Laura Shapiro - Julia Child

I TS A BIG, RAW GOOSE , naked as a baby, and shes holding it up by its massive wings, gleefully wiggling them before the camera as if shed like to waltz around the kitchen with her magnificent bird. A ten-pound beauty! she exclaims. You can cut it all up, simmer it in wine, serve it with a delicious saucesee how to ragout a goose, today on The French Chef !

Julia Child loved handling food. She loved slathering great gobs of butter around a pan with her bare hand and plunging a forefinger into a thick swirl of custard to see how warm it was getting as she stirred; sometimes, while she was showing off an array of ingredients, she couldnt help patting them affectionately. But nothing made her gleam with pleasure like the prospect of getting her hands into the fresh and glistening flesh of an animala rump of veal, a goose, a suckling pig, a giant monkfish. When she explained the different cuts of beef on her legendary public television series The French Chef, she used her own body as the butchers chart, twisting to display her back or side as if to make clear the intimate relationship between the cook and the meat. To Ragout a Goose was first aired on The French Chef in November 1972, long past the time when preparations for dinner in America began with domestic butchering. Most of Julias viewers encountered poultry only after it had been cleaned, cut into pieces, and wrapped in cellophanethoroughly denatured, that is, and ready for recipes. Julia never quarreled with convenience measures that would encourage more people to get into the kitchen, but she thought everyone should be able to take apart an animal easily and correctly. She knew there were squeamish cooks out there, not to mention vegetarians, because she got anguished letters from them all the time; but it was difficult for her to believe that people willingly surrendered their appetites to such trepidations. The idea of a self-imposed barrier between the cook and the foodwhether that barrier represented physical, mental, emotional, or moral reluctanceastonished and dismayed her. Besides, if you were going to cook goose, one of Julias all-time favorite foods, you had to bring it home whole, since it wasnt available in America in any other form. And she very much wanted Americans to cook goose. She had planned this lesson in part because it gave her a chance to demonstrate some of the most important tools in her entire batterie de cuisine: good, sharp knives and the courage to begin.

After your goose is all defrosted, the first thing you do is to take out the fat and the giblets, she explained to viewers, with the goose splayed out on the counter in front of her. Eagerly, she reached inside. Theres lots of fat which is all attached to the back end, or the vent as its politely called, she noted, gathering chunks of fat and putting them aside. You want to save all of this fat, because its wonderful to render. Her voice, a warm and hearty foghorn, swooped through each sentence, landing briefly on this word or that as it caught her fancy. To her evident surprise, after groping for the neck and giblets, she came up empty-handedFor some reason, it doesnt have anybut she did retrieve the liver, which she displayed for comparison purposes next to a life-size photograph of a fresh foie gras. The large lobe is about seven inches long, from there to there, she pointed out admiringly. The geese in France, in the foie gras country, are raised just for their livers, and thats why you can often buy goose by the piece, which you cant here.

Then she picked up a huge cleaver and began to butcher. Whang! The end of a wing flew off. With a smaller knife she slit the goose down the backbone and removed a leg and the rest of the wing (As you notice, Ive taken off a little bit of the breast along with the wing to make a better serving), but instead of finishing the job on that goose, she pulled a second goose out in front of the camera. This one was further along in the butchering process; hence she was able to hold up its raw, gaping body to show exactly how the leg and wing had been attached. Then she attacked the second goose with one bare hand and a knife, scraping vigorously through skin and fat and meat, feeling her way around the body as she sought the precise location of various joints. Heres what youre looking for: its that ball joint that attaches the wing to the shoulder, she reported as the camera focused on her fast-moving hands. Theres the small of your back there, so get that out first, and theres your kneeand lifting up the knee, slit the skin. And youre raising up the thigh and the leg at the same time. When she had the bird in pieces, she swiftly knifed away the fatty skinLook at all the fat there, thats aboutheavensalmost half an inch of fatand then proudly displayed the results. You have three and a half pounds of fat and fatty skin pieces, and you have about two and a quarter pounds of carcass and wing ends and scraps. You have really less than four pounds of meat, but youre paying for all of this so you might as well use it. Render the fat and turn the scraps into soup stock, because it makes a delicious soup.