I was a bit tired when I wrote the post about our latest meal of goat, so my apologies for reading as if I was going through the motions of being satisfied with our experience.

The availability of goat meat, both as a raw product and as an item on restaurant menus, is due mainly to the huge number of persons who migrated to Australia in the second half of C20 from Greece and the south of Italy (for a few decades, Melbourne had the second largest Greek population in the world, behind only Athens!). These days, most butchers with a strong customer base in the Greek or Italian communities of Melbourne will stock goat meat during its season.

We source our goat from Cester’s at Prahran Market; the quality is excellent and, besides, we are frequent visitors to this market, including two other favourite suppliers. Based on the two recipes we have used this season, and another we tried in 2012, we have come to very much appreciate goat as an ingredient and we will certainly use it more often next year.

We are often asked what goat meat is like. Well, it can be cooked in much the same way as lamb; that said, we are yet to try our hands at cooking a goat leg. The texture is also similar to lamb, perhaps a little less stringy but, really, that is nit-picking. Then there is the flavour: less savoury than lamb, some would say sweeter; still meaty; palate-pleasing.

And what about a wine match? In a red, I would go no bolder than a cheap and cheerful cab merlot, ditto with sangiovese. We prefer a savoury white wine. Soave is excellent, or a dry but generous pinot gris. I do have at least one follower in Italy – perhaps she will have a suggestion. That’s you Magdalena!

Next, something quite different – the story of the meal of spinach, ricotta and chestnut gnocchi we made on Sunday. Yum!