Caribbean · Main
Goat Water
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with warm spice humming through the middle, real fire that builds and stays, opening aromatic and staying there.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg goat on the bone (neck, shoulder and shank), in 5 cm pieces
- 40 ml coconut oil
- 20 g dark brown sugar
- 2 onions, chopped
- 6 garlic cloves, crushed
- 20 g thyme sprigs
- 6 cloves
- 6 allspice berries (pimento), crushed
- 1 Scotch bonnet, left whole
- 3 spring onions, bruised
- 1.5 litres water
- 12 g fine salt
- 600 g breadfruit, peeled and in wedges
- 40 g tomato ketchup
- 60 ml dark rum
- 40 g plain flour, slaked in 100 ml cold water
The skills inside
Reducing a sauceSugar stages & caramel
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Heat the oil and melt the sugar in it until it foams and goes the colour of dark treacle, then tip in all the goat at once and turn it to coat; the cold meat drops the pan temperature and stops the caramel exactly where you want it, which browning in batches cannot do.
- Add the onions, garlic, thyme, cloves, allspice, spring onions and the whole Scotch bonnet, then the water and salt.
- Simmer with the lid ajar for about 2 hours 30 minutes, fishing out the chilli as soon as the broth smells of it, until the neck meat parts from the bone. 120 min
- Add the breadfruit, cook 20 minutes more, then whisk in the flour slurry and simmer 10 minutes, until the broth is glossy and just coats a spoon. 20 min
- Stir in the ketchup and rum off the heat and let it stand 10 minutes before serving. 10 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Reducing a sauce 95 recipes
- A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
- Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
- Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
- Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.
Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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