I don’t think I would ever cook a ragout (ragù/ragoute) from scratch in order to create a pasta sauce (I’m not sure anyone does, because of the nature of the thing), but after cooking and serving a goat leg last week, I thought that, with all the leftovers, the makings for one had fallen into my lap.

Apparently there is such a thing as too rich when it comes to food, as there is in just about anything else.

I had well over half a pound of some intensely aromatic slow-cooked meat, but there was no physical sign of the vegetables that had contributed to its flavor during the 4 and a half hours it had spent in the oven on Sunday. A ragout is expected to include vegetables, and maybe only vegetables, since the meat with which they are cooked is sometimes removed and reserved for another use once the sauce has been prepared.

On Tueday I was dealing with the opposite scenario. To make it work, I could have ‘built back in’ some vegetables, so that it would at least be some form of Italian ragù, but since this dinner was supposed to be simple and quickly-assembled, I just ‘built it out’ with some interesting fats and liquids, in order to adjust the flavor and create a sauce for my supply of dry chunks and ‘pulled’ pieces of goat.

In the end I felt it wasn’t totally satisfactory, perhaps because, in the absence of vegetables, the ragù was too concentrated, too rich, too, well, ..’meaty’.

Also, on reflection today, I realize that if I had taken a few minutes to cook and add a vegetable or two the goat leftovers could have been incorporated in still a third meal, and that would have saved cooking time, at least on a different day.

• ten ounces of boned braised leg of goat, plus some defrosted fat and stock remaining from a meal of pork belly, a pinch of crushed dried smoked seranno pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, a freshly-ground mix of black pepper and other seeds or spices that had been accidentally been combined when I was preparing a dry marinade for that same pork belly meal and then decided to hold onto for future use (black pepper, fennel seeds cumin seeds, coriander seeds, star anise, white peppercorns, and whole clove), sea salt, tomato paste, water from the pasta pot, and a little olive oil, mixed inside a large antique copper pot into which 12 ounces of fresh papardelle from Luca Donofrio‘s fresh pasta shop inside Eataly’s Flatiron store, boiled carefully for little more than 2 minutes, or until barely cooked through, in a large amount of well-salted water, drained, some of the pasta water retained and added to the pan, everything stirred over a medium-high flame until the liquid had emulsified, then arranged inside shallow bowls, garnished with chopped parsley from Phillips Farms, some freshly shredded Sini Fulvi Pecorino Romano D.O.C. from Chelsea Whole Foods Market sprinkled on top, and some olive oil drizzled around the edges
• the wine was a Portuguese (Douro) red, Mateus Nicolau de Almeida, Trans Douro Express ‘Baixo Corgo’ 2015, from Flatiron Wines
• the music was Karl Nielsen’ 1906 comic opera, ‘Maskarade’, Denmark’s ‘national opera’ virtually from its premier,  Ulf Schirmer conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Radio Choir and the Danish Boys Choir, with Boje Skovus, Aage Haugland, Susanne Resmark, Gert Henning-Jensen, Michael Kristensen, Kurt Ravn, Johan Reuter, Bo Giles Nandfred, Marianne Rorholm, Bo Anker Hansen, Peter Fog, Susse Lillesoe, Hanna Hjort, Anette Simonsen, Henrietta Bonde Hansen, Flemming Jensen, Lars Pederson, and Poul Emborg

We do eat meat occasionally, but we don’t eat like this very often, and I definitely don’t cook like this very often.

Roasts, stews, and long slow braises however do have their satisfactions, especially in colder realms in and colder months, like, well, parts of New York, this month.

One of the other pleasures of a rich meal is in the planning, the anticipation, and the preparation (the last, especially when there have been several (2) days of preparation.

The music is also a part of the experience, and especially if the windows can be closed. On this night it was Busoni’s “Faust’.

And the serendipity! I love turnips, and on the day before I was to prepare a marinade for this goat leg, when I had not yet decided on what to accompany it with, I came across a table display of white turnips in the Union Square Greenmarket, including a number of quite small ones. They were a size I had never cooked before; I may never even have seen such small turnips before, but I had been aware of their existence for decades.  Julia Child wrote about ‘navets’ in her ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,

“The turnip is a wonderful vegetable when given the treatment required to bring out its delicious qualities. It wants and needs to absorb butter or meat fats, which is why turnips are particularly succulent when finished off in a stew or a braised dish, or in the juices of roasting meat.”  

She was writing something like 60 years ago, mostly for American readers, so she found it necessary to explain that she wasn’t talking about the turnips with which I grew up in the Midwest in the middle of the last century,

“In France rutabagas, or yellow turnips, are practically unheard of as food for humans, but they may be used interchangeably with white turnips.”

She went on to point out that In the country which inspired her career they would be shaped into what was called tourner gousses d’ail ou olives, so of course I always cut my large turnips into little clove of garlic or olive shapes (although larger than the model she referred to).

This past Sunday I finally had the correct size of turnip in my hands, and for the first time ever I simply had to peel them. They started and ended pretty round, so more like olives than gousses d’ail this first time out. Here they are just after I added them to the braise roughly 90 minutes before it was done:

With the turnips, this past Sunday evening, we enjoyed a slowly-cooked leg of goat that had begun with a mirepoix and was braised with the help of some rare aromatic liquids, some of which had been a part of earlier meals.

I began defrosting the 2.64-pound goat leg from Lynnhaven Dairy Goat Farm in the Union Square Greenmarket inside the refrigerator early in the afternoon on Thursday, rubbed the peppercorn/garlic/lemon zest/parsley marinade into the goat leg around noon on Saturday, then returned it to the refrigerator, inside the covered pot in which it would later be braised, removing it 24 hours later, and I placed it in the oven after preparing a mirepoix for it and immersing the goat in 4 different rich liquids shortly after 3 on Sunday.

The pot then remained in the oven for 4 and a half hours.

I used a recipe for braised leg of lamb that had been languishing inside one of my recipe a folders for years; I had spent a good deal of time researching ideas for cooking what isn’t really a very conventional piece of meat. I knew from the beginning however that goat was similar enough to lamb to be readily substituted. In the end I decided to use this fairly straightforward Sam Hayward recipe for a braised leg of lamb, a clipping I had cut out of the New York Times 15 years ago, that I found in front of my nose, in my ‘lamb’ paper file.

The braising liquid was from 4 sources: a good red wine, Marc Isart La Maldicion Tinto de Valdilecha 2017; from Copake Wine Works, a previously-frozen Kassler Braten stock; a veal tongue stock; and a pretty decent low-sodium chicken stock.

Of course the rich, mahogany-colored sauce was pretty awesome.

At the very end I did add something not in the original recipe, a garnish of chopped garlic mustard from Alewife Farm

• one pound of very small white turnips from Norwich Meadows Farm, peeled, joined the goat and the liquids about 90 minutes before the pot was removed from the 250º oven

• one bunch of collard greens, also from Norwich Meadows Farm, stripped of most of their stems, torn into small sections, washed several times and drained, transferred to a smaller bowl very quickly, in order to retain as much of the water clinging to them as possible, braised inside a large, heavy antique tin-lined copper pot in which 2 halved clove of garlic from Chelsea Whole Foods Market had first been allowed to sweat in some olive oil, adding a little of the reserved water along the way as necessary, finished with salt, pepper, finished with a drizzle of olive oil
• the wine was a Greek (Eastern Macedonia and Thrace/Drama) white, En Oeno 2010 (Cabernet Sauvignon 65% / Merlot 30% / Cabernet Franc 5%), from Foragers Market Wine
• the music was a recording of Busoni’s ‘Dr. Faust’, in a performance by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ferdinand Leitner

It’s probably a dead giveaway of the really modest size of some of the farms whose produce we enjoy in our local farmers markets that I couldn’t assemble 4 goat chops of the same cut when I was shopping in Union Square recently. No problem however, as I welcomed the chance to show a little more depth than usual on each plate, and I went home with 2 rib chops and 2 loin chops.

I didn’t think much about it until sitting down to write this blog post: This may be a big city, but that doesn’t mean the farms surrounding it have to be.

I love the Union Square Greenmarket.

This is an image of the chops while they were still marinating and the potatoes just after they had been arranged in the oven pan.

• four tiny goat chops, 2 rib cut and 2 loin cut, weighing only one pound altogether, from Lynnhaven Dairy Goat Farm, marinated for about 45 minutes in a mix of a couple tablespoons of olive oil, one sliced stem of green garlic from John D. Madura Farms, freshly-ground black pepper, 8 slightly-crushed juniper berries, some roughly-chopped rosemary from Stokes Farm, one medium crushed, now-dried-but-purchased-fresh, bay leaf from Westside Market, and a little zest from an organic Whole Foods Market lemon, pan-grilled for a few minutes, turning 3 times, seasoned with sea salt and a little more pepper after the first turn, finished with a bit of lemon juice and a drizzle of olive oil, garnished with micro red mustard from Two Guys from Woodbridge [note to the cook: the goat was a little more rare than we prefer, so ignore the instant-read thermometer next time (I think these chops are too small and irregular to get a reliable reading), and use the more dependable finger test]

• about a pound of small red fingerling potatoes from Tamarack Hollow Farm, halved then tossed with a little olive oil, salt, black pepper, a pinch of dried smoked Scotch Bonnet pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, 6 medium-size garlic cloves (unpeeled, to keep them from burning) from Keith’s Farm, roasted cut-side down inside a 400º oven on a large very well-seasoned Pampered Chef ceramic pan for less about 20 minutes, sprinkled with chopped parsley from Philipps Farms

• most of one large bunch of broccoli rabe (aka raab, or rapini, among other names) from Migliorelli Farm, wilted in a little olive oil inside a large antique high-sided tin-lined copper pot in which 2 garlic cloves from Foragers Market had been heated until slightly softened, the greens seasoned with salt and pepper, divided between the 2 plates and drizzled with a little more olive oil

• the wine was a Spanish (Rioja) red, Bodegas Hermanos de Pecina, Rioja Cosecha Tinto 2017, from Flatiron Wines 
• the music was an album of Luigi Nono’s orchestral works and chamber music, performed by by the Moscow String Quartet, the SWF Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden, and the Experimentalstudio of the Heinrich-Strobel-Foundation of the SWF Freiburg

 

‘Goat wings’, I’m calling them.

They had started out great.

But then they spent too much time in the oven. My estimate of the cooking time for slow-braised goat ribs was far more generous than it should have been (I was looking at a recipe for lamb, but I had goat (goats are pretty small, even when compared to lamb) and and I was too busy elsewhere to check on how they were doing.

Adding to my discomfort, as someone who really hates finger food, was the fact that there was no way I was going to be able to eat these somewhat desiccated ribs with a knife and fork.

But still, they were delicious, and then even gilded.

I included a sauce, which began with my deglazing the oven pan, and which happened just after I snapped this image following the removal of the ribs, and the rack on which they had rested, and before adding some stock. It’s amazing how small an amount of concentrated drippings it takes to produce something really rich.

At least I think I got the vegetable accompaniment right: Ribs and rutabaga seem made for each other, and this root even came with its own greens!

• a little over a pound of goat ribs (or ‘riblets’), already-separated from each other, from Lynnhaven Dairy Goat Farm, seasoned all over with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper then rubbed all over with a mix of dried herbs and spices (a pinch of both habanada and smoked Jamaican Scotch bonnet pepper; roughly a quarter teaspoon each of smoked Spanish pikante paprika; freshly ground cumin, coriander seed, and fennel seed; and a smidgen of turbanado sugar), set on a rack inside a large enameled cast iron oven pan and bake in a 300º oven for 1 hour, the heat then increased to 375º and, theoretically, the ribs cooked until browned outside, tender within, and an instant-read thermometer registered 175º, or, according to the recipe I had grabbed just before beginning dinner, about 1 hour longer [I’ll probably look for another recipe next time, since I this one and I may now have assembled some bad karma], the goat set aside while preparing a sauce: once the fat had been poured out of the pan it was placed on a burner above a medium flame and a quarter of a cup of low-sodium chicken stock added and stirred, scraping up the browned bits [shown in the picture above], the liquid poured into a small saucepan and a little more stock added, the liquid cooked over medium heat until reduced by half, a teaspoon of grainy Dijon mustard and some salt and pepper added, finished, off heat, by whisking in a teaspoon or so of cold butter, served on the plates with a garnish of micro red mustard from Windfall Farms, the sauce transferred to small bowls with small spoons to enable the diners to decide how to use it (basically, I thought this arrangement would at least reduce the stickiness involved in consuming the ‘wings’
• a little less than a pound of rutabaga from Norwich Meadows Farm, washed, dried, peeled, and cut as for French fries, tossed with little more than one tablespoon of olive oil, some sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, some now-dried rosemary leaves from Chelsea WHole Foods, and a bit of crushed dried pieces of  golden/bronze habanada pepper, then spread evenly, hopefully without crowding, onto a large, seasoned, unglazed ceramic Pampered Chef oven pan and roasted at 400º for about 30 or 35 minutes, garnished with micro bronze fennel from Two Guys from Woodbridge
• the rutabaga greens that had been attached to the root (there weren’t many, but, as they were from a form of turnip, they were terrific), washed, drained, chopped roughly, and wilted inside a small antique copper pot in olive oil along with a single ‘music’ or ‘strong neck’ garlic clove from Windfall Farms which had been lightly-browned in the oil first
• the wine was a Portuguese (Bairrada) red, Beira ‘FP’ Baga, Filipa Pato 2017, from Astor Wines
• the music was Bruckner’s eighth Symphony, Pierre Boulez conducting the Vienna Philharmonic

It was winter, the temperature was going to go down into the single digits, and we still didn;t intend to turn on any of the apartment radiators. I took a small roast out of the freezer the night before, thinking we’d appreciate having the oven going Wednesday evening, but also fully aware that a rack of goat, some spicy crispy roast potatoes, and savory braised cabbage would be more than just protection from the cold.

• one goat loin rack (21 ounces) from Lynn Haven in the Union Square Greenmarket, dry-marinated for about an hour, or a little more, outside the refrigerator [I had forgotten that the recipe suggested marinating for a few hours, mostly inside the refrigerator] in a mixture of rosemary leaves from Chelsea Whole Foods Market, removed from their stems; 2 medium crushed bay leaves from Westside Market; a bit of zest from an organic lemon from Whole Foods Market; a small part of one crushed dried dark habanada pepper; sea salt, and freshly-ground black pepper, then dried with paper towels and coated lightly with olive oil, the oven preheated to 425º and a heavy oval enameled cast iron pan placed inside for 10 minutes, the goat arranged, flesh side down, inside the hot pan and roasted in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes (for rare to medium rare doneness), allowed to rest for 7 minutes or so, the ribs separated into 4 chops with a heavy knife and arranged on 2 plates, finished with a squeeze of the lemon from which the zest had been removed earlier, drizzled with a bit of olive oil, garnished with micro red mustard from Two guys from Woodbridge
• twelve ounces of ‘red thumb’ small-medium potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm (some of the potatoes were quite red inside as well as out; today I asked the farmers about it and was told it wasn’t a mixup of varieties, but a characteristic quirk of this one), halved lengthwise, tossed with a little olive oil, sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, a pinch of smoked Scotch Bonnet pepper from Eckerton Hill Farm, 6 medium-size rocambole garlic cloves from Keith’s Farm (unpeeled, to keep them from burning), roasted cut-side down inside a 400º oven on a large very well-seasoned Pampered Chef ceramic pan for less about 20 minutes [the potatoes were prepared and kept warm before the goat was placed in its pan and roasted] arranged on the plates and sprinkled with chopped parsley from Philipps Farms
• an indeterminate number of chopped scallions (maybe 5 or 6), a mix of red-skinned Japanese from Norwich Meadows Farm and the more conventional from Philipps Farms, the green parts kept separate and put aside, cooked, along with 2 chopped Keith’s Farm rocambole garlic cloves, over medium-high heat inside a large antique high-sided copper pot until the garlic had begun to color, or about 3 minutes, the remaining portion of a head of Chinese cabbage (8 ounces) from Norwich Meadows Farm, thinly sliced, stirred into the pot along with salt and pepper to taste and sautéed for about a minute, a few tablespoons of fresh water added and the contents of the pot cooked, tightly covered, until the cabbage was wilted (only seconds, or maybe up to a minute), the reserved cut green scallion sections now added and cooked, uncovered, stirring until most of the water had evaporated, or about one minute [these times will vary with the type and amount of cabbage], finished by stirring on less than a tablespoon of Columela Rioja 30 Year Reserva sherry vinegar
• the wine was a terrific Portuguese (Douro) red, Quinta do Infantado, Douro Tinto 2015, from Flatiron Wines (and a really wonderful pairing with this entrée)
• the music was the 2015 ECM album, ‘Mieczysław Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies; Piano Quintet’, Gidon Kremer directing the Kremerata Baltica