National Culinary Review - September 2011

FEATURES
The
INSIDE SCOOP
Do you consider goat too risky for your restaurant? A
growing number of chefs are serving it to appreciative diners.
By Jan Greenberg

WHEN James Beard award-winning chef Jody Adams was told to “pack your knives” on the 2010 edition of “Top Chef Masters,” her waterloo was an undercooked goat leg.

“We rubbed it down with salt, lemons and
limes, and after a rinse, rubbed it again,
this time with garlic, cilantro and a lime
mixture. We made a sofrito of onions and
tomatoes, and began to stew the goat.
It cooked for hours, and over time, she
added potatoes, plantains and yuca, and
toward the end, flour dumplings. About
30 people, from Partners In Health, from
Haiti, and just friends ended up sitting at
a long table. We had a great day, and it
exemplified what food and cooking means
to me, which is bringing people together
around a table.”
For the record, goat is not an unfamiliar
meat to Adams, chef/owner of Rialto in
Cambridge, Mass. She marinates legs in
oregano, garlic, rosemary and zinfandel
vinegar, and roasts them. She has
served sweet-and-sour kid kebabs with
figs at the annual wine barbecue held
in the courtyard of The Charles Hotel,
where Rialto is located. She has even
served confit goat brains with warm
lemon vinaigrette-poached artichoke
salad with fava beans flavored with
Aleppo pepper and preserved lemon
as an appetizer.

COOKING LESSON

What came out of the loss, however, turned out to be a gift (and a YouTube hit, as well). Adams is active in Boston-based Partners In Health, an organization that has for years brought medical care to the impoverished nation of Haiti. After the 2010 earthquake, the organization was instrumental in bringing people in need of medical care to Boston for treatment.

“A mother and her daughter, whose leg had been crushed, were staying with friends of mine. We were all watching the show together, and, of course, since it had been pre-taped, nobody else knew that I had been asked to leave. When it was over, the mom came over to me and said, in Creole, ‘I can teach you how to cook a goat.’”

GOAT’S TIME?

Although goat is the world’s most-consumed meat—almost 70% of the red meat eaten globally—other than in ethnic establishments, it is rare to find goat listed on menus in the United States. Supermarkets and butchers do not routinely carry goat, and it has an undeserved reputation for being gamey and tough, based mainly on the older and larger animals favored by certain nationalities.

The National Culinary Review | September 2011

24

“When I got the goat on “Top Chef,” I
began to bone it, and realized that it
was frozen in the middle,” Adams says.
“Not only that, the meat was very dark,
which means it was an old goat leg and
had probably been sitting in the freezer
for a long time. We didn’t have time to
do a long braise, which is clearly what
this goat needed. Roasting was the only
solution, and I undercooked it.”
“The mother’s first question after we
ordered the goat was, ‘Is it going to
come dead or alive?’” Adams says. “This
beautiful baby goat from one of our local
farms arrived. I would have cooked it like
I would a small baby lamb, but, of course,
in Haiti, the goats are much older, and a
single goat must feed many people. So
we cooked it as it would have been done
in Haiti.

Its nutritional values are not widely known, either. A serving of goat has a third fewer calories than a similar-sized piece of beef. It has less than half as much fat as chicken and about two-thirds less than pork or lamb. To add to its beneficial qualities, goats are easy on the land. Unlike other livestock, they browse rather than graze, and don’t require special pasture.