LOCAVORES STRIKE IT RICH IN ITHACA -- GET YOUR OWN GOAT (with recipe)

For years local chefs searched in vain for home-grown center-of-the-plate goods, and now there’s no shortage of same, thanks to McDonald Farms, The Piggery, Northland Sheep Dairy, Autumn's Harvest, and others, many of them Ithaca Farmers Market regulars. Blue Stone Bar and Grill’s chef/owner Doug Gruen, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, veteran of many Big Apple top restaurants, and one of Ithaca’s burgeoning mob of talented “buy local, cook local” chefs, purchases vegetables and salad greens in their season from Nathaniel Thompson’s Remembrance Farm in T-burg, a member of the area’s Full Plate Farm Collective.

“The less traveling it has to do makes a big impression on the flavor of produce,” Gruen said. “And to sell [to restaurants], local farmers have to be better than average; they put a lot more effort into making their product more flavorful and tasty.” For winter, though, he has found a good source for goat meat in John Wertis, whose Searsburg BWW Farm produces a variety of goat cuts available year round, from leg of goat (think leg of lamb without the fragrance of Persian lamb coat) to goatburger, great for a warming chili, and even goat summer sausage. Goat meat is also known as chevon or, in the Southwest, cabrito (always makes me think of “cabrito ergo sum”: which translates to “therefore I am a young goat,” which doesn’t make any sense at all, but gives me the giggles). Low in cholesterol and fat (143 calories per 100 grams; chicken has 223, beef 305), and high in flavor, but without venison’s gaminess, goat cooks best at a slow braise, and Gruen’s recipe for goat curry is sure to fill a kitchen with lovely aromas as it cooks, and to elicit a chorus of yums around your table.

Doug Gruen’s Indonesian-style Goat Curry (serves 6)
2 Tbsp canola oil
2 lbs goat meat cubes with bones
1 cup diced onion
½ cup diced carrots
½ cup diced celery
1 tsp chopped garlic
1 Tbsp curry powder (Gruen prefers yellow curry powder, but curry paste can be used, or any other kind of curry powder)
½ tsp dried thyme
¼ tsp freshly ground pepper
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup coconut milk
½ cup low sodium soy sauce
½ cup soy milk
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice
½ cup peanut butter, smooth or chunky

 In a hot skillet, brown pieces of goat in canola oil. When meat is browned, add diced onion and sauté until onions take on a little color. Toss in carrots; cook for three minutes. Add celery. Make a place for the garlic in the middle of the sauté pan, and sauté the garlic until it has some color.
At highest heat, add curry powder, thyme, black pepper and bay leaf and sauté for a minute or two.

Then add all other ingredients except peanut butter, and lower flame to medium. Cover and cook until meat is tender and falling off the bone (start checking after an hour or so). Remove meat from pan; de-bone, and discard bones.

Add peanut butter to sauce in pan, whisk in well, then return goat to pan. Taste for seasoning, and serve piping hot with white steamed jasmine rice and the following garnishes: chopped scallions, chopped peanuts, chopped fresh coconut (roasted in a small pan in the oven for a short time), chopped bacon, and mango chutney. Gruen likes to serve all the garnishes in small bowls on a lazy susan in the middle of the table so diners can help themselves.

You, too, can order goat from Wertis’ BWW Farm at 387-4331; check out his Web site, http://goatmeatsny.com/, for additional recipes. You can find even more recipes at http://www.greatgoats.com/cooking.html. Should you have time, space, and inclination, there’s information on growing your own on the Web site of Cornell’s Sheep and Goat Marketing Program, where Trumansburg’s Dr. tatiana [the “T” is lower case] Stanton, a goat expert who got her start running a Peace Corps goat program in Jamaica, holds forth with good information and a few warnings.

We dined recently at Blue Stone Bar and Grill, (110 North Aurora Street, Ithaca) and enjoyed immensely Gruen’s creations, (especially his braised pork shank with brandy-glazed apples and his wasabi-glazed salmon), the restaurant’s atmosphere, and selections from their imaginative drinks menu. Call 272-2371 for information and reservations. You’re in for a treat if there’s curried goat on the menu.