Attack of the Substitutions
Pretty good meal, but the substitutions were many and of varying impact. Good news: I followed the Bread and Garlic soup recipe to the letter — after parsing out another recipe error; bad news: I scrapped the Puerco Pibil recipe in favor of Robert Rodriguez’s version, found in the DVD extras for Once Upon a Time in Mexico. It can be found here. Also, there were no fresh figs to be had, so I used kiwi — no rhyme or reason for that, except they were on an end display.
First, there is a little screwiness in the soup recipe for six. The bread called for scales down from the 75 servings to the 20 servings cleanly, but when going from 20 to six servings (roughly dividing by three) it calls not for 10 ounces of bread (which would be roughly a third for 20), but 24 ounces. If two pounds (32 ounces) feeds 20, then why the hell is 75% of that amount going to feed six? I used 10 ounces. Everything else was dirt simple, and tasted great.
For the pibil, I couldn’t source achiote paste, so I scrapped the recipe and went with the version from Robert Rodriguez’s “Ten Minute Cooking School” from the DVD material I just mentioned. He makes his own achiote paste from scratch, and I’d done this several times, not with pork, but with caribou. Essentially, grind the spices in a coffee grinder (used for spices only) and then throw everything else (including the spices you just ground into a fine powder) into a blender. Pork Butt and Pork Shoulder are the same cut of meat, so get about five pounds, cube it up into two inch pieces, then marinade the pork in the mixture from the blender for 12 hours. Roast all this for four hours at 325º. Get the extra wide/tough “grilling” aluminum foil for this, and seal the marinade and pork inside a pouch set inside a lasagna-sized pan. When it’s finished, shred the meat and serve either over rice, in tortillas, or both. Because I had my parents over, I left out the habaneros, with can be added into the individual tortillas later, depending on your heat tolerance.
I did follow the recipe in marinating the pork for 12 hours, and did also throw the onion into the foil packet when I roasted the pork, serving it up in the way directed (although I made fresh corn tortillas and added a little pecorino romano to really set off the meat.) As best I could tell, the recipe in the book is proportionally fine, but something tells me this would be a hard one to screw up: Pork, acid, cumin…..
Just plain awesomeness.
For dessert, there were no figs available, but I figured a sweet fruit with the liquor and whipped cream would be hard to screw up. The Kirsch called for wasn’t available either, but I did find a roasted cherry rum that is probably similar. Not bad, but nothing to write home about, either.
Here is the recipe from the video for the pibil:
Pretty good meal, but the substitutions were many and of varying impact. Good news: I followed the Bread and Garlic soup recipe to the letter — after parsing out another recipe error; bad news: I scrapped the Puerco Pibil recipe in favor of Robert Rodriguez’s version, found in the DVD extras for Once Upon a Time in Mexico. It can be found here. Also, there were no fresh figs to be had, so I used kiwi — no rhyme or reason for that, except they were on an end display.
First, there is a little screwiness in the soup recipe for six. The bread called for scales down from the 75 servings to the 20 servings cleanly, but when going from 20 to six servings (roughly dividing by three) it calls not for 10 ounces of bread (which would be roughly a third for 20), but 24 ounces. If two pounds (32 ounces) feeds 20, then why the hell is 75% of that amount going to feed six? I used 10 ounces. Everything else was dirt simple, and tasted great.
For the pibil, I couldn’t source achiote paste, so I scrapped the recipe and went with the version from Robert Rodriguez’s “Ten Minute Cooking School” from the DVD material I just mentioned. He makes his own achiote paste from scratch, and I’d done this several times, not with pork, but with caribou. Essentially, grind the spices in a coffee grinder (used for spices only) and then throw everything else (including the spices you just ground into a fine powder) into a blender. Pork Butt and Pork Shoulder are the same cut of meat, so get about five pounds, cube it up into two inch pieces, then marinade the pork in the mixture from the blender for 12 hours. Roast all this for four hours at 325º. Get the extra wide/tough “grilling” aluminum foil for this, and seal the marinade and pork inside a pouch set inside a lasagna-sized pan. When it’s finished, shred the meat and serve either over rice, in tortillas, or both. Because I had my parents over, I left out the habaneros, with can be added into the individual tortillas later, depending on your heat tolerance.
I did follow the recipe in marinating the pork for 12 hours, and did also throw the onion into the foil packet when I roasted the pork, serving it up in the way directed (although I made fresh corn tortillas and added a little pecorino romano to really set off the meat.) As best I could tell, the recipe in the book is proportionally fine, but something tells me this would be a hard one to screw up: Pork, acid, cumin…..
Just plain awesomeness.
For dessert, there were no figs available, but I figured a sweet fruit with the liquor and whipped cream would be hard to screw up. The Kirsch called for wasn’t available either, but I did find a roasted cherry rum that is probably similar. Not bad, but nothing to write home about, either.
Here is the recipe from the video for the pibil:
5 lbs. pork butt (shoulder), cut into 2 inch cubes
5 tablespoons annato seeds
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 tablespoon whole black pepper
½ teaspoon whole cloves
8 whole allspice berries
2 habanero Peppers, fresh or dried, cleaned and minced (optional)
½ cup orange juice
½ cup white vinegar
8 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons salt
5 lemons
1 shot of tequila
Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal — The Errata