Love my Goat

Okay so that's actually the name of a wine I used to love in college but now find more or less undrinkable, but anyway. A few months ago I bought myself the 'Jerusalem' cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, and it is wonderful. It's an absolutely gorgeous book - gives Alford & Duguid a run for their money in the Beautiful Local Photography category (and if you don't know Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's cookbooks put down your computer now and run to the nearest bookstore - sorry, who am I kidding, Amazon - and buy ALL OF THEM.). Despite drooling over pretty much the whole thing, I've only made a few recipes so far. I promise I'll post about the falafel and babaganoush project soon (early word: I think I screwed up the falafel since they were a little dry, but despite the slight moisture problems everything was insanely delicious), but I'm here today to tell you about the rather long-windedly named Conchiglie with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile.

Well, that and goats. And sheep, which frankly I prefer. You probably already know that I've got issues with milk, which tends to make my body hate me in various ways, despite the fact that cheese ranks just after cured pork products in my list of Best Things Ever In The World. Cured pork products being #1. This nudibranch might be #3, and avocados are probably #4. But I digress.

I recently had lunch with a friend of mine (at a pizza place, appropriately enough, but which was so worth it), who used to have a milk allergy, and he pointed out that if you're allergic to cow's milk sheep and goat's milk products should be just fine, since, being from a different animal, they contain different proteins. This a) makes perfect sense, and b) kind of blew my mind, because OMG I CAN EAT THAT CHEESE AND NOT HATE MYSELF LATER. (Disclaimer: I may or may not have an actual milk allergy. If I do it's certainly not the dangerous kind, otherwise I wouldn't have been at a pizza place. It may just be a sensitivity, maybe combined with some lactose intolerance; all I know is I'm physically a much happier person when I don't eat dairy in ways I won't get into here. Some people do have life-threateningly severe milk allergies and my heart goes out to them and please take them seriously in restaurants 'cause it's a real thing. But I'm not one of them, so sometimes I decide that creme brulee is worth the consequences and eat it anyway. Also Blogger wants to auto-correct brulee to Breugel, which is an interesting mental picture but no.)

Goat yogurt + basil + peas = sauce

For the lactose-intolerant crowd, more good news on goat. According to to an internet food blog I like called My New Roots, goat milk also has less lactose than cow's milk, is more easily digestible, and otherwise way healthier that cow's milk. (Full story here: http://mynewroots.org/site/2008/05/goat-is-the-new-cow-2/). (Disclaimer: Getting nutritional science from a blog is always a sketchy proposition, so please go look up the actual science somewhere other than Wikipedia before you believe me. But make her amazing Raw Brownies first.) Same goes for sheep, though maybe to a lesser extent. Still, most goat cheese tastes to me kind of like licking a goat (not that I'd know first hand), while sheep's cheese is just plain delicious. To each his own.

Sizzling garlic & chile

So back to the conchiglie: I was at the local Co-op, which is kind of hippy-ish, and saw they had both goat yogurt, which I figured would make a good breakfast, and sheep-and-goat feta, which I love feta. (The non-cow dairy downside: probably twice as expensive as the bovine equivalent.) I quickly discovered I was wrong about goat yogurt being good for breakfast, at least this brand: it was way too strongly goaty for the granola I put on top. So I opened 'Jerusalem', since the Middle East has a strong record of using yogurt in cooking, and found this. Long story short, it was delicious and easy, and it didn't make my body hate me, and you should make it. The End.

Sadly, the tomatoes were a later discovery.

Shells with Yogurt & Peas 
Adapted from 'Jerusalem' by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

One tip: This makes a lot of pasta, and while it's still pretty delicious reheated - I was happily eating leftovers for a week - the pasta tends to get a little soft and the sauce loses its texture, so I recommend serving it somewhere it's got a decent chance of getting finished. You'll notice there are actual measurements here; that's 'cause it originally came from a real cookbook. Feel free to just eyeball them, like I did.

1 1/4 cups thick (Greek) yogurt from the ungulate of your choice
1/3 cup olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1 cup peas (thawed if frozen)
1/2 lb pasta (shells, or not.)
1 tsp hot pepper or chile flakes
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 cup chopped basil
1 cup chopped mint (way less if dried)
4 oz crumbled feta
salt & pepper
1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced into halves

1) In a mini-food processor, mix the yogurt, 4 tbsp oil, 1/2 cup peas, and basil. Go until you get a nice minty-green sauce without too many chunks. If it's too thick, add more oil.

2) Start the pasta. Let it boil til al dente. Drain.

3) Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil in a pan. Add the chile, paprika, and garlic. Saute til the garlic is fragrant but don't let it brown more than a little.

4) Put the yogurt sauce in a large-ish serving bowl. Stir in the pasta a little at a time (supposedly if you do it all at once the sauce will separate; I didn't check). Add the peas, feta, mint, tomatoes, garlic in oil, and S&P to taste (the recipe says 1/2 tsp of each; I found it undersalted but that will depend on your yogurt, feta, and tastebuds). Stir it all together. Garnish with a sprig of mint and more chile to taste.