Tender filled goose with port sauce

Put a little bit of salt on the goose. Wash a stalk of sellery and chop it into thin slices. Then peel the apple, take the core out of it and cut the apple in pieces. Chop the roasted bread in dices. Also make coarse dices of the chestnuts and little ones of the onions. Mix all these ingrediënts and spice these up with 3 tbsp of thyme, salt and pepper. Fill up the goose.

Close the hole with the roulade needles and the kitchen twine. Thriftily put salt on the outside of the goose and put it in a preheated oven on 220°C for 1 hour. Save the fat fort he sauce. After that, the goose goes in the oven for 7 hours on a temperature of 80°C. This makes the goose really tender and the meat stays juicy.  

Skim the fat off the cooking juices and save this. Deglaze the roasting pan on a medium-high fire with white wine and port and scrape of the pieces that stick to the pan. Add chicken bouillon and let it boil untill it reduced by half.

Plump up 3,5 tbsp saved fat and flour in a big saucepan and cook the roux on a low fire.  Keep whipping up to prevent the formation of agglomerates. Add the mixture of wine, boil the gravy while whipping up. Then put the gravy on low fire and let it thicken in about 5 minutes while you stay whipping up frequently.

Add salt and pepper and pour the gravy in a heated gravy-bowl. 

If the goose is prepared by nights, it needs another 40 minutes in the oven before dinner on a temperature of 180°C (the goose tastes much better if it is not reheated, but freshly made). The filling is served as a side dish. Patato dumplings and red cabbage are also a very good side dish.