Last year, we enjoyed tomatoes into October, so I remain hopeful.

This week’s meal for the One Local Summer blog challenge features some of those glorious tomatoes, though I was so excited about my mozzarella that I let it hog the camera. This is a fabulous(ly easy) bruschetta, featuring multicolored heirloom tomatoes: German red strawberry (red), German striped (yellow with sunsplashed rays of red), ananas noire (green—donated by CSA member Carrie P.) and the non-heirloom sungold (orange, sweet, and tasty!).

Also in the bruschetta are purplette onions, basil, garlic and fresh mozzarella from our cow’s milk, which was absolutely divine. I’ll be making that much more often, I can tell you. We enjoyed this atop some bread baked local to my in-laws, who were kind enough to bring a giant bag down for my freezer last time they visited. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to pull something out to reheat rather than baking from scratch.

To round out our meal (though I would’ve been happy with just the bruschetta and wine!) was a whole chicken, roasted with butter, rosemary, thyme and Russian banana fingerling potatoes, another heirloom veggie—all fresh from our farm. If you’ve never tried fingerling potatoes before, you’re missing a real treat. They are creamy, buttery goodness: roasted in homemade butter and herbs, they approach Nirvana.

This week one meal really stood out from the others for local and zero mile flavor.

Rotisserie chicken; couscous with sundried tomatoes, basil, and ricotta cheese; mixed green salad with chevre, radishes, and green onions; homemade ciabatta bread.

Wine: White Linen by Deep Creek Cellars.

Everything in the meal was grown at Touch the Earth Farm except the couscous, flour, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper. The cheeses I made fresh this week from our raw Jersey milk. Mmmmmm! The tomatoes and basil are from last year’s garden.

The ricotta was tasty, but the chevre was dynamite, and we’ve been enjoying it in everything from eggs to burritos. It lends a creaminess to everything that’s just out of this world. Speaking of which, I need to make some more!

To prep the bird, I’ll rub it down with just a bit of olive oil to help crisp the skin quickly, but goose is a fatty enough bird that it doesn’t need much. I’ll prick the skin in several places with a fork to allow the fat to drain out into the deep roasting pan, which I’ll drain several times during roasting. The goal is to pierce the skin and underlying fat, but not the meat.

What ever you do, save the fat from the cooking process! Cooking a Christmas goose is a wonderful tradition for this alone. I siphon mine off with a bulb baster into a 4 cup pyrex measuring cup where it can safely cool before I fill whatever containers I might have handy and pop it into the freezer. All year long, I’ll be able to pull out the pristine white goose fat, shave off some chunks, and roast vegetables and potatoes to golden brown perfection. Goose fat is one of the most delicious cooking oils you’ll ever taste! Europeans are known to use duck and goose fat instead of butter on slice of toast.

Be sure to drain the fat for two reasons: 1) you don’t want your bird swimming in fat as it cooks, and 2) it’s highly flammable and no one needs a holiday meal to remember from that standpoint!

I’ll likely stuff my goose with fresh herbs, apples, onions, and garlic, since I won’t be doing a dressing this year. I’ll also reserve some of that stuffing to encircle the goose in the roasting pan, which will caramelize down nicely at the end of the roasting process. Adding about 1/4″ of water in the bottom of pan will help keep the fat from igniting as it drips from the bird; just be sure to skim the fat off the water when siphoning it later.

I’ll place my bird into a 425° oven for about 30 minutes or so to sear the skin, after which I’ll drop the temp down to about 325° to continue cooking until done. Folks can use a meat thermometer to test for doneness, though I generally cook until the leg bone begins to loosen and pull away a bit from the body when gently tugged. Be sure to baste and drain the fat several times during cooking.

A smaller goose like ours will take about 2 to 2.5 hours, depending whether it’s stuffed. When I’m about an hour away from being done, I’ll drizzle some of the drained fat over a medley of cubed gold potatoes and sweet potatoes, roasting them under a low broiler.

Once the goose is done, we’ll let it set for 15-20 minutes while making a gravy from the remaining pan drippings.

Links:

An NPR story acclaiming the wonders of goose fat

An illustrated guide to roasting goose

I made two heritage turkeys this year, one for dinner and one for leftovers. This one is a 17lb Narragansett tom, and the other was an 11 lb Royal Palm hen, both of which I brined for about 24-36 hours in a kosher salt ice bath. The heritage birds have such incredibly long legs that they’re impossible to truss in the bird, and they hang over my largest roasting pan. Next year, I’ll have some twine on hand at least. I cooked our birds at a high heat (425°) for the first 40 minutes or so to seal in the juices and crisp the outer skin, then lowered the temp to around 350° for the remaining cooking time. I think next year I’ll drop it to 325°, though both turkeys were moist, tender, and delicious.

For the stuffing, I made two loaves of country white bread (made with half whole wheat pastry flour), diced them into cubes and tossed them with several garden herbs—rosemary, thyme, oregano and Italian parsley—and crisped them in the oven for about an hour and let set out overnight. Thursday morning I browned our last package of sausage that I’d been saving together with green onions, garlic, and swiss chard stems, and of course fresh herbs then drenched it all with homemade turkey stock.

For sides, we enjoyed roasted butternut squash stuffed with onion and parsley; kale and chard wilted with olive oil and caramelized onions; sautéed mixed beans; our three Beauregard sweet potatoes we managed to harvest this year baked with cinnamon and brown sugar; the requisite mashed potatoes and a beautiful deep brown gravy; and a lovely side salad with mixed greens, a red wine vinaigrette, onion, one of our last storage tomatoes, and crumbled gorgonzola.

For breads I made our standard ciabatta as well as mini Gruyère gougères—a small, light puff pastry. Dessert was a homemade pumpkin pie with puréed pumpkin from our freezer. I’d also planned to make apple crisp with local apples, but by the time dessert rolled around, we were all totally stuffed. So we limited ourselves to the pumpkin pie and the deserts my mother-in-law brought down, showing uncharacteristic restraint, considering we’ve been known to have one desert per person at the table.

Everything was homegrown or homemade. Non-local items: the flour, potatoes, olive oil, vinegar, Gorgonzola and some spices. The milk and Gruyère were both from our local creamery, and I could’ve had a bleu as well if I’d thought ahead.

The pièce de résistance…

• Dice yellow squash, green zucchini, and green zebra tomatoes
• Toss with balsamic vinaigrette

Balsamic Vinaigrette:

• equal parts of olive oil and balsamic vinegar
• pinch cayenne pepper
• pinch sea salt
• dollop dijon mustard
• minced garlic clove
• basil

Dinner here on Wednesday:
Heritage chicken brushed in olive oil, sprinkled with thyme and rosemary, and slow cooked on the rotisserie grill.

Salad with purslane, black seeded simpson and red salad bowl lettuces, green onion, garlic scape, and sunflower seeds with a creamy horseradish dill dressing. For the dressing I combined olive oil, cider vinegar, sea salt, horseradish greens, dill and a generous dollop of creamy horseradish condiment and whirred it all in the blender for a few seconds.

Herb Focaccia for the bread machine:
10.5 ounces warm water
4 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3 cups bread flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp yeast

Roll out dough into a rough square or rectangle, cover and allow to rise again for approx. 20 min, though this step can be skipped if you’re in a hurry. Brush with olive oil and garlic, add chopped dill, thyme, rosemary, parsley, garlic scapes, chives and coarse sea salt. Bake in oven for about 10-12 minutes on pizza stone for best results.

Wine: Santa Julia Chardonnay, a reasonably priced tasty white wine from Argentina; although I prefer their Torrontes, both are quite good for the price.