I came to London armed. Armed with Nigella recipes of things to cook with ingredients that I couldn’t get in Australia. I had recipes such a perfect roasted potatoes made with Goose fat and Roasted Goose. What I didn’t count on was Goose being out of season until December. So distressed at having a dinner party the next night I flung myself on Waitrose’s meat counter (not literally) and picked up two Free range Guinea Fowls, raised for Waitrose in France’s Loire Valley.

Looking at them, they looked like a chicken, with black legs. I used one of Waitrose’s recipes based on the fact that it was simple and it required not too many ingredients. Lower in fat than chicken, they’re tender with slightly drier meat with a gamey taste.

I am always very apprehensive trying to cook new types of food. Especially for dinner parties for people that I haven’t cooked for before. There was a time when we were preparing this when I asked my husband to quarter the Guinea Fowls and when he asked “How?” to which I frantically replied “I don’t know! Just quarter them!”. He did a pretty good job in the end and the recipe is quite ideal for a dinner party as most of the work is in the browning of the pieces and the peeling, coring and slicing the apples. The rest is a cinch and I suggest that you make more of the sauce than specified. It’s downright delicious with any sort of meat. And please know that I’m not suggesting that you try and track down a Free range Guinea Fowl, a good chicken will do.

As for the perfect roast potatoes, I’ve tried these using a butter and oil mix which works but but now that I’ve tried using Goose fat I have to confess that yes indeed, using Goose Fat does produce superior results. And interestingly, I have read that Goose Fat is, despite what one would assume, the most balanced of all animal fats because it has far less saturated fats than butter and lard and has far more ‘heart healthy’ monounsaturated (55g compared to 19.8g in butter) and polyunsaturated fats (10.8g compared to 2.6g in butter), which are essential for good health. In comparison to other animal fats, it is possibly one of the reasons that cardio-vascular disease is not as prevalent in the goose rearing and consuming regions of the South West of France as in some other regions of Europe. So Goose Fat it up!

I didn’t use anything close to the amount of goose fat that Nigella used though, in fact I used less than a can and even then I thought it was too much. I don’t know how I’d go about finding Goose Fat in Australia. It’s readily available here, and in fact, apparently around Christmas, it’s impossible to get a tin due to Nigella and Delia’s raves. Is it crazy to pack tins of it in my luggage?

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