Irish stew with goat

Slow cooked, winter dish to warm up our hearth and our hearts. Served from the pot family style with rustic bread and its thick gravy. Perfect to relax, strengthen and comfort us until the days grow longer again.

It is impressive how much two cuisines from opposites sides of Europe can be. Yet there are Greek and Irish dishes with striking similarities such as Moussakas and Shepherd’s pie or the Greek goat stew and the Irish Stew. This stew is made with all different kinds of stewing meat and root vegetables but traditionally preferred are mutton lamb or goat with potato, onion and broth. Older animals are preferred since they were mainly bred for their wool and milk. They give a much richer flavour and are more nutritious however but they require patience and careful cooking.

Here we try a version with more vegetables but also with a trick to make the dish more presentable for Sunday lunch. The goat needs slow and low roasting, which harder vegetables like carrots and parsnips or turnips can withstand, if they are cut into chunks while enriching the taste. Potatoes would end up half dissolved. As they don’t have much flavor to impart but rather absorb, we can keep them aside and add in the form of a topping towards the end.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kilo of goat with bone in, in portions
• 1 onion
• 2 leeks
• 2 celery stalks or half a celeriac root
• 2 carrots
• 1 parsnip
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tbsp rosemary, finely chopped
• 1.5 liters of homemade broth , warm
• 2-3 potatoes

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Coarsely chop all vegetables except the potatoes into chunks. Brown the goat in a well-heated flameproof pot and set aside. Return the pot to a medium heat and sauté the onion, leeks, celery, carrots, and parsnip for 5 minutes. Towards the end, add the garlic and the finely chopped rosemary and the meat. Pour over 1 liter of broth, cover and put in the hot oven for 1.5 hours until the goat is tender.

Cut the potatoes into 1 cm slices. Uncover the pot and add enough hot broth to cover if needed, season with salt and pepper, then cover with the potato slices. Press them a little into enter the broth, then lightly grease. Bake covered for 15′ then uncover and bake for another 15′, until the potatoes are golden and cooked through.