Goat

[richardf8]

I had goat for lunch today, for the second time in my life. morgan1 and I went to the Midwest Mountaineering paddlesport expo, and I had been hoping to get a pheasant burger, but Famous Daves was doing the catering this year, and they were only serving pig, so we stepped out to a little muslim restaurant that is the first restaurant we've seen do well at its location. Muslims are great - you can trust them not to serve you pig. So anyway I had goat and Morgan had chicken. We were given a dish of green hot sauce that I would love to know more about: I was able to pick up tastes of mint and cilantro, and suspect the heat came from green chilis. There was basmati rice that had been given some sort of saffron treatment and tasted like it was cooked in broth, and a yogurt dressed salad. The goat was good, but very bony. I identified a loin, some ribs, and a hip joint. It had a flavor not unlike lamb, but somehow deeper. It was a good thing to do, because my previous encounter with goat was a disaster. Not the fault of the goat, but rather of an inexperienced cook with a point to prove.

It was about 13 years ago. I was a writing tutor in a class designed to bring disadvantaged students' skills up to speed. A couple of those students were from the Carribean: Haiti and Jamaica in particular. We were at the end of term and had decided to celebrate with a potluck. I volunteered my lasagna.

"Men can't cook!" Dion, the Jamaican, jibed. I told her to mind her stereotypes and assured her that I could cook circles around her. Dion volunteered "curried" goat.

The day of the potluck arrived. I arrived early to put my Lasagna in a warm of in the dorm's community kitchen. And I saw Dion "currying" her goat. She evidently imagined that the currying of goat entailed boiling it in water together with as much black pepper as she could muster. She then presented the resultant grey-black grainy mess on a lovely bed of minute rice. I tasted a bit -- all flavor had been tortured from the meat in a manner of which I thought my mother alone was capable. The black pepper, however, imparted a nasty, bitter heat to it that was the sole flavor. No one touched it, not even Dion, who had been warned by her Haitian classmate, Marie, not to use so much pepper. I took home a clean casserole, however. But the biggest hit was the instructor's cheese-n-broccoli soup. It was one of those Kraft recipes that entails combining Velveeta and Cream-of-Broccoli soup in a microwave-safe bowl and nuking.

Suffice it to say, my second encounter with goat was a vast improvement over my first.

Comments

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

*laugh* It sounds like 'men can't cook' really means 'Dion can't cook'!

The only time I boil meat is when I'm serving that meat in a soup...

I'm curious, though, about the 'Muslim' restaurant. Do you mean that it's a Middle Eastern place? (We have several Muslim Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area. Quite tasty, but probably not what you mean.)

[richardf8]

Well, that's the thing, I can't quite place the nationality. It was certainly not middle eastern. Elements of the presentation, like that sauce and the yogurt dressed salad had an almost Indian or Pakistani feel, but the seasonings in the meat did not seem very Indian at all. The demographics of the area leads to a strong possibility that it is Somali. But this is all guesswork. I could only be certain of the religion, so that's all I'm claiming to know.

[timtylor.livejournal.com]

It had a flavor not unlike lamb, but somehow deeper.

Not like chicken??? ;)

I'm pretty sure I've never eaten goats-meat. Goat cheese at some point, maybe. It seems a bit strange, come to think of it; goats aren't exactly exotic animals round here, and I'm sure I've seen plenty, but not tasted many.

[richardf8]

Red meat never tastes like chicken. It's usually reptiles you hear that about.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

"How did it taste?" "Not ba-a-ad."