Tacos de Barbacoa de Chivo de la Mixteca

This is from the Mixteca, the dry highland region of western Oaxaca where the land is rocky and the goats are lean and the women cook barbacoa in hornos de pozo dug into the earth behind their kitchens. Huajuapan de Leon is the capital of this tradition. Drive out of Oaxaca city heading northwest, past the mezcal country of the Valles Centrales, past Santiago Apoala, and you reach the Mixteca Baja, where the terrain turns arid and the maguey grows wild on the hillsides. That maguey is not decoration. Its pencas are the cooking vessel.

The goat is young, not cabrito (that is Monterrey's word), but chivo joven, under a year old, with meat that is lean but not tough if you know what you are doing. The adobo is built on chile guajillo and chile ancho, toasted and soaked and blended with garlic, cumin, cloves, black pepper, and a splash of vinegar. The avocado leaves go between the meat and the maguey pencas. They are not optional. Hojas de aguacate give the barbacoa a faint anise fragrance that you cannot get from anything else. Remove them and you have made a different dish.

I collected this recipe in Huajuapan from a senora named Dona Reina who had been making barbacoa de chivo for weddings, funerals, and fiestas patronales for over forty years. She told me the horno de pozo takes six hours to heat and five hours to cook and that anyone who tries to rush it deserves what they get. I have adapted it for a home oven because most people do not have a pit in their backyard, but I will tell you what you are missing: the smoke from the charcoal, the mineral taste of the earth, the way the maguey pencas char at the edges and perfume the meat with something no oven can replicate. This adaptation gets you close. Close enough to understand why the Mixteca takes this dish so seriously. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.