Oca in Onto

Veneto farms once kept grey and grey-and-white geese, later displaced by the big white Romagnola. The birds went into cured meats, a prosciutto they call parsuti in dialect, and into oca in onto or oca in pignatto, goose in its own fat: a confit that used every part of the bird and would keep for months. The women made it in winter, in the slack time, against the summer to come, and the first geese were traditionally killed and eaten in early November for Saint Martin.