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Mon, 13 Sep 2004

Puerco Pibil

From time to time I run into a recipe with an interesting story behind it. This one comes from a movie, the enjoyable Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the final installment of Robert Rodriguez's Mariachi trilogy. In the movie, Johnny Depp's character eats a pork shoulder dish that is so good thathttp://www.berchonfood.com. well, that would be telling. In any case, it figures in the plot in an offhand way. On the DVD edition, Rodriguez invites the viewer into his home -- which is also his digital video and sound studio -- and recreates the dish on camera: puerco pibil, Yucatan-style pork shoulder.

Several web pages purport to have transcribed the recipe from the DVD, and each has made a few adaptations. This version is from a recipe site called TwigLeaf, and I am inserting the text here verbatim so you can review it for the discussion below.

5 lbs pork butt
5 Tbsp annatto seed
2 tsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp ground pepper
8 allspice seeds
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup white vinegar
5 lemons
2 habanero peppers
2 Tbsp salt
8 garlic cloves, minced
Splash of Tequila
Banana leaves for wrapping (or foil)

A very nice slow roasted pork (adapted from Robert Rodriguez's recipe from the Once Upon a Time in Mexico DVD)http://www.berchonfood.comhttp://www.berchonfood.com.

In a clean coffee grinder (yes, a coffee grinder), grind the annatto seed, cumin seed, pepper, allspice, and cloves into a fine powder. Chop up the habanero peppers, removing the veins and seeds. If you want to kill your diners, leave a few seeds in. But these peppers are mucho caliente as they are. (Have your boys put a chopped piece on the tip of their tongues for proof.)

Mix the orange juice, vinegar, the ground powder and the peppers with the salt and the garlic in a medium bowl. Add that splash of tequila into the mix now. Stir it all up until it's somewhat smooth. Trim the pork butt and cut into roughly 2 inch cubes.

Place the cubes in a large ziplock bag and pour the mixture over the the meat. Seal and shake around to ensure the meat is thoroughly covered in the sauce.

Now, if you wanna be cool, you can line a large pan with banana leaves and then pour the meat/sauce concoction on top of that, pulling the banana leaves back across the top and holding it down with foil to make sure none of the flavor nor steam escapes. However, in the event that you live in a place where banana leaves are hard to findhttp://www.berchonfood.comhttp://www.berchonfood.com line the pan with aluminum foil, dump the meat/sauce, cover the whole deal with foil.

Turn your oven on 325 degrees and let this pork roast for 4 hours. (A little longer doesn't hurt.) You can serve this over white or mexican rice. I think white rice is the way to go since it creates such a great visual picture and that the flavor of the meat is offset so well by the rice.

Well. There you have it. There are a couple of issues with the recipe, the first being that 5 lemons are required, but never used; I took that to mean that the juice of the lemons was to be added to the vinegar and orange juice to be mixed with the spices. There's also no direction as to how long to let this marinate, but overnight seems right to me.

I presently lack a spice grinder (and did not want to spice up my coffee grinder, as it were), so I sought out ground spices. These are never as good as grinding your own, but I did find a supply of very fresh ground spices at the Mexican market I went to -- the name escapes me, but it is on Fruitvale Avenue in Oakland, about a block east of Everett & Jones BBQ. I also bought two kinds of peppers there: the specifed habaneros (dried) and some tinned chipotles.

Which brings us to the next item, spiciness. I cut up a habanero, removed the seeds and membranes, and tasted a tiny bit. Whoooah!!! Even a 2mm-square piece of seedless/membraneless habanero was enough to knock me for a loop. So, I opened the chipotles, and cut off a bit of same. Double whooooah! The combination of the two burned my mouth for a full 20 minutes, during which I attempted, tearfully, to continue the recipe, but had to resort to attempts at putting out the fire with water, bread, milk, and even beer. Nothing helped. I sucked on some ice, which seemed to do the best job. But it just kept on, and on, and on! Wow. That's quite a pepper.

So I radically downsized the chile pepper content of the dish. I de-seeded and de-membraned a single chipotle, diced it, and threw it in. As it turned out, I could have gotten away with a few more -- the slow cooking defused (and diffused) the pepper. There was a tanginess, but no real kick. Here's the raw concoction:

I used a glass baking pan, did not use banana leaf, and tightly sealed the top with foil. This worked very well, and the best evidence was that during the 4.5-hour coooking process, the house did not fill with delicious aromas from the oven. The foil kept the mojo in!

I opened the foil seal and was greeted with lovely steam and all that concentrated aroma:

The pork maintained its structural cube integrity for a photo, but immediately collapsed -- nay, melted! -- upon attack with a fork. So I spooned it into a shallow bowl, pulled it apart like pork shoulder barbecue, mixed it with the sauce, and dug in. I wanted to keep this a low-carb meal, so I skipped the rice, and served it with a simple green salad and a purposely bland side dish of cauliflower.

The interplay of flavors was intense and satisfying. The sauce was more liquid than I had expected (I was thinking it would end up more like a mole), and the predominant taste, as Maggie noted after her own production of the dish last week, was citrus, which is unusual and surprisingly good. The only table condiment I added was a little salt, which brought out the flavors. I had two helpings, and finished the rest for lunch today, accompanied by low-carb tortilla chips.

When I make this again, I'll definitely go ahead with more chile peppers, and amp up the garlic and maybe cut down a little on the total liquid. In any case, hats off to Robert Rodriguez!

Posted at 16:09 | permanent link

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