Barbacoa de Chivo en Hojas de Maguey

This is from Oaxaca. From the Valles Centrales, specifically from Tlacolula de Matamoros, where the Sunday tianguis is the oldest continuously running market in the Americas and the barbacoa de chivo stalls open before sunrise.

The defining ingredient is not the goat. It is the maguey. The fresh agave leaf, passed over a flame until pliable, then wrapped around the meat, perfumes the barbacoa with a green, mineral, faintly sweet flavor that nothing else can give. Banana leaf is for tamales oaxaquenos and cochinita pibil. Maguey is for barbacoa. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and within Oaxaca, cada region tiene su propia barbacoa. The version from the Mixteca uses chile costeno. The version from the Sierra Norte sometimes uses lamb. This is the Tlacolula version: goat, chilhuacle, guajillo, pasilla oaxaqueno, and the broth below catching the fat all day long.

The broth is not an afterthought. In Oaxaca, the consome is half the meal. Garbanzos, rice, epazote, and the rendered juices of the goat. You serve the broth first, in clay cups, with diced onion and cilantro and lime. Then the meat, on the maguey, with hand-pressed tortillas and salsa borracha. That is the order. That is the ritual.

My notebook from the 2007 trip to Tlacolula has a page where the senora at the puesto, Dona Lucina, drew me a diagram of how she banks the pit, where the stones go, where the clay olla of broth sits, where the maguey-wrapped meat rests above. She would not let me photograph it. She made me draw it myself so I would remember. Recetas probadas y garantizadas, but only if you respect the architecture of the dish.