Dopers I need a few recipe suggestions.
I have somehow eneded up inviting 30 people over for new years eve and have promised to cook a goat over coals and serve it up with kebab type salads, pitta bread and chilli sauce. It all seamed like a good idea at the time.
The goat (well it is a kid really) cooking is not an issue. However whilst sampling kebabs late at night during my student days, I failed to take note of the salads and the chilli sauce that was always an excellent accompaniment.
So does anyone have any good salad suggestions and a chill sauce recipe that can be amped up or down as required, that would go well stuffed inside pitta bread with goat.
Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how to make pitta bread.
The goat will also be served with a buttload of chorizos as one or two kids will not go far.
Cheers
NBC
Here’s a pita bread recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Peppys-Pita-Bread/Detail.aspx All the one’s I’ve seen are about the same. I didn’t have any luck with baking on the middle rack and puffing up. I’ll try this again with also turning on the broiler.
What I do now is roll out the pita to about the thickness of two quarters stacked up. About 6 inches in diameter works best for me. Then let rise/rest for 30 minutes or so. I toss the dough onto either a pizza stone or a big cast iron pan on the bottom rack. Oven has been pre heated to 500 degrees. Takes maybe one minute to puff up like a ballon, then I flip over for about another 45 seconds. Take it out. You’ll need to play around with the baking times a little bit.
You can usually back 2 at a time if the pan is big enough.
Making your own you can do white flour, 50% white and 50% whole wheat, add in some oatmeal (I bake for some diabetics), sourdough, or play around with different mixtures. Pretty much any break mix will work.
You can make the pita a day early or the morning of your bash.
Pita bread is the one bread thing I bake that’s a crowd pleaser in my household.
You could also make bulgar salad or cous cous salad as a side.
I just baked some pita. This time, turned the oven up to the high setting, turned on the broiler, then put the pita on the middle rack for about 2.5 minutes. Suckers started bubbling around 1 minute, puffed up into a ball at 2 minutes.
I tried laying the pita right on the rack, and that one puffed up okay. Tried one on foil after it had been sitting for about 30 minutes and the bottom stuck to the foil and didn’t cook up well. Tried another one by placing on foil right before putting into the oven and I think this one puffed up the best.
So, the trick seems to be the oven and broiler both going. (I find on the pizza stone/cast iron pan that one side is much thicker than the other side.)
I probably should have mentioned I was think kebabs type food of a Greek / Turkish persuasion.
The issue is really that I am cooking a whole goat (although Lamb has the same issues) over a parrilla. Now the meat is very delicately flavored, but it needs to be served directly off the parrilla and be hot and juicy, if it cools down it will dry out and the fat solidifies and is a bit off putting.
At a new years eve party, getting people sat down and ready to eat will be a bit like herding cats uphill in the snow towards a barking dog. I plan to lure them towards the parrilla with the chorizos which are easy to keep on the go, but then need to carve up and serve the goat reasonably quickly. (Also so I can then leave the cooking and join in the party)
I figure putting the meat in the pockets of pita bread with some salad sort of stuff and some chilli (or any other ideas) sauce will keep it warm and add some juice.
To which end I need some ideas for a juicy sort of salad that would go with kid (think delicate lamb flavor) in the bread. Also a chilli sauce that will add juice, but can be made both hot for the northern hemispherical guests and kept very mild for the locals.
You can make an easy salad with some midle eastern flavor with leaf lettuce, feta cheese, red onion and sliced black olives. Dress it with a red wine vinagrette.
Couscous or baba ghanoush would be fitting as well.
Another option for inside the pitas with the goat is Tzatziki Sauce - I’ve normally seen it used with lamb, but I imagine it would go well with goat, from your description. Mild flavour, and you could use it to offer your guests a choice from the chili sauce. Would also help keep the meat juicy in the pita.
There’s a link to a receipe at the bottom of the wiki page, or you can just google it.
If I were committing to the whole grilled goat thing in a mideastern style, prepared especially for New Years Eve, I would probably go with a version of Ethiopian Berebere chile sauce as a condiment. Unfortunately, it can’t really be toned down… I mean, I suppose you could leave out a few chilis or dilute/cut it if you really wanted, but that kind of defeats the whole point, IMHO. (The linked recipe page for the berebere also includes a host of other chile sauce recipes that should be great inspiration and perhaps a springboard to your own chile sauce).
Here is also a genuine American (Texan) cabrito sauce recipe I ran acoss (it seems very mild and would suit the Northern sensibilities, as American Chili Powder is a mild mix of chile and cumin…)
Barney McBee’s Texas Goat Sauce
Makes about 7 cups
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
1 clove garlic, mashed
1 32-ounce bottle ketchup
3 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 cups black coffee
1 cup distilled vinegar
1 lemon, cut in half
6 tablespoons chili powder
3 good taps Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Heat oil over medium-low in a large saucepan. Add onions and garlic and sauté until tender but not brown. Whisk together ketchup and mustard in a large bowl and add to ingredients in saucepan. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer over low heat for 1 hour. Refrigerate unused sauce up to several weeks.
While this sauce is meant for goat, it has an earthy flavor (probably from the coffee) that goes nicely with beef or mutton.
Actually, I was mistaken, that berebere recipe that I gave does need to be diluted to serve as a condiment. I’d look at that recipe as a flavorful African chile paste that you would add in preferred quantities to olive oil and fresh citrus (lemons/limes) to serve over the goat pitas. Or, another idea- you could add a small quantity of the berebere to a cool tzatziki yogurt sauce as the mild offering and serve the rest of the berebere as I described above slightly diluted with citrus and olive oil for the people who enjoy it really hot and spicy.
I’d go with a simple salad of shredded lettuce, cabbage, sliced onions, and tomatoes to serve inside the goat pita if you were to chose the berebere and berebere tzatziki as sauces.
ChinaGuy
Worked a treat, It took some experimentation to get the right place in the oven, I ended up having them on a thin baking tray that was placed on the very bottom of the oven. As it is a gas oven this was the hottest place.
Devilsknew
That is a pretty cool looking sauce from ethiopia, I am giving it a bash (although I have no peanut oil or Fenegreek , pretty much unheard of down here, Argentine cuisine tends to not use anything hot or too many spices.
I think I’ll keep some for adding to the tzatziki (I managed to persuade someone to make that for me) and some with lemon. The rest I’ll take a hint from the Texas sauce I’ll blend the Berebere down with tomatoes, lemon/lime and Worcestershire sauce for a lager volume sauce. The Coffee sounds like a pretty wacky idea as well. It would certainly add a bit of a ‘what the hell is that?’ body to the sauce.
I have someone bringing a couscous salad thing, and will knock up a few salads , tomatoes green leafy things and olives, and a shredded lettuce/onion/tomato/cabbage/(lemon?) combo
