“A ten-pound beauty!” she exclaims. “You can cut it all up, simmer it in wine, serve it with a delicious sauce—see how to ragout a goose, today on The French Chef!”Julia Child loved handling food. She loved slathering great gobs of butter around a pan with her bare hand and plunging a forefinger into a thick swirl of custard to see how warm it was getting as she stirred; sometimes, while she was showing off an array of ingredients, she couldn’t help patting them affectionately. But nothing made her gleam with pleasure like the prospect of getting her hands into the fresh and glistening flesh of an animal—a rump of veal, a goose, a suckling pig, a giant monkfish. When she explained the different cuts of beef on her legendary public television series The French Chef, she used her own body as the butcher’s chart, twisting to display her back or side as if to make clear the intimate relationship between the cook and the meat. “To Ragout a Goose” was first aired on The French Chef in November 1972, long past the time when preparations for dinner in America began with domestic butchering.
