Gravy

In “A Texas Cabrito Communion,” Gravy producer Evan Stern invites us to ride along as he joins the Avila and Aguirre families for a celebratory reunion and cabrito cookout at their YY Ranch, which sits below the Nueces River in Texas. The river once served as the boundary between Texas and the Mexican states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas, and some advocate for viewing this region and Northern Mexico as a singular landscape, united by shared terroir and culture. As a beloved delicacy enjoyed on both sides of the Rio Grande, cabrito—a roasted baby goat nourished strictly on a diet of mother’s milk—brings this philosophy to life. As Mundo and Luz Aguirre, a couple who have driven in from Monterrey, prepare the feast, Stern explores how this dish that’s now a staple of Easter celebrations was brought to the New World by Spanish Sephardic Jewish shepherds. Faced with the Inquisition’s policies of forced Catholic conversion, they turned to goat as a staple to maintain kosher practice in secret. Eventually, in the six