Canarian · Main · From the menu Travesía
Kid goat, palm honey, star anise, heritage potato
Baifo, miel de palma, anís estrellado, papa antigua
Shoulder of baifo browned hard, braised for four hours, and finished with palm honey from La Gomera off the heat. Served over crushed heritage potato. The most island-specific thing I cook.
Two things I want to be honest about. First, the star anise is mine and not traditional: I went looking for it in the Canarian repertoire and it is not there. Baifo is seasoned with pimentón, thyme, garlic, oregano and cumin, and the only warm spice anyone uses is clove. I keep the anise because it works with goat, not because the island does it. Second, the palm honey goes in at the end and never into the braise. It is around 75 per cent sugar, and four hours at 150 degrees will take it past caramel and into bitterness. Both of the published recipes that use it properly add it late.
Ingredients
- 2 kg kid goat shoulder, bone in, cut into large pieces
- 400 ml dry white wine, half for the marinade and half for the braise
- 80 ml olive oil
- 10 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 sprigs thyme and 2 bay leaves
- 2 large onions and 4 carrots, roughly chopped
- 250 g crushed tomatoes
- 1 tbsp sweet pimentón and 1 tbsp dried oregano
- 2 tsp ground cumin and 4 cloves
- 2 star anise
- About 600 ml light meat or chicken stock, to bring the liquid to roughly 870 ml in total
- 3 tbsp miel de palma, plus a little to finish
- 800 g papas antiguas, butter, salt
Method
- The night before, marinate the goat in 200 ml of the white wine with the olive oil, the crushed garlic, the thyme and the bay. Five of the nine recipes I checked marinate overnight and every Canarian one uses white wine, never red.
- Lift the meat out, dry it and season it. Brown it hard in a heavy casserole in batches, about ten minutes a batch. Do not crowd the pan; this is where the colour of the finished sauce comes from.
- In the same fat, cook the onion and carrot down, then add the pimentón, oregano, cumin, cloves and the star anise, and finally the tomato.
- Deglaze with the remaining 200 ml of wine and let it reduce.
- Return the meat, add stock until the liquid comes roughly halfway up the meat, about 870 ml of liquid in total. Bring to a bare simmer, cover, and cook at 150 to 160 °C.
- Give it four hours and then start testing. Every published time I found is for a lighter shoulder than this one, so four hours is a floor rather than a target. It is ready when the bones lift out clean and the meat still holds its shape.
- Pull the star anise out at the halfway mark. Nothing in the record tells you how kid fat carries anise over four hours, and I would rather under-do it.
- Lift the meat out. Strain the liquid, skim the fat, and reduce it hard until it coats a spoon.
- Off the heat, whisk in the palm honey. Taste: it wants to be just on the edge of too sweet and then pulled back with salt.
- Boil the potatoes, drain and crush them coarsely with butter and salt. Warm the meat through in the sauce and serve it over the potato, with a last thread of palm honey and some of the sauce, not a pool of it.
Serve it with. A robust island red, something with listán negro in it, and papas arrugadas if you would rather not crush them.