meeting #4

\\garXiv:0803.0001
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 19:00 CT (>3500kcal)Title: goatstro-phAuthors: Steph & Nathan
Categories: gastro-ph\\

It all started with a stew.  (Perhaps) it started 15 years ago at a birthday party in which Nathan and his friends topped a meal with coconut, apples, raisins and anything else with a pretty color.  Think of the stew as the "suicide" beverage of your youth in which you mixed all the 

soft drinks available at the soda fountain together, only the stew actually tastes good in addition to being a daring venture.  The stew is a lovely mixture of peanut butter, tomatoes, onions, and spices.  It looks pretty spectacular when cooked in a black chamba.

Before we cooked the stew, though, we needed to go get the goat.  The stew can be cooked with a variety of meats or be left completely vegetarian.  But we both wanted to try cooking goat, and we also wanted a reason to go to a real butcher in the city, so this was the perfect opportunity. 1/2 day of calling butchers later, we tried calling a grocer in Greek town.  They didn't have goat, but their supplier probably did.  That's how we found Olympic Meat Packers on Randolph & Canal.  When we asked for goat that would be appropriate for a stew, the butcher brought out 1/2 of a goat, carrying it by it's legs.  He chopped it up a bit, and we left happily with 4.5 lbs of goat.

Another dish we've been dying to master is the spongy Ethiopian bread injera. It turns out that the best way to get a sour flavor in injera is to use teff flour (teff is the smallest grain in the world!) and then to let the base sit for a few weeks so that it can absorb yeast from the air.  But we decided to cheat by using seltzer water as the leavening agent.  

The samosas turned out to be really fun to make.  We made 

the stuffing a day early and left the stuffing and frying to the day of the dinner.  The delicious sour flavor of the outer crust comes from using yogurt.  I think I'm a sucker for anything sour.We used a recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.

The evening turned out well, perhaps mostly because Chris hadn't slept in 48 hours.  We managed to feed him enough food to finally knock him out though.

\\