Do the halal butchers have any reason to be thankful to the New York Times? Indeed, they do. For apparently goat meat is the new fad, and of course our Muslim brothers have more goat than your average grocery in America. I remember reading Henry Alford’s funny article (“How I Learned to Love Goat Meat“) in the NYT a couple of months ago, but did not realize it’s actually affected the New York eating scene, as evident from this writer’s confession to his new “culinary obsession.” But for my desi friends, I’ve just got to quote the following from Alford:

When New York magazine proclaimed eating goat a “trendlet” last summer, one reader wrote on the magazine’s Web site, “Here are white people again!!!! Acting like they invented goat meat.”

LOL. To be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with goat meat. There’s no denying that Bengalis consider it a bit of a delicacy. Whenever I go home, my mom likes to plan out all my few days there just so she can make sure I get to eat all the things I “need to” (according to her), and that includes a fine khashi’r gosht dish at least once during the trip. But there’s an art to the whole thing, from the quality of meat you manage to buy to the way you cook, and so just like bad art, it may turn out to be rather unappealing if there’s a glitch at any stage of the process. You have to, for instance, bring the right balance to your eclectic mix of spices, achieve the right tenderness, and get rid of the notorious smell (Apparently, even “Chaucer said they ’stinken,’” like six centuries ago). Suffice it to say, I trust my mom to handle it much better than my relatively inexperienced cooking hands.