for a Parisian restaurant the weekend of my birthday, so that is something to look forward to in February. You can get on a sleeper train in the evening and wake up in Venice, so that will be a nice weekend at some point next year. We were going to get the fast train up to Edinburgh for Christmas, but the train tickets were twice as expensive as either flying or hiring a car. Why is it that the most environmentally friendly mode of transport is the most expensive?

To sum up, life is pretty sweet. The only minor downside I can think of is that it gets dark at about 5pm, but that just gives me an excuse to buy a new heavy coat with my first paycheck. And a scarf and some gloves.