This is a personal blog about food from the east Mediterranean countries of Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Turkey and with a very strong focus on goat meat.

I am a spirited cook with an insatiable appetite for east Mediterranean food and goat meat. I’ll be sharing recipes as well as my favourite London food discoveries.

East Mediterranean countries understand conflict and flavour very well.  My family are refugees and I grew up understanding devastation, anguish and differences.  And food.  A lot of food.

My grandmother was a prolific cook and the first to show me everything from how to use sour dough starter, making stock to the joys of eating rice pudding with cinnamon and rosewater on a hot summer’s afternoon.  Her name, Elpiniki, which translates to Hope Wins is where I draw my inspiration from.

While I am all too familiar with the battle of the origins game when it comes to food, this blog is about seeking similarities in regional variations and shining a light on the tasty secret recipes that every family has. I’ll also be sharing my London food discoveries.

Goat Glorious Goat

I truly love goat.  My first memorable encounter with goat was at the age of 4 and her name was Saggle. Saggle belonged to an English family who lived in the village and my best friend and I use to love playing with her. One day Saggle wasn’t in the field and we were told that she ate too much and exploded. I don’t know if this is true or if she ended up as Sunday roast.  A lot further down the line my worth as a single woman eligible for marriage was equated to goats (I think I was worth 70 at the time).    When I moved to the UK to study, I soon realised that eating goat wasn’t going to be easy, in fact, at times I felt embarrassed to admit how much I loved eating it.  My search to find goat and share it in a way that I liked to eat it made me realise that we should in fact be eating more goat, not just as a good nutritional alternative to other red meats but because it’s important in order to support the goat dairy industry. If you enjoy any goat dairy products and you eat meat, then you should be eating goat meat. ‘ Defra estimates that 30,000 billies (young male goats) are born every year but most of them are slaughtered and their carcasses burnt shortly after birth.’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/0/21884916)

By Nadia Stokes