viande de chevreau au Québec

[Animal 0]

Young or old? Depends on how strong you want it to taste
By LESLEY CHESTERMAN, The Gazette

January 19, 2011

If you're buying fresh goat meat in Quebec, chances are you'll end up with kid - that is, an animal less than 6 months in age. When it's older than that, goat meat is often referred to as chevon -or, in many Caribbean islands and in parts of South Asia (especially Pakistan and India), mutton, which is also used to describe older lamb meat.

The reason we get such young animals in Quebec is that the baby goats sold for meat are by-products of the goat milk industry, as each female milking goat on average produces two babies a year. When the baby goats reach the age of 2 or 3 months (or as early as 40 days), the milk farmers, such as Isabelle Couturier of Chevrerie Fruit d'une passion, don't have the space to keep them, so all goats are sold for meat, save for a few females who are kept for milking. Though that may sound harsh, Couturier says goat farmers who do not slaughter or sell off the baby goats often kill them at birth. One would assume such young, milk-fed goats would be the most tender, but they also don't have much meat on them. "Goat is often braised," chef Stelio Perembelon told me, "but I was set on roasting it when I prepared it at Les Chevres, but it often turned out tough. So the breeder worked on improving it, trying out different breeds of goat, and experimenting with different feeds. We eventually came to the conclusion that a meatier, 5-month-old goat was what made the best roast goat."

"I love the older goat," says Vikram Vij, Vancouver chef and owner of the famed Indian restaurant Vij's. "The flavour is stronger, but the Indian spices overpower it, and the texture of the different cuts varies. When we make goat stew, we buy the whole animal, cut it up and mix all the cuts together, so you get some bites that are super tender, some that are chewy and some that are fattier."

At Vij's, they have determined that 9-month-old goats yield the ideal ratio of meat to tenderness, and it is purchased directly from an organic farm in B.C. that raises the animals for meat, primarily for the ethnic market. In Quebec, goats are raised for milk and not meat, so an older goat is hard to acquire.

"When the goats get older, the meat gets redder, stronger tasting and is drier," says Couturier. "We don't sell the older goats. They're used to make sausage and saucisson sec."

Luca Magistrale, owner of Boucherie Charcuterie Chez Vito, says he sells goat mostly to the Italian and Greek communities for Easter celebrations, when the goat is cut in four and roasted with potatoes. Yet he has no demand for older goat, saying, "I prefer them under a year in age. Older than that, it takes on a sort of lamb-like flavour."

Because goats are slaughtered infrequently, chefs must offer it as a special, since the fresh product is not readily available enough for it to be listed as a menu item. Another deterrent is the cost -about $10 a pound - whereas lamb runs at about $7 a pound. Says Magistrale: "It's expensive, second only to bison, which sells for $17 a pound. Still, it deserves to be more popular."

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