Chicken Shawarma with Fresh Pita, Goat Rigatoni Ragu, Korean BBQ Duck, Rainbow Curry, Papaya Salad & More!

We’ve got lots of meal ideas for cold winter days — hearty, with big bright flavors and colors. There’s a decadent baked goat rigatoni ragu, chicken shawarma with freshly made pita, lots of veggies and all the toppings, plus Instant Pot Korean barbecue duck legs for rice bowls, our new goat Italian sausage with polenta and marinara and a fun rainbow Thai curry with chicken meatballs and papaya salad.

Baked Goat Rigatoni Ragu with Roasted Squash Salad

There’s something about a baked pasta dish, right? And there’s a quick sauce and ricotta baked pasta situation and then there’s long simmered sauces, like this ragu, combined with silky noodles (from cream and egg yolks). It was a bit of a project, but it was worth it!

I used our ground goat meat and based the recipe on Ina Garten’s Baked Rigatoni with Lamb Ragu and it came out absolutely delicious. There are far more recipes out there for lamb dishes of all kinds than goat, but they’re so similar, so if I need a baseline recipe to work with, I will often search for what I have in mind but with lamb instead of goat.

In this case, I followed the recipe except without even realizing it at first, I planned on doubling the ground goat meat from 1 to 2 pounds. My parents were visiting and we all like plenty of protein to our carbs. So I suppose you could make it with one pound of ground meat as the recipe calls for, but the sauce and the ratio seemed to come out perfect this way.

It started with sautéing onions, carrots and fennel, then garlic and then browning the meat. Then there’s tomatoes, tomato paste and wine that you cook down into a rich sauce until the meat is very tender.

Meanwhile, you cook the pasta and toss it with cream and egg yolks. It sounds rich, but it helps make the whole thing velvety and plays up the ragu without ricotta. Then you top it all with cheese and bake.

We used leftover roasted Autumn Frost squash on a salad that also included pomegranate arils, feta, pistachios and crispy shallots. It was a fantastic combo and the pasta leftovers were great all week.

Fresh Pita from Bellegarde Pizza Dough

We do a lot of pizza parties in our house these days and for making 4-7 pizzas, it makes more sense to make a big batch of pizza dough from scratch rather than pulling that many Bellegarde frozen pizza dough balls from our inventory at the shop. We sell amazing stone-milled flour, too, after all!

So I have been finding Bellegarde’s pizza dough more convenient for when we just want to do two pizzas for Grant and me or for homemade pita!

The size works great for dividing each ball into four. I typically cut them, then do another stretch and fold on all the pieces to get them back into a circular shape, then let them proof a little while I do other things, then roll them out on a floured surface.

Then I just heat a cast iron pan on the stove top, brush on some oil with a high smoke point and cook each pita individually. I put a lid on the pan and that seems to steam the pita while it’s also browning and cooking on the bottom. They typically get a nice big air pocket in them, which is so satisfying to flip them like that!

Sheet Pan Chicken Shawarma with Roasted Kale & Turnips & Steamed Carrots

These pitas were for sheet pan chicken shawarma. Grant butchered several roosters that we hatched this summer from our breeding flock, so we have a good supply of homegrown chicken in our freezer at the moment.

I used chicken breasts for this recipe because thighs and legs from egg laying breeds that take so much longer to grow are much tougher and need to be slow or pressure cooked, but you could certainly use regular chicken thighs here!

I cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and tossed with a marinade/sauce of Greek yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, turmeric, black pepper, coriander, cumin, garlic powder, oregano and smoked paprika.

Then I chopped a bunch of River Queen’s Dino kale and Two Dog’s hakurei turnips to roast in the oven at the same time as the chicken.

I’ve learned in the last couple of years that I much prefer steamed or sautéed carrots to roasted carrots, so I made those separately and finished them with butter, fresh dill, castelvetrano olives and Meyer lemon vinegar.

It all came together with the fresh pita slathered with some Nur’s Kitchen hummus, topped with chicken. I also added some of my lacto-fermented rosemary honey mustard pickles, which were a dream here and had the veggies on the side. My family did different iterations of the various veggies and chicken in their pitas and I did enjoy stuffing some pieces of kale into the wrap as I ate!

The leftovers were nice as wraps, but I also did a version with leftover rice from another meal, toasted pita pieces, plus the chicken, steamed broccolini and some of my caraway coriander beet cabbage kraut.

Korean Barbecue Duck Legs with Rice, Broccolini, Salad & Kimchi

Grant also butchered some of our homestead ducks in November, so we’re working through some Muscovy duck meat, too. These birds lived a long life, so needless to say the legs especially need to be pressure cooked!

I seasoned a bunch of leg quarters with garlic and onion powder, plus minced ginger and gochujang and dolloped some Korean barbecue sauce on as well and splashed some rice vinegar in with the water beneath the trivet. I cooked them for at least an hour on high pressure (I can’t remember exactly now, it may have been longer!).

Then I let the meat cool enough to shred, removed the bones and put the meat back in the cooking liquid and sautéed until the sauce thickened up. We had it with rice, steamed broccolini, a quick salad, kimchi, spicy mayo and crunchy garlic chips sprinkled on top. It was really good!

Goat Italian Sausage Links with Marinara Sauce, Polenta & Beet Salad

The weekend after we got all of our beef and goat meat back from the butcher, we had to sample the new goat sausage right away!

For the Hot Italian Links, I made a quick marinara sauce with onions, carrots, fennel, garlic, tomatoes and tomato paste. I cooked it until all the veggies were soft and then used an immersion blender to puree some of it.

Meanwhile, I made some polenta with Jimmy Red Cornmeal. Grits, polenta, cornmeal and masa are all made from the same type of corn, it’s just fineness of the grind that varies. Grits are typically the coarsest, followed by polenta, then cornmeal and then masa or corn flour.

But you can certainly use finer cornmeal as polenta. It ends up with an even smoother texture than grits or polenta and that’s not something I mind!

I also steamed some beets and made a dressing with Greek yogurt, lemon and mint. It was all really nice together and the sausage was outstanding! I was hoping it would come out well, but this even surpassed my expectations. The texture is very fine and the seasonings are really nice with the goat meat.

Because there were just three sausages and we also tried the ground goat chorizo sausage, I ended up repurposing the leftovers for the week: I made a small batch of black eyed peas and red clay peas and we ate the polenta, chorizo and beans together and then I blended the remaining marinara sauce with cashews and nutritional yeast for a tomato soup that went wonderfully with a scallion mushroom grilled cheese!

Rainbow Thai Curry with Chicken Meatballs

Cold weather calls for soup and there is something so comforting about a one pot meal loaded with protein, veggies and broth.

I did a two pound batch of my go to chicken meatballs, adding a little red curry paste to the breadcrumbs, egg and garlic and onion powders. I cooked them in cast iron pans, starting them on the stove top and then transferring them to the oven. I really like this to be able to avoid turning them when they’re still soft and breaking them.

For the curry, it started with onions, garlic and ginger, then red curry paste, deglazed with fish sauce, coconut aminos and rice vinegar and then I added rainbow carrots and purple cauliflower, plus broth and coconut cream. Between the deep purple carrots and the lavender colored cauliflower, the curry turned kind of purplish grey when it cooled, but it was still delicious!

I added the cooked meatballs at the end and topped with cilantro, scallions and lime juice.

(Non Traditional) Papaya Salad

I got a papaya from VEGGI Farmer’s Coop and probably cut into it too soon! It was ripe, but not as sweet as it could be. So I decided to do a take on a papaya salad that is usually made with crunchier, less ripe green papaya.

I had some cherry tomatoes that I harvested in December before one of our freezes that have been ripening in the window for a month! This was the last of them.

The sauce started with those cherry tomatoes, minced garlic, peanut oil and then lots of fish sauce, a little brown sugar and some of my fermented carrot hot sauce made with River Queen’s Sugar Rush Peach hot peppers for added spice and funk. Then I sliced up the papaya and finished with roasted peanuts, Thai mint and cilantro and lime juice. It was really good with the curry!