After making three reservations for our vacation in Montreal in a few weeks, I’ve decided that it would be best to reduce superfluous spending on food, and start cooking through my fridge and freezer. I think I’ll permit myself fresh vegetables if I need them, but I have weeks (if not months) of food in my pantry, so I’m just going to have to be a little creative.

Tonight I defrosted some bone-in goat stew meat from the butcher, about a pound of it. Unsure what to do, I picked up my favorite Bruce and Mark tome – Goat: Meat, Milk, Cheese for inspiration. Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough have written several dozen cookbooks in the past few decades, and were two of my favorite authors to grace Omnivore during my tenure. Goat the cookbook is full of punchy, robust recipes, and ridiculously aromatic Vietnamese inspired shanks caught my eye as a launching point for my dinner tonight.

The recipe calls for an overnight spice rub, and some large pieces of meat, but I thought that I could adapt it fairly well for my needs tonight, and cut some corners without sacrificing too much flavor. I seasoned my goat stew meat with a large spoonful of chile powder, a teaspoon of brown sugar, and a teaspoon of five spice. I then browned my meat in my All Clad with some leftover drippings from the sausage last night. Yep, I’m a girl who doesn’t like to waste. While the goat browned, I chopped up a few cloves of garlic, a knob of ginger, and a large shallot. I pushed the goat to one side of the pan, and added in the chopped aromatics, and let them cook for a minute or two. I then added a spoonful of Red Boat fish sauce, a spoonful of soy sauce, a spoonful of cider vinegar and a spoonful of honey.  I topped everything off with about two cups of beef stock, brought it all to a boil, turned it down to a simmer, and let it cook for an hour. I added a small handful of orzo and let it all cook for another 25 minutes until the pasta was mostly cooked through, and had absorbed much of the liquid. I determined that it was a little too salty near the end, so I added just a tad more beef stock and let it cook for a few minutes more. The resulting sauce was sweet, salty, and a little sticky – with just enough punch of chile and ginger to make the back of your throat tingle.