Cochinita pibil tacos

We ferociously celebrated Taco Tuesday this week and I encourage you to do the same. Restricting your taco intake to only one day a week is an absurdly unnecessary practice. I'll be the first to admit that catchy alliterative branding is a force of nature that is not to be reckoned with, but then again so are tacos.

A few years back we spent some time in Mexico over a summer. For a couple of days during this period we stayed with a lady in Mexico City, Elia, that Anton's mom met when she studied abroad in Paris. Even though the two had not spoken nor met in close to 40 years, Elia was more than excited about welcoming us into her home for a few days and show us around town. Dinner parties with Cuban fugitives, movie executives and family members were organized, tips on how to bring home a kilo of masa (corn flour) without attracting unwanted attention at the airport (given that it quite fairly looks like a brick of cocaine) were given, and most importantly Elia took us to her favorite Cochinita pibil taco restaurant. Cochinita pibil is a way of preparing pork shoulder from Yucatan. The pork shoulder is braised low and slow with citrus and various dried peppers and the result is a pulled pork of the melt-in-your-freaking-mouth variety that unsurprisingly does gorgeously on tacos.

To my greatest disappointment I am not from Yucatan, Mexico. Which means that this recipe undeniably has a few tweaks here and there from the traditional version to accommodate the ingredients available to us here in Europe. Now before all alarm bells go off: there will be some chili peppers (moringa and casabelle) in the list below that can be tricky to find, don't stress too much about them specifically. If you can only find other types of dried Mexican chilis: awesome, use those. The dried chilis we use are not overly spicy so keep that in mind with your quantities.

Ingredients #

For two to four people.

The pork:

• 800gr pork shoulder (for 2 people this is a lot, which didn't stop us from eating it in its entirety, but will most likely feed 4 normal people)
• 1 orange
• 1 lime
• 1 big yellow onion
• 2 dried casabell peppers
• 1 dried morita pepper
• 100gr chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 50ml dark rum
• 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
• black pepper
• salt

To assemble:

• the amount of tacos you think you'll need to ship this pork to your mouth
• a bunch of cilantro
• 2 limes
• 1 yellow onion

Add any other toppings you'd like on there for example this Goat cheese, lime and chives crema:

• 125gr goat cheese
• 1 lime
• a small bunch of chives
• 5 tablespoons of Greek or Turkish yoghurt

Method #

1. Heat up your oven to about 125 degrees Celsius.

2. Grind your dried chilis in a spice grinder or high power blender and add to a bowl together with the sugar, a BIG BIG generous pinch of salt, ground black pepper, the zest of the orange, the juice of said orange, the juice of one lime, your chipotle adobo mixture, the rum, and well do we have anything left? Oh right the pork. Give the pork a nice rub down with your marinate and set aside briefly.

3. Roughly chop your onions in half rings, or rings or quarter rings, really nobody cares. Add them to your Dutch oven, or other heavy bottomed oven safe pot, together with the two halves of the orange you zested and squeeezed for juice earlier. On top of this happy mixture add your pork + marinade and place this with a lid in your oven for about 5-6 hours.

4. You'll want to check on your meat every once in a while, flipping it around occasionally to prevent it from burning. After a while your house will start smelling un-fucking-real so just make sure you're mentally prepared for that in case you're working from home and tend to get snacky.

5. It's hard to give an exact amount of hours it will take before it's done, but you'll notice that at some point your meat will very easily pull apart. This is what you want, if you have troubles pulling it apart pop it back in to the oven for a bit longer, checking every 30min or so. Generally this is a very forgiving dish, however it is possible to overcook the meat which will make it dry. Don't unnecessarily leave it in the oven for too long. Once done, take out the orange halves, pull your meat apart and give it a good stir to mix it with the onions and juicy business in the pot.

6. Once your pork is done it's taco time! This part I'll leave completely up to you, within boundaries of reasonability. Most traditional taco toppings generally include raw or pickled onion, cilantro and freshly squeezed lime juice, I usually start with that and see where the journey takes me! If you're looking for a tangy sauce: I blended together some goat cheese with the juice of one lime, Turkish yoghurt and some chives we had laying around. Not your most traditional Mexican salsa but surely can recommend!

These are so incredibly delicious, the citrus-y notes work so well with the pork and yeah slow roasting meat for a couple of hours with things that taste good makes for great dinners! Who knew!

On the topic of toppings: in countries like NL and the Nordics we grow up eating tacos in what I'll dub the "Santa Maria bubble". In this bubble, tacos are often topped with things like cucumber and iceberg lettuce, and while I'm not here to tell you how to eat your tacos: in this recipe you're looking for toppings that will compliment the richness of the meat, but that won't be offensively bad when getting warm. Onion will add a fresh crunch to your taco like you'd hope a cucumber would do, unfortunately there are very few affairs sadder than a lukewarm cucumber. So yes, I guess I am telling you how to eat your tacos.