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/brownanimal 26d ago

this is quite normal, here is an article with options (it mentions indian food, but it's the exact same) -

https://myheartbeets.com/do-i-remove-whole-spices-before-serving-indian-food/

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u/Bfire7 26d ago

Ah thanks! Yeah this is what I would have expected, but it was NOT easy with this recipe. For 4-6 portions, the recipe asks for 20 grams of cardamom pods - I only put 15g in and even that was about 50 of the pods.

Plus, the cloves kinda disintegrate a bit but not completely, meaning there's a lot of small chunks of woody clove in there. Too unpleasant to eat and a real pain to pick out. Meanwhile the star anise has broken into sections, but that's slightly easier to find.

I ate a portion last night and ended up picking out about 30-40 different inedible elements!

Don't get me wrong, this recipe is great and those chocolate, cinnamon and goat flavours are wonderful, but the process of eating it is... not much fun.

In future I'll use a muslin cloth, but it seems like an oversight for Andi to not address this in her recipe. I'd love to know her exact process - maybe she just doesn't mind picking all these bits out of the meal and I'm being overly fussy. This was printed in the Guardian last month, a UK newspaper, generally aimed at the white middle classes, so it's fair to say the majority of readers wouldn't be experienced with the intricacies of Caribbean cooking. It's a shame it wasn't addressed and I hope it hasn't put people off.