We recommend a traditional recipe from Aperanthos, the rifi (small goat) . It is a Naxian recipe, which you encounter with small variations in many villages of the island. It has as basic materials, besides the goat, rice filling and a variety of weeds.
Ingredients:
- 1 rifi (small goat) 8-9 kg. (To fit in our kitechen).
- 400gr. of glutinous rice.
- ½ kg of local raisins
- 2 kg of weeds
- 1 handful of the plant that plucks the poppy (koutsounades).
- Plenty of fennel
- A bunch of dill
- 2-3 frsh (green) onions
- 1 kg of onions.
- Olive oil, water
- Pepper, salt, oregano
Directions:
Clean, wash and mince the weeds, the fennel and the plant tha plucks the poppy (koutsounades).
Salt the weeds, and squeeze them for the fluids to leave.
Finely mince the fresh onions and the dryly onions, dill and fennel, which is poured into the saucepan for lightly soaking with 2 medium glasses of water until they wither.
Then add the remaining weeds to the saucepan and stir them all until they are softened.
Add the rice and raisins with the appropriate salt pepper, leaving them for a while (about 5 minutes) continuing the stirring. We check that we need to add some water.
Pour the small goat in and out with olive oil and add salt-pepper with a little oregano.
Empty the stuffing inside the small goat.
We push them to fit all the filling ingredients.
We grab the opening with a large needle and we sew the point for the ingredients to not get out of the small goat.
Pour the pan with some oil and place the goat.
If it is out of the filling pan, drain it to an edge in the pan, which is placed in the oven after it has been preheated to 250C.
After getting color we lower it to 180C. We always control meat fluids.
Turn it upside down – when it looks like it is cooked on one side – until it gets better on the other side.
Total baking – on average – lasts 4 hours.
We thank Manolis Chatzipetros from Aperanthos for the recipe.