TRADITIONAL FOOD FOR MICHAELMAS; RECIPE FOR GOOSE 29 SEPTEMBER

TRADITIONAL FOOD FOR MICHAELMAS; RECIPE FOR GOOSE

29 SEPTEMBER

Image from: Maggie Beer - Roast Goose with apple and sage stuffing.

GOOSE-
Katherine Burton sets out traditional food for the Feast of St Michael, whom she describes as “the Star of love that conquers pride”, and who vanquished Lucifer who had until then been called the “Star of the Morning”.
According to her, an Irish superstition says that the eating of goose at the Feast Day of the Archangel is a guarantee of freedom from financial hardship throughout the year! The Feast of Michaelmas does have relation to the financial quarters of the year, so maybe there is a ready explanation for the investment in goose as a form of dinner insurance against poverty.
She stated that the custom of eating goose at Michaelmas dinner was a practice which seems to have originated with the presentation of a goose to the landlord when paying rent. According to a sixteenth century poet:
“And when the tenants come to pay their quarter’s rent,
They bring some fowl at Midsummer, a dish of fish in Lent,
At Christmas capon, at Michaelmas a goose,
And somewhat else at New Year’s tide, for fear their lease fly loose.”
Katherine Burton, “The Feast Day Cookbook”, Catholic Authors Press.
The recipe for Goose is as follows:
Potato and Sausage Stuffing
6 cups cubed potatoes
3 tablespoons chopped onions
3 tablespoons butter
¾ lb sausage meat
3 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon marjoram
salt and pepper
METHOD
Preheat oven to 170 degrees C.
Peel and cube the potatoes and parboil. Saute the onion in the butter and add the potatoes, sausage meat and parsley. Season with Marjoram and pepper and salt lightly because of the sausage meat.
Stuff the goose, then prick all over and place in a warm oven. After an hour drain off the fat, (use for potatoes).
Roast the goose at 170 degrees C in an uncovered pan allowing 25 minutes to the kilo.
The authors of the Bad Catholics Guide to Good Living also include a recipe for Devil's Food Cake, presumably in honour of the resounding defeat of Lucifer at the hands of St Michael.* They do point out that the Renaissance idea of angels as chubby cute two year olds may not be accurate, (bearing in mind that Lucifer was thrown out of heaven, not by an angel "flapping his tiny wings and waving a pudgy hand", and that, in the Bible, "any time an angel appears to someone, they say, "Fear Not!"). They surmise that the angels "are more like the winged warriors depicted in Byzantine icons than the airborne toddlers we know and love."
It was also traditional to drink the wine of the first grape harvest, blessed by the priest, and called "St Michael's love" or "Michelsminne". As we generally get our wine blessed on the Feast of St John, (27th December), I would imagine that the priests would be too busy to bless wine on St Michael's Day. However, there is nothing against a good glass of wine, and there are beautiful wines named after St Michael, notably, San Angelo Pino Grigio, (Holy Angel), produced by Castel Banfi in Montalcino; see Michael P Foley, "Drinking with the Saints" at p. 269.
* John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak, at p. 151.

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