Ben, as regular readers know, is an adventuresome gourmand. I am always pretty organized in my grocery expeditions, but when I spotted frozen “bone-in goat cubes” in the same case where I usually find sausage, I decided that Ben might like to try some Jamaican fare. I threw it in the shopping cart, along with some jerk seasoning, and everything needed for my regularly scheduled meal program.
When I got to the check-out lane, the guy at the cash register noted my purchases and asked if I was making Jamaican food. When I replied that it was kind of an impulse buy (as, no doubt, so many purchasers of bone-in goat cubes must admit) he recommended that I save the jerk seasoning for chicken, and make curried goat. “But it’s not like beef,” he warned. “Low and slow, or it will get tough. There’s nothing better than good goat, but bad goat…” his voice trailed off, leaving me to guess at the goat atrocities he had known.
It isn’t often I take unsolicited culinary advice from Wegman’s cashiers, but this guy seemed to really know his goat, so I did a little research when I got home, and it all checked out. We paired our goat curry with Caribbean rice and beans, and listened to Bob Marley while we cooked.
We adjusted this goat recipe to be done in the crockpot (two hours on high heat, add quartered potatoes, and 4 hours on low.) Since the produce section at Wegmans looks pretty raggedy at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, there were no fresh hot peppers available, so we used a couple shishito peppers. It is probably for the best, as I understand Scotch bonnet peppers will melt your face off.
