The thing about goat is that you have to curry it. Well you could do it in other ways but curried goat is where it’s at. The best curried goat is when you go to a party in and they bring out the food late in the evening and there is a big steaming pot of curried goat alongside white rice,and callaloo. I also love it with roti but that’s let’s likely to happen. I love the combination of the spicy meat with the bland white rice and even though it maybe 87F at 10 PM you still want it steaming hot. This idea that you should have cool or room temperature food when the weather is warm is unheard of in Jamaica. I also have a particular fondness for our soups which are always served hot. I love out pumpkin or pepperpot or even a good old Saturday beef soup full of big chunks of yam and green banana and spinners -long dumplings about the size of a small thumb. And then there’s goat soup other wise known as Mannish Water made from the head, intestines and testicles of the goat and believed to be an aphrodisiac.

A male goat is therefore what you need·to make a proper Mannish water. It is from common to have it around Christmas and Easter but is also served often as an appetizer when the group is big – a cup is the perfect size for this. Many people will put white rum(also know as John Crow batty). I guess because it stings on the way out of your body. With Mannish water the important thing is to clean the meat thoroughly with diluted vinegar and water. To be safe you can even throw off the first water by that I mean you could add the meat to the boiling salted water and let it cool for 10 minutes, throw off that water and add a couple gallons of fresh water to the pot – by now your meat should be clean. When you add the green bananas to the pot it is best if you cut off the tips but leave the skin on. As a kid we would drink the green banana water also known as pot water.

I wonder, if we got iron and all those purported nutrients from the big iron put or from the skin. The pot water was a donkey grey color and sometimes they would put dried codfish in the pot as well as some yellow yam and scotch bonnet pepper – that’s a whole other soup or a very elevated pot water. I use to love this but then again I am a country gal :.·I believed Mavis when she told me that this would make me strong and even now if I’m in Jamaica and I see the cook about to throw out the green banana water I make her stop and I immediately reheat it and pour myself a cup. I will then sip it as though I were having a cup of the finest tea to ever pass through the turquoise waters of the West Indies.

Of course the goats are all over the countryside. Sweet little kids and big fat pregnant mamma goats stopping traffic by taking their time to cross the street and always at the busiest intersection. I often wonder how the country people keep track of their own goats. They seem to roam so freely and no one seems to mind them. I don’t even want to think about what happens with the road kill but I do have one more thing to say about the cooking of curried goat and that is that it tastes great with Irish potato cooked in the gravy. Locals just calt it Irish. Like the rice it balances the heat of the curried goat.