RICETTE per capretto (e capra) – Recipes for slow cooked kid and goat

Quite a bit of cooking went on over the Christmas and the New Year period and there was no time to write about it. Most of the time I do not even manage to take photos, however for this dish, I did.

This is a slow cooked goat with mushrooms. The Sicilian bit in this dish is that the goat pieces were marinated in Marsala Fine (semi dry) and cooked with Marsala too. Most recipes eventuating from the rest of Italy would use wine – red and perhaps white.

I used the goat ragout to dress egg pappardelle.

I hope the photos tell the story.

I bought a leg and a shoulder of capretto… the italian word for kid and the etto at the end of the word makes it diminutive…however, judging by the size of it, it was a capra…a goat.

There were seven of us for lunch and I also bought a kilo of mushrooms.

Below is the photo of the marinade:

Marsala Fine, extra virgin olive oil, herbs – bay, cloves, rosemary –

these herbs are used in sicilian cooking but I also used nepitella and sage – herbs that are more common in the north and central Italy.

I cut most of the meat off the bone but kept the bones in with the meat to marinade overnight.

Drain the meat and bones and sauté the meat in some extra virgin olive oil in small batches.

Place the sautéed meat aside and finish sautéeing all the meat and the bones.

Prepare the sofritto – white onion, carrot and celery, chopped pretty small.

Use the same pan.

Sauté the onion first in some extra virgin oil, then add the carrots and celery and sauté some more.

Add the meat and bones.

Add the marinade, the herbs (and some new ones too).

Add salt and pepper and some good meat stock and more Marsala.

Cover and cook on slow heat. Check level of moisture regularly and if needed add more stock. I cooked mine for just below four hours. Remove the bones….they should be clean.