
Just as a postscript to recent notes on the subject of wild goats, it is worth reporting that we ate some goat last night and it was absolutely excellent – perhaps one of the best home made curries I can remember. Slow cooked with cardamom pods and cloves, the meat was beautifully tender – this was diced neck from an old animal, but the meat was most similar to a coarse-grained lamb, with none of the grease you might expect from hogget or mutton and something like a flavour of venison.
Most importantly, there was absolutely no flavour of “goat” – the rank, reeking misery of the smell seemed to vanish when the animals were skinned, and freezing the meat for a few days before eating it also seemed to help. I can hardly recommend it highly enough if you’re ever in the position to try some wild goat meat, and given that these animals have been feeding free-range on the finest forage that Galloway has to offer, perhaps these high commendations are not surprising.