St Martin was a guy in the 16 century
(1500-talet) who were reluctant to be elected bishop. He hid in the
goose pen, but the geese made such noise that he was found. Later on he
became the known bishop Saint Martin from Tours, France. The tradition to eat
goose is related to him, and in the Medieval times the tradition to celebrate
him was important.
In Sweden the first notice of a goose feast
is actually from Stockholm, in 1557 (The Nordic Museum has written a very nice text about
this tradition.). Nowadays it is mainly in the south, in Skåne, where goose
is eaten on the evening the 10th November, the day before St Martins
day, which is the 11th November. That started in the mid-1800. The name Martin in Swedish becomes Mårten.
In our family Mårten Gås has always been
celebrated! My grandparents lived on a big farm, breeding mainly turkey and
chicken, but every year they also had some geese, specifically for Mårten. In the
sixties my grandmother wrote down the recipe (we have since then used the same
recipe each year!) for the “Svartsoppa”, a goose blood soup (it includes a lot
of good red wine and has to be served with sherry), with goose sausage made
from the goose throat and paté. The main course is the goose cooked in the oven , with the related extras of
red cabbage, apple halves with red currant gelé, apple mousse, potatoes, sauce,
and as a dessert – the petit choux in the shape of swans (or geese) filled with
vanilla ice cream. (No apple-pie! That is what you usually get if you eat
Mårten in a restaurant. Never in my family J)
This year Johan and I decided to invite the
family for the feast, and on the Saturday 12 November (2 days late…. But OK)
the whole house was full of nice relatives.
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| Axel helps with apples and sallad |
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| Lotta rinses sallad. |
My sister Lotta, who had flown up from
Belgium, and Axel supported us in the morning by pealing and boiling all the
apples halves in sugar water. My parents came with the 2 geese and the black soup
that they had prepared the day before. And the sauce of course! Before the
dessert I had some good helpers to organize the swans, and fill them with the
ice cream. (And I think some creative children found some chocolate sauce to
add on the swans…)
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| The soup and goose came with my parents |
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| It tasted like it should - perfectly round, with a twist of sherry |
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| We all fit in the livinng room. Amazing house with great space! |
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| Lots of gossip going on in the childrens corner of the table... |
It felt great to see everybody again, and to
be able to sit together and talk and have fun.
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The swans with powered sugar on top!
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