Melt-In-Your-Mouth Meat over the Oak Fire: Roast Kid

Today, I’d like to share with you a recipe starring young goat meat, also one of the main ingredients of the recipes created by the great Chef Georges Auguste Escoffier who was the first to receive the “Legion d’Honneur” badge laying the groundwork for the modern cuisine.

In my opinion, the young goat meat is the healthiest meat in the world!

The reason is quite clear. Goat is not a livestock animal. It’d beat its rivals in a taste competition because it is allowed to freely graze in a natural setting

A young goat in its right season can even be more appetizing than a spring lamb.

Also called “çebiş” in some Turkish dialects, the kid goat is mostly consumed in spring. But it is best enjoyed during the months of March and April. As it is the case, the March kid meat I preordered from Tantris Restaurant one week prior to my visit was a proof of that. However my first choice is always my stone oven.

The young male goats are mostly found in Thrace and the Aegean region of Turkey. The kid meat I used for the recipe is from one of the best goat farming centers in Turkey, Gölen. The portion of the ingredients of the sauce I used for two kid goats weighing 5.5 kilograms was totally up to my taste. As the pictures could be an example for you, you’re free to use or omit every ingredient depending on the limit of your palate.

An Appointment in the Stone Oven

Preheated with oak wood for 6-8 hours, the oven becomes ready to meet the kid meat only when the cinders start to turn into ashes. Of course the most important detail to make such an appointment even more appetizing is the sauce that flavors the meat.

You can prepare a simple and basic sauce by mixing fine-chopped fresh thyme, sage leaves; grated orange peels, garlic and fresh ginger and enrich it with white balsamic vinegar and honey in addition to extra virgin oil, lime and orange juice. The last things to add the mixture are lots of rock salt, large black peppercorns and thin red pepper flakes.

After rubbing this sauce over the meat, place a few red peppers, rosemary twigs and shallots to put it in the stone oven which has been heating for hours. At this point, if you wish, you can also place a few thin-skinned potatoes into the baking dish. You can even stuff the whole kid with rice. But if you’d like to concentrate on the simple and basic taste of the kid goats, I don’t recommend you to use either stuffing rice or potatoes.

 Cover the baking dish with tinfoil and leave it to cook for one hour and 45 minutes. If you think you can take it right to the dinner table once the time is over, consider that because it’s still early to do that!

Because it is still possible to heighten the taste of the roast kid to another level although it is enough to make you fall in love with its taste just the way it is!

In order to do that, pour a bottle of local Narince-Emir coupage over the roast kid and put it back in the stone oven without covering the dish with tinfoil, only this time throw a few thin laurel twigs into the fire. Once the roast kid gets smoked with the laurel twigs in 15 minutes, it will just melt in the mouth.

As you can see from the pictures, I used a perforated sheet pan. The sauce that gathers at the bottom during the cooking process can be used in many ways. You either use the sauce without adding anything more just like the way I would, or mix it with “demi-glace”, the mother sauce of the French cuisine and serve it with the dish.

The kid goat meat is like an undiscovered treasure in Turkey. Many people are not ready for this taste yet. As it is the case, it could be found at only a few refined restaurants and some local restaurants located along the roads connecting the above-mentioned cities. “Kelleci Pala Ahmet” in the village Oğlananası along the Izmir-Aydın road is just one example to them.

Eating the fish raw was just a crazy idea though 10-15 years ago. Now sushi restaurants are something that we come across on every corner. Maybe the thoughts of people about the kid meat change over time and they have the courage to discover the flavors lying around them.

Bon appétit and enjoy the taste of life…