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Salsa De Barbacoa (Barbecue Sauce)
Just get yourself a flock of limes and squeeze out about 1/2 glass of juice; use lemon, vinegar, white wine or sherry if you must, although the result won't be nearly so Mejicano without the limes. But first chop up very fine a discreet amount of garlic with 1 big onion and cook it tenderly in plenty of butter, anyway 1/4 pound. Then toss in your lime juice, with a couple of teaspoons of mustard and of salt, just ahead of whopping tablespoons full of good Texas chili powder, a can of thick tomato soup and 1/2 cup of water. Then, to get that extra foreign savor, here's the secret: crumble a bay leaf with some cumin seed in your palm and sprinkle it in when no rival barbecuer is looking. Let everything thicken by stirring the whole, simmer 5 minutes, and you've got the real McCoy, somewhat resembling molten lava, but more soothing all the way down. After that there's nothing else to do but spill it on open-fire-cooked flesh, fish or fowl, all the way from barbe to cue.
A mid-century barbecue mop built on lime juice, chili powder and canned tomato soup. It comes together in about fifteen minutes; the only real judgement calls are the vague measures.
- "Half a glass" of lime juiceRead it as 1/2 cup, roughly 4 fl oz, which is about four juicy limes. The acid is what carries the sauce, so measure rather than eyeball.
- ButterA quarter pound is one stick, 4 oz. Cook the onion and garlic gently in it until soft and translucent without browning — that is what "tenderly" is asking for.
- Chili powderThe amount is left open. Start with 2 tablespoons of a Texas-style blend (chile with cumin and oregano already in it) and taste before adding more; modern powders vary widely in heat and salt.
- SaltTwo teaspoons plus condensed soup plus a commercial chili blend is a lot of sodium. Add half, then correct at the end.
- Canned tomato soupA can meant the condensed kind, roughly 10 to 11 oz, undiluted apart from the half cup of water called for. Tomato sauce or passata with a pinch of sugar does a similar job with less sweetness.
- Bay and cuminCrumbled bay leaf does not soften in five minutes and leaves sharp fragments. Add the leaf whole and fish it out, and toast then grind the cumin seed instead of leaving it whole.
- Simmer timeFive minutes is enough to marry the spices but not to cook the raw edge off chili powder. Ten to fifteen minutes over low heat, stirring, gives a rounder sauce; it thickens as it sits.
- Yield and useAbout 2 to 2 1/2 cups, enough for four to six servings. Sugar and tomato in the sauce will scorch over live fire, so brush it on in the last few minutes of cooking or serve it alongside.
Barbacoa came into Spanish from Ta\ban\bo, describing a wooden frame or grating used to hold meat over a fire, and the English "barbecue" follows from it \bto to cue\b joke nods to the old folk etymology from French barbe \queue, beard to tail, which linguists have long rejected. The sauce itself is thoroughly American: canned condensed tomato soup and commercial "chili powder" blends of ground chile with cumin and oregano were widely available pantry goods by the 1930s and 40s, which put a Southwestern flavour within reach anywhere in the country. Here the shortcut sits alongside a gesture at authenticity \b the insistence on real lime juice and a whispered "secret" of bay and cumin.