Cabrito al Pastor Norteño

Cabrito belongs to Nuevo Leon. Specifically to Monterrey, where the cabriterias along Avenida Madero have been splaying milk-fed kid goats on iron crosses beside mesquite fires since before there were paved roads in the state. This is the dish of the north. Not tacos, not fajitas, not the Tex-Mex inventions that crossed the border and came back unrecognizable. Cabrito al pastor is the meal that anchors a norteño Sunday.

The animal is a cabrito lechal, a kid goat between 28 and 40 days old that has eaten nothing but its mother's milk. Older than that and the meat turns gamy and you have chivo, a different animal and a different dish. The cabrito is split open butterfly-style, mounted on a flat iron cross called an asador, and staked vertically beside, not over, a long bed of mesquite coals. It cooks for four hours by radiant heat, the way they do it in the chaparral country where the goats graze and the mesquite grows on the same land. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Nuevo Leon.

Flour tortillas are the bread of the north. Sobaqueras, the enormous thin ones stretched across the cook's forearm, are what cabrito demands. Wheat grows in the north because corn does not. Anybody who tries to wrap cabrito in a corn tortilla has not understood the geography of the dish. The accompaniments are also northern: frijoles charros with bacon and chile, guacamole made without cilantro the way norteños prefer it, salsa borracha built on chile pasilla and beer, cebollitas cambray charred whole on the same fire. The whole table is one regional argument against the idea that Mexican food is one thing. La manteca es el sabor, the mesquite is the soul, and the rest is patience.

My mother's notebook had only one note about cabrito: 'Solo en Monterrey, solo con mesquite, solo el mero domingo.' Only in Monterrey, only with mesquite, only on Sunday. She had eaten it once, at a cousin's wedding in San Pedro Garza Garcia, and she never made it at home in the city because she said it was not honest to try. I learned this recipe from Doña Ofelia, who has been splaying cabritos at her family cabriteria in Allende, Nuevo Leon, for fifty-three years. She watched me write it down and said: 'Si no tienes mesquite, no lo hagas.' If you do not have mesquite, do not make it. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.