Cut all the fat from the goose into small pieces and cook in a skillet with 1 cup of cold water. Let cook uncovered until the water has evaporated; then fry until brown. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot.
This is rendering, not frying: the water lets the fat melt out of the skin slowly without scorching before the cracklings crisp. Everything hinges on not rushing the first stage.
- What "greeben" isGribenes (Yiddish; usually glossed as scraps or cracklings) are the browned bits of goose skin and fat left after rendering. The clear fat that pours off is schmaltz — the more valuable half of the operation, though this recipe says nothing about saving it.
- Fat and skin together"All the fat from the goose" is usually taken to mean the solid fat pads from the cavity and neck, along with the trimmed skin. Skin is what actually crisps; pure fat with no skin will largely melt away and leave you little to salt.
- Cut small and evenHalf-inch pieces are about right. Uneven pieces mean some are leather before others have given up their fat.
- The water is deliberateThe cup of cold water holds the pan at boiling point until the fat has melted out. Do not cover the pan, or the water will not leave, and do not walk away once it stops sputtering — that is the moment browning begins and burnt greeben are bitter.
- Heat levelMedium-low throughout. Depending on the quantity it will commonly take the better part of an hour, and it cannot usefully be hurried.
- Onion, if you want itSliced onion added in the last ten or fifteen minutes is a common traditional addition. The book omits it; it flavours the schmaltz as well.
- Yield and keepingYields vary with the size of the bird, but a goose gives enough fat for a jar of schmaltz and a modest bowl of greeben. Strain the fat into a jar and refrigerate; it keeps well. The greeben are best eaten the day they are made and go soft in the refrigerator.
- ServingSalt while hot and eat as a snack, or fold into chopped liver, kasha, mashed potato or matzo balls.
Goose was the fat animal of Ashkenazi Jewish cooking in central and eastern Europe: pork was forbidden and butter could not be served with meat, so rendered goose fat did the work that lard and butter did in Christian kitchens. Geese were fattened through the autumn and killed around the turn of the year, and a household would render enough schmaltz to see it through the winter and, in many homes, through Passover. The gribenes were the by-product, salted and eaten out of hand or stirred into chopped liver — a small windfall from a job done for other reasons. Its appearance here, in a book that assigns one dish per day to a nation or a cuisine, reflects the way American cookbooks of the period treated immigrant food: a single representative recipe, stated flatly, with the cultural knowledge that surrounded it left out.