#stephen temkin

[permanentstyle]

https://www.permanentstyle.com/2018/02/how-a-hat-should-fit-with-stephen-temkin-fedora.html

How a hat should fit (with Stephen Temkin fedora)

[permanentstyle]

https://www.permanentstyle.com/2016/11/a-pale-grey-jacket-with-green-corduroy.html

A pale-grey jacket with green corduroy

[citybitestoronto]

Get Your Goat

By Stephen Temkin

The people who say young goat’s delicious aren’t kidding around

IT’S GOAT TIME. Ornery but delicious, and unfortunately hard to find.

Ah, summertime: carefree indulgence, exposed flesh and lithe young things frolicking in the grass. Well, not for me. My summer satiation with anything 18-years old will come from a snifter of Springbank on the patio.

Although, come to think of it, I have been indulging in the exposed flesh of lithe young things that frolic in the grass: I’ve been eating young goats. The meat of a young goat is excellent food. Unfortunately, for some reason the idea makes many people squeamish, and so its local availability is somewhat limited.

Get over it, I say. If you like lamb, you’ll probably like goat; you may even prefer it. Indeed, the goat I’ve been eating is some of the finest local meat I’ve had the pleasure to consume.

At its best, the meat of a young goat is like a mild version of lamb; it’s sort of like merging lamb with veal. The flavour is clean and distinct yet not without delicacy. The texture, especially in the choice cuts, is relatively lean yet tender and finely grained.

It is usually butchered and cooked the same way as lamb: rack and loin for roasting or chops on the grill, rear haunch and leg (H-bone removed and the meat tied) for a grand roast, shoulder for chops or stew (a classic for curry), and foreshanks for braising. As for the trim, goat meat makes a surprisingly brilliant burger, so much so that you may wish to sacrifice foreshank and shoulder to the cause.

Goats are more difficult to raise than sheep, mostly because they are stubborn, ornery little critters. Farmers are therefore encouraged to leave them to their own devices, herding them into the barn only for the winter. As such, their very nature encourages a natural, pasture-raised product.

I’ve been buying my goat at Sausage King in the St. Lawrence Market. Sausage King, once one of the market’s more easily ignored vendors, is now an obligatory stop. That’s because it was purchased last September by the esteemed Rosedale butcher, Olliffe, itself acquired in 2009 by former chef, Ben Gundy, and his brothers.

Ben has assembled an excellent team, and his entry into the St. Lawrence Market represents the first positive development in that institution in a very long time, especially in the meat department; of the several butchers there, at least three could vanish without so much as a whimper of regret in culinary circles.

The market’s dusty stagnation may explain why Sausage King is no longer carrying the goat on a regular basis. Turns out that another food writer and I were pretty much the only customers.

What does it say when one of the city’s finest butchers is unable to dispose of one small delicious goat per week at National Geographic’s so-called “best market in the world”? It seems to suggest that Toronto’s foodie establishment doesn’t agree with National Geographic, and they would be right. I still shop at the market every week but see a need for a serious upgrade.

Fortunately, you can also still get yours through Sausage King. You must order the whole animal and they will beautifully break it down. The cost would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $250. Well worth it for the burgers alone. CB

Photo by Sacha Kahn via Flickr.