Get your goat and eat it

9:13am Tuesday 25th March 2008

PRINCE Harry may love it and apparently the Germans have it every Easter and now Dean Timpson is cooking it at the Compleat Angler.

What? I hear you ask - well, goat of course. Though this is not the curried kind you understand, it's slow roasted shoulder and leg of goat with lemon thyme and savoy cabbage.

The dish forms part of Dean's seven-course special Easter tasting menu which my family and I enjoyed recently at the renowned Marlow restaurant. Our first course, Cornish crab wrapped in red pepper, set the tone for the afternoon. It was fabulously light and the sweet saltiness of the crab was delicately offset by the pickled fennel and red pepper jelly garnish.

Course two featured some impossibly tender new season lamb served with wild garlic and pearl barley risotto. The meat was meltingly soft, juicy, very lean and cooked pink, which kept the flavour and freshness in.

What came next, a fillet of line-caught seabass with bok choi and truffle butter sauce, brilliantly offset what we had sampled so far. This was the high point of the menu for me. Seabass really doesn't need to be swamped by a sauce and this combination of lightly steamed greens and truffle butter was just perfect.

Then it was time for the goat. After the lamb and fish, I really didn't feel it necessary to go back for more pink meat, but my curiosity was aroused. The texture was rubbery almost and the flavour stronger and more gamey than the lamb. I preferred the leg to the shoulder, but couldn't manage to finish this rather rich course.

I should add here that it wasn't easy for me to come to terms with eating goat in the first place. Goats are among my favourite animals. I even toyed with the idea of having a goat farm when I was young.

My daughter and husband were a little uneasy too, but consoled themselves with desserts, including poached rhubarb with gingerbread croutons and rhubarb sorbet, and caramelised apple with puff pastry and vanilla parfait.

Not a sweet-tooth, I opted for the selection of British and continental cheeses, which lived up to Dean's reputation for locally sourced and fresh ingredients.

The accompanying truly international selection of wines chosen for us by the sommelier was surprising and very high quality. It ranged from an astonishingly good medium-bodied Piesporter Moselle with hints of lemon and grapefruit through to the Elysium Black Muscat Quady 2005, richly sweet yet with a very particular aroma of roses and Turkish delight.

There was also a Chateau Billot, Cuvée Flagie, Bergerac 2002, with intense flavours of grapefruit and honey which balanced the cheeses nicely. It was well worth the £110 total bill for a glass to go with each course.

The other sample tasting menu (both are £65) features foie gras, scallops, monkfish and lamb, an impressive range of dishes, and the sample market menu (£24.50) available for lunch Wednesday to Saturday of crayfish, chicken or goat's cheese followed by turbot, cod or roast pork belly, looks equally tempting.

It was dispiriting to see so few fellow diners on a Saturday lunchtime, but we guessed the somewhat blustery and unpredictable weather was largely to blame.

I will certainly be back to see what Dean has to offer as the seasons change. But Prince Harry, with all due respect, I'm afraid you can eat goat.

The Compleat Angler, Marlow. Details: 01628 405405

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