Just a couple of kids. Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net/Nuchylee
Kid in the kitchen
This column originally ran in the column "Ravenous" on March 2, 2006, in the Woodstock Times, the Saugerties Times and the Kingston Times, etc.
The goat is my favorite barnyard animal, a quirky, frisky character that somehow evokes evil and springtime simultaneously. A baby goat bouncing on craggy hilltops is surely a sign of the freshness of spring, but we also think of the rebellious, devilish goat of the Bible, the ornery free-thinker who won’t go with the flow or follow the crowd, a leader not a flock member, the opposite of the meek, agreeable sheep that herd together obediently.
I like that about the goat.
Goats have gumption; picture Snowball, a young he-goat from Georgia whose owner, Carl Hulsey, tried to make him into a watchdog by beating him regularly with a stick. Finally, Snowball had his fill of that treatment and gored Hulsey to death. Rather then being put to sleep as a dangerous animal, he went to live at an animal shelter, castrated and renamed “Snow.”
I’ve always wanted my own goat in the back yard, to keep the grass short rather than fend off intruders, though. Goats munch charmingly on tin cans, too, supposedly, and nuzzle you like puppies, their short wiry fur tickling your skin. At petting zoos they gently taste the grubby chubby hands of small children, teaching them to love animals.
Why would anyone eat such sweet creatures? Because goat meat isn’t tough or gamey, but rather lean and tender, much milder tasting than the lamb it’s compared to. In the U.S. it’s an underappreciated meat by most people who were born here rather than immigrating from elsewhere. In most of the world, goats are a primary protein source. Where it’s too hilly for cows to graze, you find sheep, and where it’s too steep for sheep, goats go.
What is euphemistically called “chevon” is about the healthiest meat you can eat. It has as much protein than beef, but the flesh is not marbled with fat, and three ounces contains only three grams, compared to 24 grams of fat in pork and 16 in beef or lamb.
Like eggs and bunnies, goats are symbols of the advent of spring. Whole goats roasted on a spit have been a part of spring celebrations around the world for eons. Archeological evidence of domesticated goats goes back 10,000 years or more.
A classic springtime Mediterranean dish that I love to cook is goat stewed with an assortment of green spring vegetables, along with fresh herbs and am egg-lemon sauce like the Greek avgolemono. Of Sephardic origin, this dish comes in many variations that span countries, universal across the sunny lands of Greece, Turkey, Spain, Italy and France. In his version, my late Tuscan father-in-law Angelo would cook half a baby lamb each Easter, with frozen peas and parsley as his green vegetable and herb of choice. My own favorite version is from Sicily and Calabria, out of Mediterranean The Beautiful Cookbook by Joyce Goldstein and Ayla Algar (Collins, 1994). I use artichokes, fava beans when I can get them, or possibly asparagus, adding fresh mint or marjoram or dill, depending on what’s around.
In Sicily they stuff 12-pound kids with a sausage or tomato risotto, or sometimes with a combination of tiny shell pasta, caciocavallo cheese, prosciutto and ground veal.
On the French island of Corsica they roast goat with garlic or stew it with white wine and fresh herbs.
In Greece they bake goat over a bed of vegetables or enfold it in parchment paper with cheese. They grind it up and mix it with trahana, a tiny pasta, to make meatballs or stuff it into onions. Many health-minded modern Greeks have switched from lamb to goat for their spit roasting.
Some French still eat their goat in the medieval way, with allspice, sage and sweet wine, or just roast it over an open fire with herbs. The first goat I ever tasted was in France. My uncle Conrad, who lived in the Pyrenees for two thirds of his life, fancied himself a gentleman farmer and filled his yard with grazing beasts. When I visited in 1980 he directed his wife at the time, Mireille, to cook the oldest goat. I was timid to try it but she stewed it for hours so it wasn’t as tough as you’d think: quite tasty and full of the garlicky flavor of southern France. Generally goat is best stewed with white wine rather that red because of its delicacy.
In the Middle East you’ll find goat roasted and served with perfumed rice and hard-boiled eggs. It’s enjoyed throughout Asia, too, as well as Africa and Latin America. In Mexico you’ll see it in a stew called birria or as a delicious taco filling. I used to order it in tacos and burritos at a neighborhood joint in Brooklyn until they took it off the menu. In Northern Mexico they serve roast goat with tortillas, guacamole, black beans and salsa. Although you find goat on menus in parts of this country with a sizeable Mexican population, the rest of us haven’t really discovered it yet, although it is catching on a bit, year by year, and some top chefs like Scott Conant of L’Impero in Manhattan feature it on their menus.
My favorite way to cook goat is in Caribbean curries. Of the goat dishes I’ve cooked it is consistently the tastiest. I love it Jamaican style but it’s also wonderful like they make it in Grenada and in Trinidad, served as a sandwich wrapped in roti, an Indian style thick flatbread. I once had a fat and sumptuous one at a Brooklyn take out shop that kept me full for a day. In stoba from the Dutch Antilles goat meat is stewed with annatto and potatoes.
The market for goat meat is seasonal but gets busier during some holidays that immigrants have brought here along with their love for goat. People from different parts of the world prefer different types of animal, younger or older, male or female. For example, the Greeks and Italians prefer the youngest milk-fed kids to roast whole at Easter, but the Jamaicans prefer a more mature and flavorsome animal for their zesty curries.
If you want to get your goat, A.M.A Goat Farm in Mount Marion sells excellent goat meat at the Saugerties Farmers Market on Saturdays in season. I have seen goat meat at Adams in Kingston but not at every visit to the store. Skyland Farm upstate ships the meat of grass fed goats by FedEx (call (315) 822-6600. Copeland Family Farm in California sells it, too, from www.goatmeats.com or 1-866-WOW-GOAT. In the City you’ll find it at some shops offering Halal meats (killed according to Muslim law) and at the wonderful Italian butcher Esposito’s on Ninth Avenue.
So if you haven’t tried goat yet, give it a chance. And maybe--if we are what we eat--the delicious, versatile and healthy meat will leave you with some of the beast’s playful personality.
This column originally ran in the column "Ravenous" on March 2, 2006, in the Woodstock Times, the Saugerties Times and the Kingston Times, etc.
The goat is my favorite barnyard animal, a quirky, frisky character that somehow evokes evil and springtime simultaneously. A baby goat bouncing on craggy hilltops is surely a sign of the freshness of spring, but we also think of the rebellious, devilish goat of the Bible, the ornery free-thinker who won’t go with the flow or follow the crowd, a leader not a flock member, the opposite of the meek, agreeable sheep that herd together obediently.
I like that about the goat.
Goats have gumption; picture Snowball, a young he-goat from Georgia whose owner, Carl Hulsey, tried to make him into a watchdog by beating him regularly with a stick. Finally, Snowball had his fill of that treatment and gored Hulsey to death. Rather then being put to sleep as a dangerous animal, he went to live at an animal shelter, castrated and renamed “Snow.”
I’ve always wanted my own goat in the back yard, to keep the grass short rather than fend off intruders, though. Goats munch charmingly on tin cans, too, supposedly, and nuzzle you like puppies, their short wiry fur tickling your skin. At petting zoos they gently taste the grubby chubby hands of small children, teaching them to love animals.
Why would anyone eat such sweet creatures? Because goat meat isn’t tough or gamey, but rather lean and tender, much milder tasting than the lamb it’s compared to. In the U.S. it’s an underappreciated meat by most people who were born here rather than immigrating from elsewhere. In most of the world, goats are a primary protein source. Where it’s too hilly for cows to graze, you find sheep, and where it’s too steep for sheep, goats go.
What is euphemistically called “chevon” is about the healthiest meat you can eat. It has as much protein than beef, but the flesh is not marbled with fat, and three ounces contains only three grams, compared to 24 grams of fat in pork and 16 in beef or lamb.
Like eggs and bunnies, goats are symbols of the advent of spring. Whole goats roasted on a spit have been a part of spring celebrations around the world for eons. Archeological evidence of domesticated goats goes back 10,000 years or more.
A classic springtime Mediterranean dish that I love to cook is goat stewed with an assortment of green spring vegetables, along with fresh herbs and am egg-lemon sauce like the Greek avgolemono. Of Sephardic origin, this dish comes in many variations that span countries, universal across the sunny lands of Greece, Turkey, Spain, Italy and France. In his version, my late Tuscan father-in-law Angelo would cook half a baby lamb each Easter, with frozen peas and parsley as his green vegetable and herb of choice. My own favorite version is from Sicily and Calabria, out of Mediterranean The Beautiful Cookbook by Joyce Goldstein and Ayla Algar (Collins, 1994). I use artichokes, fava beans when I can get them, or possibly asparagus, adding fresh mint or marjoram or dill, depending on what’s around.
In Sicily they stuff 12-pound kids with a sausage or tomato risotto, or sometimes with a combination of tiny shell pasta, caciocavallo cheese, prosciutto and ground veal.
On the French island of Corsica they roast goat with garlic or stew it with white wine and fresh herbs.
In Greece they bake goat over a bed of vegetables or enfold it in parchment paper with cheese. They grind it up and mix it with trahana, a tiny pasta, to make meatballs or stuff it into onions. Many health-minded modern Greeks have switched from lamb to goat for their spit roasting.
Some French still eat their goat in the medieval way, with allspice, sage and sweet wine, or just roast it over an open fire with herbs. The first goat I ever tasted was in France. My uncle Conrad, who lived in the Pyrenees for two thirds of his life, fancied himself a gentleman farmer and filled his yard with grazing beasts. When I visited in 1980 he directed his wife at the time, Mireille, to cook the oldest goat. I was timid to try it but she stewed it for hours so it wasn’t as tough as you’d think: quite tasty and full of the garlicky flavor of southern France. Generally goat is best stewed with white wine rather that red because of its delicacy.
In the Middle East you’ll find goat roasted and served with perfumed rice and hard-boiled eggs. It’s enjoyed throughout Asia, too, as well as Africa and Latin America. In Mexico you’ll see it in a stew called birria or as a delicious taco filling. I used to order it in tacos and burritos at a neighborhood joint in Brooklyn until they took it off the menu. In Northern Mexico they serve roast goat with tortillas, guacamole, black beans and salsa. Although you find goat on menus in parts of this country with a sizeable Mexican population, the rest of us haven’t really discovered it yet, although it is catching on a bit, year by year, and some top chefs like Scott Conant of L’Impero in Manhattan feature it on their menus.
My favorite way to cook goat is in Caribbean curries. Of the goat dishes I’ve cooked it is consistently the tastiest. I love it Jamaican style but it’s also wonderful like they make it in Grenada and in Trinidad, served as a sandwich wrapped in roti, an Indian style thick flatbread. I once had a fat and sumptuous one at a Brooklyn take out shop that kept me full for a day. In stoba from the Dutch Antilles goat meat is stewed with annatto and potatoes.
The market for goat meat is seasonal but gets busier during some holidays that immigrants have brought here along with their love for goat. People from different parts of the world prefer different types of animal, younger or older, male or female. For example, the Greeks and Italians prefer the youngest milk-fed kids to roast whole at Easter, but the Jamaicans prefer a more mature and flavorsome animal for their zesty curries.
If you want to get your goat, A.M.A Goat Farm in Mount Marion sells excellent goat meat at the Saugerties Farmers Market on Saturdays in season. I have seen goat meat at Adams in Kingston but not at every visit to the store. Skyland Farm upstate ships the meat of grass fed goats by FedEx (call (315) 822-6600. Copeland Family Farm in California sells it, too, from www.goatmeats.com or 1-866-WOW-GOAT. In the City you’ll find it at some shops offering Halal meats (killed according to Muslim law) and at the wonderful Italian butcher Esposito’s on Ninth Avenue.
So if you haven’t tried goat yet, give it a chance. And maybe--if we are what we eat--the delicious, versatile and healthy meat will leave you with some of the beast’s playful personality.
