I’m sure the title sent many folks to reading something less incendiary. In truth, this combination made a tasty meal. I needed to use up some goat I had in the freezer, along with some beets and okra I found at the fruit stand. Off to the cookbook collection for inspiration.
I found the okra stew recipe in Claudia Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food. The original recipe used beef, veal, or lamb; I substituted the goat. The method is pretty standard: Sauté the onions, then brown the meat. Stir in some ground coriander, tomatoes, and tomato paste. Let simmer for 1-1 1/2 hours until the goat is tender. Stir in the okra about 20 minutes before serving. I made the Iraqi variation, which included Persian dried limes in the stew. I’d bought these at The Souk, a Middle Eastern grocery in Pike Place Market, some time back.
As for the beets, the recipe for the salad came from The Ethnic Paris Cookbook, by Charlotte Puckett and Olivia Kiang-Snaije. The beets were roasted, then peeled and chopped. The vinaigrette included harissa, a North African chile sauce.The salad came together while the rice was cooking and the okra simmered in the stew.
Julian put together an antipasto platter while I finished dinner. It wasn’t exactly in keeping with the theme, as one of the items on the platter was Salumi soppressata. (Salumi also makes a killer mole sausage.) The meal was quite good, despite the incongruity.
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