"Jack Sloan" > wrote in message
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> Yours is the first claim I have seen that barbacoa should be of steamed
> lamb. It does sound good.
> Jack
>
There are two places in Mexico where barbacoa rules on weekends. One, is
south Insurgentes on the free road from Mexico City to Cuernavaca and
Xochimilco. The other is on the north side Lake Texcoco in the township of
Texcoco. Families spend the week putting together all the stuff for sale on
Saturday and Sunday to people escaping the congestion and pollution of
Mexico City. This has been going on for over 100 years!

Barbacoa is lamb wrapped in maguey leaves and seasoned with salt and
aromatic leaves from something that tastes and smells between avocado leaves
and eucaliptus. A hole is dug and for two days the pit is heated by burning
wood; rocks are added to the side of the pit to retain the heat. Once it has
reached it's ultimate temperature, the bundles of wrapped lamb are placed in
the pit, covered for overnight cooking. Customers buy by the kilo along with
freshly made tortillas, salsa borracha (a sauce made from chiles that grow
on trees (chile de arbol), garlic, onion, tomato and the most important
ingredient: pulque. Pulque is a fermentation from the juices recovered from
the heart of a cactus (maguey, century plant) by first cutting out the
heart, then letting the juices settle, then coming around with a gourd with
one hole in the bottom and one on the top. The person recovering the juice
will put the gourd into the liquid then suck on the top hole then transfer
the juice to a pig skin container. This juice is put into barrels and
fermented for 72 hours and it becomes pulque. (From pulque you can distill
it into Mezcal or a Tequila-like concoction). So the salsa borracha is a lot
of chile and some cactus beer. Other sauces on the table will be guacamole,
green salsa, red salsa, cilantro, rice and beans and lots of tequila. The
barbacoa meat itself is pinched from the unwrapped cactus bundle by each
person and flaked onto an open fresh corn tortilla upon which the choice of
sauces is added. Then rolled into a taco, holding the aft end down to
prevent spilling while you lean forward to munch on the delicacy.

I'm getting really hungry!

Wayne
www.rcsailcars.com

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