"cabrito"

Well, I cooked the goat I killed last week. It turned out great. We had a great party and I met a bunch of the other farmers here. The goat was easy but did take a few days to put together. First it went in a brine for twenty-four hours. Then a spice rub for another day and then finally on the smoker. I guess having a smoker is pretty important for this recipe. I was going to do it over my fire pit but the smoker is much easier to control, and we have one, so I used it. The guests being farmers were pretty well acquainted with cooking whole animals. One gentleman told me he likes to do goats in the Argentinian way. He explained to me he builds a big fire and then pokes two big skewers in a cross shape through the animal and props it vertically next to the flames to roast. That sounds pretty easy. Anyways, I smoked the goat for about six hours.

My recipe is a combination of two techniques. Layne (my boss and owner of Quail Croft Farm) told me the best way she had ever done it was with low smoke for three hours and then in a low oven for another three and covered to create a wet cooking environment. This sounded good to me but she didn't tell me about any seasoning. Octavio who bought a goat from Layne (wish I had a photo) a few weeks ago, told me he used a brine and then a spice rub which was the traditional way to cook cabrito (I mentioned this before, it is a goat that has only been milk fed and never pastured.) Apparently, the most tender. So I followed both recipes. I used a basic brine and mixed my own"very, extra special spice mixture," blah, blah, blah whatever. I don't know why there has to be such a mystery sometimes to cooking. You know, pick your spices to your taste, it's not very hard. I used a lot of coriander, dried chili, cumin, black pepper, sugar and I skipped the salt because I used a brine. I toasted the coriander and ground it in a spice grinder. Is that a recipe.


I guess some sort of recipe would be useful

For the brine
Use these proportions and make enough to cover
1 gallon water
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
I also threw in some other stuff I had around a bunch of garlic and bay leaf, but honestly I don't think it really adds much flavor.

For the dry rub (approximately)
1/2 cup coriander toasted and ground in a spice grinder
2 tbs cumin toasted and ground
1/2 cup dried chili (I used the korean stuff not local but not super spicy and nice flavor, kind ok like paprika which would be a good substitute.)
1/4 cup sugar

Procedure
1) Cover whole goat in brine for one day
2) Pull it out of the brine and let air dry for an hour
3) Apply spice rub, refrigerate for one day
4) Get smoker ready or fire pit or webber
5)Smoke for three hours at one hundred degrees
6) Raise temperature to around three hundred degrees and continue to smoke for three more hours until an internal temperature reads 160 Also put a pan of water in the smoker to create a wet environment to help keep the meat moist.

P.S.
With the liver and kidneys I made chopped liver. Good recipe. Baby goat liver is really good. Very mild.For next time, maybe.

Green Split Pea Salad

Jim and Christina Sesby's started this farm
about ten years ago They have four milkers and sell the raw milk and cream to the locals. The milk is gorgeous; sweet and rich with flavor. Jim and Christina are crusaders for raw milk. The state agencies and the Dairy Board are of the opinion that raw milk is a health hazard. But, that is just not true. These cows are clean, the milk room is practically spotless, and the milk is handled with the utmost of care. Milk from a normal dairy is often contaminated; why bother with cleanliness when the milk is going to be pasteurized anyway. Really the lack of support for this product is another example of big business and there lobbies stealing our democracy. But its not a total loss with people like the Sesby's working hard for us to eat well.

Projects abound around here. Christina is experimenting with making cheese. There will be some piggies coming soon, which entails learning some curing and chacuterie, hopefully. Right now we have some pork bellies to cure and smoke for bacon next week. And soon, the chicks and little turkeys will be arriving (meat birds).

I killed a baby goat yesterday. One of my projects. We're having a potluck here for the producers of a film called "Good Earth" and for our local Slow Food organization. I thought a whole animal on the bar-b-que would be awesome and a great learning experience for me. It was really important for me to do the slaughtering. Christina was there to help me through the whole process, really holding my hand. I used a knife. It was quick. I got blood all over my jeans. We tied it up in the barn were we gutted and skinned it. The killing was intense for me. My mother just passed away and I had, for the first time in my life, an extremity of emotion that I had never felt before. It was like being on drugs at times. The killing of the goat brought me back to that place. It wasn't reliving my mothers death, but the emotions had an equivalency. It's clarity I felt the most; a sense of connectedness. The kid has a hanging wieght , of probably around, twenty or twenty-five pounds. I only paid fifty dollars for it. A pretty good deal. Why isn't this more normal? People do this all the time, but most aren't born here. A cabbie in Seattle, from Eritrea, told me he goes to a farm for all his meat and kills it himself; a taco vendor in Portland told me the same; a man named Octavio came to Quail Croft (my other internship and were I procured the kid) for his "cabrito" (the tiniest milk fed kid he could find). There is a community of people out there that are more intimately connected to there meat, and, I guess, I am part of that community now.

Anyways, that goat is for another meal. This week I wanted to cook over an open fire to practice for the goat. I built a fire pit. I stacked up some rocks in a circle and then I layed a grate over the center; quite easy and cheaper than a Weber. We did a whole turkey that I brined and then put a spice rub on. It turned out real nice. Also, we had leeks braised in chicken broth, a split pea salad, and fresh bread with butter. Although the turkey was very good, we've all had bar-b-que, I thought the salad was a bit different, so here it is.

Split Peas and Miner's Lettuce with Egg and Yogurt Dressing

This recipe uses miners lettuce which I foraged and is, I believe, pretty hard to find in the produce aisle, pea shoots would be really good, actually, probably better than the lettuce, but I had a patch on the farm, so use it, right. I didn't record the exact measurements, but cooking is not a recipe and one has to know techniques and how to adjust. The ideas good; make yours better.

3 cups green split peas
a few big handfuls of miner's lettuce about equal part lettuce to peas
4 hard boiled eggs (for a small egg 8 min in simmering water)
1/4 cup fresh goat cheese ((I used the Quail Croft Cheese which I had a hand in making)
1/2 cup sliced leek

dressing
2 egg yolks
1/8 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp whole grain mustard
1 bunch chives
1/2 cup mint
1 1/2 cups yogurt

1)Saute the aromatics and then add the split peas, cover with water and cook until tender but not mush
2)Let the split peas cool which gives you time to make the dressing by combining the egg yolks, mustard, vinegar and herbs in a blender and pulsing until very smooth, then slowly add the yogurt to make creamy dressing. Pass it through a chinoise or a fine meshed strainer. It wont be super thick, kind of like cream consistency.
3)Dress the peas and greens and don't forget to season with salt and pepper
4)Finish by sprinkling some goat cheese and topping with hard boiled egg
5)Some bacon would make this perfect

Again, this tasted pretty good. I hope this is a fairly accurate recipe. If there is any interest in publishing these I will be sure to make these right. For now just trust your gut instinct.

Carrot Soup

I feel like I'm in another country. I left Seattle and a career as a cook that was stagnating. I am now an intern for no pay with only room and board on two small farms in the San Juan Islands. One, Quail Croft Farm, is a goat dairy and cheese making operation, Heritage Farm is across the road and operates a CSA (community supported agriculture), a raw cow milk dairy with pastured meat and fresh eggs. This is all organic of course. And its about food; wholesomeness, taste, anti-oil, food security and community.

I am here to have an experience, learn some new skills and see what being a grower looks like. I want to cook. I am here as a farm intern and will be very busy herding goats and helping garden, but I'm here to to cook locally and seasonally. Just like in "Julie and Julia" I want to cook a recipe a week. Except, I want to come up with something original and something from this exact place and about these people. Don't get me wrong I am no localvore (I will be drinking coffee everyday), but I don't want to cook "Mediterranean Cusine". I don't want to use olive oil. I want to use what is available here and make it work. I have farm butter and chicken fat and lard all from grass fed animals and if I believe Michael Pollan that fat will be just as healthy as the olive oil.

These farmers are food motivated (as my dog trainer puts it), they want to be around good food, so they are happy to have me here cooking. I'll be preparing weekly meals, food for special events and parties, writing recipes for the CSA members and hopefully we will be putting on farm dinners.

We did our first weekly dinner and I came up with my first recipe. Let me say, before coming out I had this grand fantasy of having all these great farm ingredients to work with but it's not quite like that. And, at first, I was disappointed. But, this is reality. It's cold here. Winter is barely over and nothing is coming out of the ground. And, also, our society is dependent on grocery store food. I don't have prosciutto's and tons of cheeses to work with. It is farms like Heritage and Quail Croft that are trying to create this slow food, but without the support of the community it will go nowhere. And for the moment, there is no smoke house around the corner to provide me with beautiful bacon or ham. But, this is what eating seasonal is all about. When the peas do, finally, come and there are tons of tomatoes I am going to be stoked. Anyways, For my first meal I braised a beef heart with pinto beans (recipe needs some work), had a cauliflower and celeriac casserole, fresh bread, wheat bran cakes (the bran is a byproduct of grinding the wheat for the fresh bread so I came up with a recipe to use it up, kind of like polenta cakes, not too bad. But, I had one winner
Soup of Carrot Jus with Leeks and Winter Greens

It's a pretty simple soup but a bit different from the standard carrot and ginger puree. Here I use juice of carrots (jus is the french way of saying juice or sauce made from the juice of something). And everything came from the farm except the salt and pepper.

6 cups of carrot juice (approximately 3 large bunches of carrots)
2 TBS. Lard
2 Tbs Butter
1/8 cup flour
6 Small Leeks cleaned and sliced into half moons (white and little bit of green only)
A big bunch of any kind of braising green you like (I used Swiss chard and flowering kale)
pinch of chili flakes

1) Melt fat
2) Slowly saute leeks until tender then add chili flakes
3) Add flour to pan to make a roux (just like sausage gravy) I really want just enough to give the soup a little body and help the carrot juice from separating. Cook until fat and flour combine
4) Add carrot juice and bring to a simmer to slightly thicken. Cook until it tastes good and not like raw carrot juice. At this point you can hold the soup until ready to serve. When ready reheat and season with salt then add greens and wilt and then serve.

This soup is kind of sweet and would benefit from some acid. If I had a little sauerkraut I might have used a bit when I was cooking the leeks, also I think it would have been good with beef tongue cured like corned beef. Anyways, it's pretty good the way it is. Also, I am not real sure how accurate this recipe is, if you follow the general technique you should do fine. I'll try to be more accurate in the future.