Goosegrease

Eastside Road, January 2, 2013—

OVER THERE TO THE LEFT (depending on your browser, of course) you see grilled cheese sandwiches, raw carrots, and a couple of little baked potatoes. One raw, two cooked, different techniques. A nice little survey for a first after-a-series-of-feasts light supper, with one touch of decadence, hinted at in the title above.

The carrots, of course, are simply scrubbed and cut lengthwise. Since they're good small fresh carrots they need absolutely nothing, not even salt — though they were helped a bit by that barely visible stain of something on the plate at the center of the photo. (Depending on your browser and monitor, of course.)

Lindsey put slices of Gruyère between slices of bread, buttered them slightly on the outsides, and grilled them between two black iron frying pans. You pre-heat both, on the range; then put the sandwiches in the larger one and set the smaller one on top. Who needs a fancy electric grill?

(The bread is Acme's "Edible Schoolyard" bread, whole wheat, pumpernickel, honey and salt, a delicious bread with a dense grain.)

The potatoes were "baked" in a little electric toaster oven we use for such things. I don't know which is more efficient, that oven or firing up our gas oven, much too large for the job.

The decadence is goose fat. There were a few scraps of the Christmas goose in one of the pots, and I rendered them out in a little enameled iron saucepan, set on our wood heating-stove, over a few days. I like the fragrance. You simply add a little water to the scraps and let it cook very slowly. At the end, you'll hear sizzling: either add a little more water and continue the process, or toss the whole thing out, or — as I do — spread the cooked goose rillettes on toast and pour the little bit of hot goose fat onto your baked potato. If some of the carrots pick up a little, no problem. You can get every bit of this heavenly stuff off your plate with the last of the grilled cheese sandwich.

Red blend, "L. Preston," Preston of Dry Creek, nv