Retsina Braised Shoulder of Goat with Whipped Feta

I sit here stroking my weary ribs, which have only just stopped jiggling after I read your comments on my food confessions post. It seems that we’re all secretly hoofing back corned beef and salad cream sandwiches, washed down with buckets of instant coffee (mainly to annoy people with beards, apparently). There’s a time and a place though, guys. Just been dumped? Grab the Cheesestrings. Hungover? Anything goes, frankly – the world is your pickled onion Monster Munch cheese toastie.

Sunday lunch though, that’s sacred turf. One cannot be messing around with Gregg’s steak slices and cheap Cheddar on the Official Day of Long, Slow Cooking.

Goat is now becoming more mainstream in the UK, not found only in Caribbean takeaways. It’s not that easy to get down here in Peckham or Brixton actually, with most places selling you mutton instead. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen dedicated suppliers like Cabrito become known, and Turner and George are selling goat from Tailored Goat Company (based in Cumbria), which is how I got hold of this shoulder.

It’s fantastic meat, with a flavour not unlike mutton (hence the substitution), but without that ‘slightly high’ kiff you often get with lamb. The best way to cook a shoulder is to braise it in liquid for around 4 hours (I once tried to cook it entirely on the BBQ – total cock up, it’s too lean), after which time you’ll have meat tender enough to pull apart.

Retsina braised goat with whipped feta

We decided to go Greek, and it went into a roasting tray with garlic, onions, about ten bay leaves (I’m all for silly amounts of bay) and half a bottle of retsina, which we had to beg off the staff at a local restaurant who thought we were the council trying to stitch them up. It’s a classic ‘stick it in the oven and forget about it’ job, with serious springtime Mediterranean vibes.

We ate it with toasted pitta, a salad of blood orange and olives (Greek, obvs), some quick pickled red onions, and Feta which I whipped up because that is what we do with Feta now, don’t ya know. It turns into a sort of fluffy paste when mixed with cream cheese or yoghurt, great for spreading inside little goat-y sandwiches. They really do take some bleating.

SORRY.

Retsina Braised Shoulder of Goat with Whipped Feta

This method looks long but every stage is about as simple as it gets. I reckon this would easily serve 6 people. It kept us going for a week… more on that soon. 

1 x 2.5kg shoulder of goat
6 tablespoons olive oil
1 head of garlic, cut in half
2 onions, peeled and roughly sliced
10 bay leaves
1/2 bottle retsina (standard wine bottle size)

Preheat the oven to 160C. Place the shoulder on top of the onions in a roasting tray and rub with the oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add everything else to the tray, cover with foil and cook for 4 hours, or until very tender.

For the blood orange salad:

3 blood oranges, segmented
10 kalamata olives
Soft lettuce
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1.5 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon honey

Mix olive oil, lemon juice and honey in a jar. Add salt and pepper. Put lid on and shake until combined. Set aside. To assemble the salad, mix the orange segments, olives and lettuce and mix with a enough of the dressing to coat.

For the whipped feta:

140g feta cheese
80g cream cheese
Parsley, chopped

Crumble the feta into a food processor and blend. Add cream cheese and blend again. Taste and season with pepper, garnish with parsley.

For the quick pickled red onions:

1 red onion, finely sliced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
Large pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to pickle. Stir occasionally.

Serve the goat with toasted pitta breads and the rest of the bits and pieces.

Pork Cheek Tacos with Blood Orange and Chipotle

A slow-cooked meat dish always wants something to offset the richness (beef ragu with gremolata for another example), which is why I thought these pork cheeks would work well in tacos. They need leisurely cooking to melt the fat and render the meat fork-tender. I was thinking along the lines of saucy carnitas.

The blood oranges have hit the shops and so I used some juice to braise the cheeks, combined with Mexican spices and smoky chipotle flakes (you could also add some chipotles en adobo). After 3 hours of bubbling, the meat was coming apart in shreds and the sauce intensely flavoured; it’s probably one of the most delicious slow cooked dishes I’ve ever made. We piled it onto pan-scorched tacos and topped with lime-heavy guacamole, green chilli and Thomasina Miers’ pink onions pickled in citrus juice and herbs

The leftovers made the largest and most kick ass burrito I’ve ever eaten in my life. I would’ve been embarrassed had anyone actually seen me eating it; meat all over my hands and face. I burnt my cheek with chilli. The sauce left its indelible mark in no less than 3 places on my t-shirt. Totally worth it though, especially considering I bought 10 cheeks for £2.50. Result.

Pork Cheek Tacos with Blood Orange and Chipotle

10 pork cheeks
Juice of 1 large blood orange
4 cloves
6 allspice berries
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon crushed chipotle chillies (or to taste)
1 tablespoon fresh oregano leaves
2 carrots, very finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons tomato purée
1 litre vegetable stock (or enough to comfortably cover the cheeks; the sauce will be reduced at the end)
1 teaspoon sugar

Flour and oil for searing the cheeks

Heat a few tablespoons of the oil in a large, heavy based saucepan. Dust some flour onto a plate and use it to coat the pork cheeks by turning them over on the plate. Once the oil is hot, sear the cheeks a few at a time until brown on all sides then set aside on a plate.

Add the onions and carrots to the pan and cook for 5 minutes or so until softened. Add the spices (in a little bit of muslin if you want to be fancy and make it easy to fish them out later on), orange juice, bay leaves, oregano, tomato purée, sugar and stock, bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer. Add the pig cheeks back to the pan, put a lid on and cook on the lowest heat possible for 3 hours.

After this time, check the sauce for seasoning and add salt and pepper as necessary. Remove the meat from the sauce; it should be extremely tender and falling apart at the touch. Shred it and set aside. Fish the whole spices from the sauce then reduce it over a high heat by about two thirds. Basically you want enough to coat the meat in a rich sauce. Add the meat back to the sauce and warm through.

Serve on tacos with guacamole and onions lightly pickled in orange and lime juice with herbs. To cut tacos, use a large glass, teacup or knife to make circles from a large fajita wrap and toast lightly in a dry pan.