There are quite a few goat farms in the area, and the elk and venison come from the family property in the Rockies. It is all butchered by the same small town butcher at nine thousand something feet and I love the fact that everything is local and unprocessed (not just local...but close to home!).
So this dinner was as much about presentation as it was about flavor for me. Presentation is extremely important because it is the first part of the meal that people experience. It gets the diner excited and salivating. The person who first introduced me to creative presentation was attending this particular shindig, so I felt I had to put my best foot forward on that front to impress!!!!
As a starter, I decided to take a page out of my restaurant's chef's playbook and make an heirloom tomato salad. Fresh and light, it composed of freshly sliced green, heirloom and cherry tomatoes. I topped it with chopped almonds, a round of goats cheese and an aged balsamic (with basil garnish). It was perfectly light and didn't ruin the appetite for the heavier mains.
My grandfather has had some dietary restrictions around acidic foods recently, so I made a separate starter for him. I did a take on proscuitto wrapped asparagus, but one that was more "knife and fork" edible. I blanched baby asparagus in balsalmic vinegar and olive oil, and then made a bed of them on the plate, topping them with a dollop of goat cheese and three proscuitto rosettes. Easy, classic, and yummy.
I decided for our first dinner party out here to feature a "duo of goat." My grandfather had already made a roast of a shank marinated in LOTS of red wine and brown sugar (like...2 cups brown sugar). He slow roasted it until the goat was well done but falling off the bone, shredding the meat so that we had a nice batch of tender, sweet, small bits to deal with. I wanted the meat to be warm, but not too hot as I wanted to form it into rillette shapes on the plate. I used small sections of PVC piping on the plate and packed it full of the shredded goat. It was pretty juicy, so I tried to shake it out before packing it. I slowly and carefully would pull the pipe directly up off of the plate and then drizzle some of the goats own juices back over the top of the formed meat. I then garnished it with one fresh lemon (for squeezing at the table) and a deep fried lemon wedge for sweetness.
In retrospect I should have garnished it with something green, ideally flat leaf parsley which would have complimented the lemon. The lemon juice over the goat was perfect, cutting the richness of the meat and adding complexity to the flavor palate. The deep fried lemon wheels were more fun than anything...you can eat the whole thing and they taste like one of those lemon head candies. I love them!
For the other half of the duo, I used a recipe that I had used before on a different cut of meat. I was making a goat rack and sirloin roast, which I used in my "moorish" recipe for a lamb shoulder slow roast. Unfortunately, I encountered the same problem with the goat back bone as I had before, and did not have the tools to break the bone properly, so after going to it with a hammer just admitted defeat on the whole presentation aspect. I was able to salvage the "pretty plate" with my sides though, so overall a win!
The moorish goat I marinated overnight in harissa, a very spicy chili sauce originating in the Mediterranean, largely North Africa and southern Spain. You make a broth by sauteing carrots, garlic, and onions with coriander/cilantro stalks and cinnamon sticks and then combining with a mixture of white wine, water and honey. You place the meat over the bed of vegetables and then pour the sauce over in a dutch oven of some sort...and then slow roast for about two and half to three hours. The meat is super tender, and generally falls straight off the bone. I tried to prevent the falling off the bone until it got to the table, for my own presentation purposes.
I paired the super spicy meat with a mix of couscous, quinoa and red grapes that I formed into a little cake on the plate (using cookie cutters). I topped the cake with a greek and honey yogurt blended with cucumber puree (SO GOOD) and a cucumber salad tossed with fresh radish wheels and diced sweet onions in a sherry-sage vinaigrette. The super cool and sweet salad was a perfect balance for the heavy heat in the goat.
To finish of the meal, and to avoid leaving anyone with heavy stomachs, I decided to do a light fruit dessert to cleanse the palate. I marinated two sliced peaches in Pimms No. 1 and two tablespoons of brown sugar all afternoon, and layered them in a saucer with slices of fresh (un-marinated) peaches. I topped off the dish with a small scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and two fresh basil leaves. It was really a nice ending to a meal that, in my opinion, found a balance between rich and light. I wasn't too full by the end of it, but I had certainly eaten enough!
I served the meats with a bottle of Fleurie Beaujolais gamay, 2011. Was light and a little gamey, perfect for pairing with stronger flavored meats like goat. We served the tomato starter with vodka martinis and olives, which was also a nice, clean pairing. A Pimms cup would have been a great pairing for dessert, but due to driver restrictions, we called it a night after the wine!
Can't wait for some risotto tonight! Off to the local Italian market for some charcuterie fun....until then!
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