Goose

Like I said, I found a goose. If I like it, I'm hoping that it's going to stay available through the holiday season, so I have the option of treating myself to one around Christmas, too. It came frozen (obviously), so for the moment it's still frozen -- we had duck all week this past week, I'm not going to make the girlfriend eat goose for two weeks without a palate-cleanser of hoofmeat and pasta in the interregnum.

I get the impression from the way people have talked about it that ILCers who've cooked goose before have roasted it whole. I'm skeptical of this. Duck is often roasted whole, but I think it shouldn't be, especially in home kitchens -- it's much more finicky that way, far moreso than chicken or turkey, and it's an approach that emphasizes all of the bird's weak points.

I can get good results with steaming the duck before roasting it, but the goose is far too large for there to be any way for me to do that. I don't like the "prick it all over and roast it at 500 degrees" method, partly because I don't think it's very effective, but mostly because there's no exhaust in my kitchen and the windows are not near enough for ventilation: if I spend a couple hours burning fat in the oven, the apartment will smell like it for a week.

So my natural inclination would be to remove the backbone and wings, cut the rest into quarters, and deal with it piecemeal. Is there a really compelling reason not to?