Goose Confit plus other bits

I bought a goose for Thanksgiving. I love goose, and it's a better amount of meat for a small family. It's also expensive, but if you use all of it, it's worth it.
I hadn't planned on taking any pictures and talking about how I make the goose, however, after a tweeple friend asked about it, I did some pictures. However, me, being me, I forgot to take pictures of the roasted goose breasts and the finished product. Perhaps over Christmas, when I plan to make goose again, I'll do it right. I'll also use up the extra bits I didn't this time around. I didn't take the time to use the innards, and I was castigated by friends for not making the rendered skin into cracklings.
Anywho. I broke down the goose into the standard 8+1 cuts. Two each of the wings, legs, thighs, and breasts. I consider the carcass to be the extra cut. I took the carcas and the extra skin and fat I had cut off of the other pieces into a glass casserole dish and into the convection oven at 225 degrees. After an hour, most of the fat had rendered out. I took all the large pieces and put them into a stock pot with onion, carrots and thyme to simmer for the day. The skin was put back in the casserole and put back into the oven to finish rendering.
You can see how much fat ended up rendering out.
Here's a picture of the stock getting started. I pulled a couple pieces out so you can see how everything browned nicely before going in for stock. Brown always means flavor. I let is simmer softly for about 8 hours. After that, the big pieces are removed. The rest is run through the chinois (fine strainer) and set aside to cool overnight. That lets the fat come to the top for easy removal.
The next day with most of the fat skimmed off it looks like the soft Jello if you've done it well. I've pulled up a little while it's starting to heat to show what it looks like. I set a medium boil and reduced about a gallon to about 4-5 cups. Basically, just taste it until you get the level of concentration of flavor you want. I set it aside, made a roux, put the liquid over the roux and made a light, but strongly flavored, gravy. I only needed to add a little salt and pepper to finish it off. It was spooned over the roast breasts for the finished meal. Back to the confit. After all, that's what this is supposed to be all about anyway.
After I broke down the goose and cut the extra skin and fat off of the legs and thighs, I rubbed kosher salt over the pieces, I minced garlic and spread it over everything. Finally, I used a fair amount of fresh tyme. It was all placed in a zip loc bage with the air squeezed out and placed in the fridge overnight.
After it was removed from the the marinade, it it looked like this. The smell was very garlicky.
Here's the meat going into a glass meatloaf container.
I layer the legs, cover them with fat, put in the thighs and cover it with fat. It's in the oven ready to cook. I've put a tray underneath to collect what boils over.
It quickly became evident that as the meat contracted that parts started sticking out of the fat. I didn't have enough fat, and a deeper container to cover things. I decided I needed a weight to hold everything down. I grabbed a mason jar, since it could handle the heat. I filled it with nails and metal items laying around the basement. I covered the meat with foil and put the jar on it. You can also see the probe thermometer in it. I set the temperature to keep the fat at 210-215 degrees.
After about 3 hours, the meat was pulling away from the bone easily. I removed the meat and let it cool a little. I separated the fat off the solids again. I removed all the meat from the bones. I placed it in a tupperware container and covered it with the fat. Here's a couple pictures.
The first shows what it looks like with warm fat.
The second after it's cooled.
Here's the breasts before cooking. I sprinkled a little salt and pepper on them. I took a cast iron frying pan and placed a little fat in it. After it was hot, the breasts were place in it skin side down. After the skin was crisp and brown, I put the frying pan in a 350 degree pre-heated convection oven. I cooked it for about 10 minutes with the skin down, turned the breast over and cooked for about another 10 minutes. I cooked it until the meat was 130 degreed in the center. I pulled the frying pan and let it sit while I finished up the rest.
Here you can see the finished gravy and some goose confit. I had previously steamed some fingerling potatoes that had been cut into bite sized pieces. I placed them in a frying pan with a little fat, added some fresh tyme leaves, a little salt and pepper and the duck confit that you can see in this picture.
The fat for cooking was the fat that came with the confit when I removed it from the fat. As soon as everything in the fry pan was warm, it was time to plate everything.

The goose breast was sliced thinly across the grain. It was cooked medium. I didn't try to get fancy in the plating. I just placed fanned out breast, some potatoes with the confit in the middle. Covered the breast with some gravy. Finally, I had steamed some hericot vert (French green beans) and placed it on the other side. Everything came out really well. Next time, I'll remember the other pictures.