I cut the meat into cubes and marinated it for several hours in a dry mix of home-made curry powder, powdered Allspice (Jamaican Pepper), grated fresh ginger and crushed garlic. After browning the meat I cooked it long and slow (about 3 hours +). In the dish went onion, chilli (one Rocoto and one Cayenne - both home-grown), more curry powder, some fresh thyme, some fennel seeds, stock and lots of ginger cut into thin "Julienne" strips.
Continuing the Caribbean theme I decided to accompany my curry with this salsa made from mango, diced chilli and mint - reflecting the yellow, red and green combination so popular in that part of the world:
The chillis and mint came from my garden, but (regrettably) not the mango!
Next up, in the absence of plantains, I cooked some bananas. Prior to baking them I cut a long slit in them in order to avoid any explosions. After 20 minutes they were completely black on the outside, but gooey and sweet on the inside:
Normally I would have served Rice-and-Peas with this curry, but I decided that for the sake of variety I would do some Sweet Potato wedges. I cut the potatoes lengthways into quarters, leaving the skins on, rubbed them with a tablespoonful of vegetable oil and sprinkled them generously with paprika - a mix of the sweet and the spicy versions.
The last element of the meal was some "greens". In the Caribbean this would probably have been callaloo or an amaranth of some sort, but I used Brussels Tops from my garden:
Here is the meal, plated-up:
The curry was not HOT, hot, just mildly warming, leaving a pleasant tingle on the tongue. The curry powder I used was one that Jane makes from home-roasted whole spices. It is a fragrant mix rather than a very hot one. The other ingredients I used were in a similar vein, particularly the ginger, which went lovely and soft and mellow after its 3 hours of cooking. And the goat meat? Likewise, melt-in-the-mouth tender and delicious.
If you can get hold of goat meat, I strongly recommend that you get some and try it.
I love curries, but I hate goat (I would take extra helpings of the rest of that meal though!). It's not the texture I have issues with, but the taste...it's much too strong for me. My husband actually thought it was all in my head at one point (i.e. I just didn't like the idea of eating goat). We went to this Indian restaurant and he ordered some "meat" samosas. Well, being the typical Canadian, I thought this meant they were made with beef. One bite is all it took...and he hasn't tried to trick me since :)
ReplyDeleteWe are also fans of goat meat - the Farmers' Market occasionally has it, sometimes as roasting joints as well as diced meat. Goats are being farmed in large numbers for the milk & surplus animals (presumably males) are sold off as meat. However this 'farmed' goat meat is much more delicate in flavour (either because of the current variety of goats kept for milk or the way they are fed/aged etc) than the meat we used to get from Caribbean butchers in Brixton market (London) many years ago.
ReplyDeleteI love goat meat and we usually have it the Indian way. In spicy curries. But I would love to try out the Caribbean version. That plate of food looks very delicious. It'll be a while before we can have mango salsa. The trees in our region are in full bloom now...
ReplyDeleteWhen we had the smallholding goat meat was a regular meal, male kids were raised for the freezer. We found the younger tasted like mutton, the older more like silverside, and used just as we would lamb or beef. Very rarely saw it for sale in the butchers.
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