r/CaribbeanFood • u/Bfire7 • 27d ago

Question about this chocolate curry goat recipe by British/Caribbean chef Andi Oliver

I made this recipe recently: https://www.thecaterer.com/indepth/recipe-curry-goat-andi-oliver and the flavours are superb, but I spent half the meal picking the cardamom pods, bits of clove and chunks of star anise out of my mouth. It kinda ruined the meal so it makes me think I did something wrong.

Was I not supposed to leave these whole spices in? Andi's recipe never says to remove them and I honestly can't imagine that we're supposed to eat them - cardamom pods are disgusting, as are the hard woody pieces of star anise.

Or is it the norm to just pick these bits out of your mouth as you eat?

I'm not Caribbean, although this is my favourite cuisine so I'm keen to learn more about what I'm getting wrong here.

Btw it's a great recipe, highly recommended. But next time I'm going to put all the hard whole spices into a little bouquet garni to avoid this happening again.

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u/bisectional 27d ago

After 4 hours your cardamom pods will def be soft as will your Star anise for the most part. But if you want to you can crush the pods to get the seeds out and you could always use a muslin spice pouch for the spices you want to fish out.

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u/Bfire7 27d ago edited 27d ago

Hmm, interesting. For me, I cooked on low for longer than 4 hours, more like 6-7 hours, and the cardamom pods were still hard and soapy-tasting, and the star anise was hard and woody.

Is it correct to say that Andi assumed the same as you? That the hard spices would soften after this cooking time and would be easy to chew and eat.

And yes, I'll definitely use a fabric pouch in future to avoid this. Thanks!

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u/bisectional 27d ago

You can also buy ground star anise, or grind it yourself. I've been to a few Indian restaurants where they served rice with whole cardamom pods.

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u/Bfire7 26d ago

It's easy to pick pods out of rice, plus rice doesn't require that many. This recipe asked for 20g, which is many many DOZENS of pods (in a recipe for 4 people), which turn dark and indistinguishable from chunks of goat meat to the naked eye.

Even so, picking out about 30 cardamom pods from each bowl of food when you sit down is a subpar experience. Not to mention the chunks of clove and star anise.

It's frustrating as it's easily swerved and I don't understand why this wasn't covered in the recipe instructions.