Stinky Stuff Fusion

I made millet the other day, I like to play with grains/starches. I get bored with the rice, noodle, potato routine. It is bland like all the rest and goes with just about everything. I picked it up at an Asian grocery, which I find to be much less expensive and has much better stock turnover than most health food stores. It is cooked just like rice except that it requires 3 parts water for 1 part millet.
Today’s meal was to go with the leftover millet, so I walked out to the garden, picked a bit of the red chard, washed and chopped it and then stared at it for a few moments to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up. I decided that it needed to be a sort of Indian meal, but not quite. I wanted the lime tang of Vietnamese food…so I chopped an onion, and two carrots from the garden.
The chard in the garden is about to go to seed, so I am eating as much of it as I can. I hated chard as a kid, but once I learned that vegetables can be seasoned with more than salt, pepper and a bit of butter, and don’t need to be cooked until they are unrecognizable, a whole new world opened up.

I pulled out my grandmother’s trusty cast iron skillet and heated a little oil. Into that oil I tossed asafoetida, yes, you folks who took Latin read that right, it means stinky stuff, another name for it is hing. The folks in India who have religious reasons for not using garlic or just don’t like garlic or bad breath use it instead, the scent does cling to your clothes though. I think it is great, and it really lets you know who your real friends are!

Next some black mustard seeds, and cumin seeds. When those started popping, I tossed in a little turmeric, some garam masala, and some red pepper. As soon as the red pepper hit the pan I grabbed the chopped onion and tossed it in, because I know that if it smokes I’ll be coughing while opening every window in the house. Next went in the carrots and the stems of the chard. When those were softened, I added the greens, tossed it a bit and then put on the cover and turned it to low. While that was cooking I zapped the millet. I scooped the greens into the bowl, scooped some chick peas in on top and drizzled a little lime juice with a bit of sugar over the top of it all.

Very yummy, very filling, has complete proteins, and certainly is not boring. It has no name, but today I called it lunch.

Got My Goat

Got My Goat
A local supermarket (SweetBay) carried goat for a while, stopped carrying it and is now carrying it again!! I almost did a little dance by the meat case, but being a bit gimpy at the moment, I refrained. I did hum to the 70’s tunes and sing along a little though.

Goat has a flavor similar to lamb, but takes a bit longer to cook. I find many people’s aversion to goat meat puzzling. Most have never tried it, they even seem to fear it, but they are willing to eat bottom feeders such as lobster and catfish. I don’t get it. The “mutton” that the Brits ate in India was almost all goat meat. They just couldn’t call it by its proper name, somewhere along the way goats unjustly started getting lots of disrespect. They are smart animals unlike their vacuous sheep cousins; maybe their craftiness is their downfall. I believe that long ago the folks who kept Western civilization moving along were shepherds and fought the goat herders for land, water, power, religion (all the usual stuff) and then vilified the poor goat along the way, they even gave the greatest villain of all goat horns and a beard.

Luckily, some folks appreciate a little goat meat once in a while and enough of them live close enough to Sweetbay and complain enough (like me) to make them carry it again. I bought some to support the cause, and pulled it out of my freezer yesterday, uncertain what I was going to do with it this time. I wasn’t in the mood for Scotch broth or a curry, so I pulled out my Middle Eastern recipes and looked through the lamb recipes and then spotted a chicken recipe that I had made quite a few times and had forgotten over the years. Out came my trusty pressure cooker, into it went a can of beef broth, the goat meat, some additional water, about 1.5 cups of tomatoes, a couple cinnamon sticks, a good amount of coriander, black pepper, and turmeric, then a pinch of each cardamom, cloves, and nutmeg (I measured by sight, not spoons). I didn’t have orange or lemon peel to toss in, so I used tangerine zest (I sent the peeled tangerine in Jillian’s lunch today). I pressure cooked it for about 45 minutes and then dumped it into the crock pot, because I wanted to soak and cook some chick peas quickly in the pressure cooker. The cooked chick peas were dressed with lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and a bit of salt. I served the goat and chick peas with creamed spinach and rice.

Jillian had creamed spinach for the first time last night, she didn’t want to try it, but we used our best parental “persuasion”, then she did try it. A moment later she said she wasn’t sure if she liked it. We encouraged her to take another taste and didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem to be going over well, so I scraped the last of it on to my plate and ate it. Moments later she asked if there was more spinach left, hers was gone and she was a convert.
The meal must have been pretty good because Kirk thanked me for the nice dinner, twice. He seems to have missed my cooking (the gimpy state gets in the way of standing in the kitchen; I started dinner at 2:30 and took numerous breaks to serve dinner at 6:15). The parrot snatched up the tidbit of goat in her bowl at dinnertime, and clutched it tightly, not dropping a crumb, very unusual for a very messy parrot.