Carrot

I've been digging through the deep freeze lately trying to weed out some of the older stuff, and use it up. I was in for another dig yesterday when I discovered a kg bag of goat stewing pieces, and figured I'd try to whip up a stew with them. So I let them thaw in the fridge for a day, and today took them out to start the stew. Note in the recipe below if you are going straight from the freezer then add 10 or 15 minutes to the oven time - but more on that in a bit. First a comment on what makes this "kid friendly". A couple of things really, but mainly the fact that I pureed a number of the ingredients that I knew the boys would balk at if they saw them in there. Namely - the whole 2 cups of carrots, and 2 of the 3 cups of potato. The 3rd cup of potato I diced up really small figuring that they would not balk at small pieces - and my gamble paid off. I did not have any turnip on hand, but I'd have pureed it as well if I did. Another thing which makes this kid friendly is that I meticulously picked through the goat to eliminate the copious bones. Goat bones can be small, and sharp - definitely a hazard for even an older child. Though if you wanted to go for a more authentic Mediterranean feel, you could eliminate that step.

Something I've been doing a lot of lately with meats is roasting them in the oven in my cast iron frying pan, and collecting and saving the juices which result. Though clearly in this case we would use the juices for the stew. In fact, I also dug out some juice I saved the other night from some pan-fried minute steaks, as well as some home canned lamb broth that my wife and I canned up early last year.

In our house growing up there was always a jar of mustard pickles in the fridge, and they were always paired with both baked beans and meat pie, which were both something my mom made regularly. A few years ago I decided to make my own, and I ended up being extremely pleased with the results. The main veggies to put in there are cucumbers, onions and cauliflower, but you can also put in stuff like rutabaga, turnip, radish, and carrots. This time around it is just the latter.

After you cut up your cucumbers and onions you have to salt them and leave them over night, to draw as much moisture as possible out of them. I just put them into a food grade bucket and leave them on the side step since it is cool enough at night this time of year that it is about fridge temperature. Then the next day you squeeze as much moisture as you can out of them - either by hand or with a fruit press like we have - and continue on with your recipe.

This is a yummy “cleaning out the veggie drawer” sort of soup. It’s lentil based, but uses pretty much whatever veggies you happen to have on hand. I’ve made it most often with zucchini because we buy an annual share in a CSA, and what farm doesn’t have too much zucchini in late summer? This is a great one to get going in a slow cooker, too, and reheats really well from leftover.