Violino di Capri

No relation.

The freezer is full. Need some other way of preserving the meat. Violino di Capri is our answer.

It's a cured goat leg - called a violin because you're supposed to hold it like a violin while you cut it. Hopefully not like a concert violinist, more like a folk violinist, if you are tempted to hold it like a classical player I whole-heartedly recommend cutting away from you.

The recipe came from here - and for once I followed the recipe. Except that we dont have sodiium nitrite, so I substituted more salt. And I couldn't be bothered to grind 10 grms of black pepper but we had some pre-ground white pepper instead. And we didn't have any powdered garlic so I just used 4 cloves of fresh garlic instead. And we dont have scales sensitive enough for anything less than 10 grams. So I guessed. 10 Juniper berries will be roughly 3 grams innit? (the recipe links used a rather small goat leg - ours was nigh on 3.5 kg)

And then of course will come the hanging in a chiller cabinet. We don't have one but we'll worry about that in the weeks to come.

The lack of sodium nitrite is a bit of a worry. It's a good idea to use it because it inhibits many nasty things like botulism. It also helps the meat keep a pink colour which is generally considered more attractive. My substitute for Sodium Nitrite was extra salt and a darn good anti-bacterial clean down of everything used in the prep. Here's hoping. Death by botulism is pretty unpleasant.

The lack of piccies is due to Jussi having the camera to photograph more goat kids.

I wanted to take piccies

Frozen goat meat for sale

Collection only.

One hotel has taken one of the kids we've had to slaughter this year. That leaves three for us to eat or sell. Given market conditions, we've drastically reduced the price - I mean there is no way we are making any money or even covering our costs at £5 per kilo, but it's market forces innit guv.

We've just eaten some for tea - and jolly goatdamn scrumptious it was too.

Proper Crofters

There are various tiers of crofting achievement. One of the most difficult to achieve is getting recognised by the Crofters Commission of having rights to the land you are farming - and then getting the rights to the common grazings which go along with the croft. We've succeeded in these things (although there is still some uncertainty over one of the three common grazings we are entitled to).

But up there with the impossible things is getting EU subsidies to help your enterprise. We've dutifully completed the necessary forms every year. Every year we get a letter saying we are not getting anything. Every year Jussi has phoned to ask why not and generally deposited as many fleas into the ears of the proverbial faceless pen pushers as possible.

This year we are to get a subsidy. £500 by way of thanks for trying to squeeze some life from the rocks and bogs that is our croft land. Not too shabby!

Goat curry recipes, Star Wars, improbability and fresh air

When I blogged a lot I noticed that if you put 'recipe' in the title of a post you got a lot more hits. So just to save the fury of recipe hunters I should admit now that there are no recipes in this post - but there is important news about a key ingredient.

Kidding has started. Rather late but it has begun. And we've had our first kids born in a field - which is slightly exciting. Although it was a funny sight to see twenty goats surrounding something in the grass - peering quizzically.

Goats give birth to slightly more females than males, unlike humans who give birth to slightly more males than females (because boys are weaker and less obstinate). We've had seven kids so far - and 7 males. Apart from being a lot of curry the chances of this are less than 0.78 % or 1 in 128. Who wants to bet on the sex of the next kid?

This years letter is T. You'll remember that we name goats according to their parentage (Anglo-Nubian have names related to Africa, British Alpine to myths and legends, and British Saanen to flora). The names aren't settled yet but the front runners thus far are: Taureg, Turtur, Tariq, Tablet, Troy, Titan, Triton, Thor, Tintin and Troll. Personally I can see a Star Wars character but that would be the wrong letter.

Timetables

I'll try that one again

Timetables

Ah-ha! The first cuckoo was heard this morning - and the swallows are back nesting in the goat house and boy oh boy what a spring.

And I've been working like working work work. Preparing a tender for our local community transport group - and gee whiz is it complicated. I've done tenders before, and I've experienced far more complicated tender processes, but the complication here is trying to vary timetables to suit what we perceive as local need, which adjusts driver hours and mileage (which has to be split into live miles and dead miles). It probably sounds straight forward enough - but there are a myriad of variations and the tendency is for me to be tied in knots most of the time. And to be honest the way Highland Council have written the timetables hasn't helped. Here is a typical example.

Meanwhile I return to blog cos I'm sick of staring at timetables. And here is the view from my home-office window. But I'm trying to keep the fact that I work for the Home Office a secret.