Cochinita Pibil

There is nothing like hunting for “exotic” ingredients that makes me want to cook a dish more. In this case, it was banana leaves. Apparently they are not as easy as I thought to find in my neighborhood. First, I went to the regular grocery and they clearly had none. I next ventured to Caninos, our outdoor produce market and was unsuccessful yet again. Across the street I had spotted a few weeks ago a spice shop (Granels) and thought maybe I would give them a try. The owner was fantastic and although they did not have any, he called around to the warehouses to figure out if anyone had them in stock. Luckily, the warehouse down the street had them. Not lucky for me, my spanish is only so-so and I had to procure these hojas de plátanas. After my poor attempt at spanish, they were kind enough to grab these for me and I was on my merry way.

I now know that you can also get these in the freezer at many Asian supermarkets or likely at a large Mexican market. In any case, if you cannot find banana leaves, don’t worry. The dish doesn’t suffer without them, it just makes it a little more traditional.

On the lines of tradition, cochinita pibil is usually cooked in a pit in the ground. That wasn’t going to happen here, but I attempted to make it as close to traditional as I could.

This was my first attempt with banana leaves, and I was quite surprised with exactly how large they were. If I would have thought about it, it made sense how enormous they were. However, when you see them being used, they are usually already in a nice square shape easy for wrapping. Essentially, you are creating a little steam pocket to cook your meat in nice and slow to really develop those flavors. Sort of like using parchment paper as I have in my cod en papillote.

This cochinita pibil could feed an enormous crowd as it consisted of 8 pounds of pork. Definitely a fun summer dish to serve at a party and each person could get their own banana leaf packet.

This was also a first for me to make jicama “tortillas”. I’m not really for a corn tortilla unless it is freshly made, and obviously I cannot eat the flour tortillas either. Instead, I took a mandolin and thinly sliced jicama which made perfect little street taco sizes! It also added a nice crispy crunch to my taco!

Ingredients:

1 cinnamon stick

5 cloves

2 tablespoons mexican oregano

2 tablespoons black peppercorns

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

3/4 piece achiote paste

1 garlic bulb

3/4 cup of bitter orange (or you can use 1/4 of each lime, grapefruit and lemon juice)

1/4 cup white vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

8 lbs bone in pork shoulder, or 6 lbs boneless

2 roma tomatoes

1 white onion, sliced

1 red bell pepper

bay leaves

banana leaves (if available)

Toppings

pickled red onion

jalapeno

jicima

avocado

Directions

for the sauce: with the peel still on, toast your garlic over a medium flame until blackened. Set aside and peel when cool.

Place your spices in a dry saucepan and heat for about 2 minutes until aromatic. Place these in a blender along with your garlic, achiote paste, salt, and your liquids. Blend until a consistency similar to ketchup.

for the pork: cut your pork into 2 inch chunks. Pour your sauce over and refrigerate for at least one hour. Would be better overnight to really get that flavor infused.

Get a square, or cut a square, of banana leaves. Place a piece of pork in the middle and top with a slice of tomato, a few onions, a slice of red bell pepper and lastly half of a bayleaf. Wrap them up nicely by folding one end over the pork and continue to wrap. Then you will take the top and bottom piece and fold over. The weight of the pork should hold them down during cooking.

In a large roasting dish, line it with large banana leaves until it covers the pan with some extra to fold over. Lay your little packets of pork in your dish. Cover with your banana leaves then a piece of foil. Bake for 3.5-4 hours.

**if you don’t have banana leaves, cover the bottom of your roasting dish with foil. Place all the pork in your dish and then layer with the onion, bayleaf, and red pepper. Cover the top with more foil and bake for 3.5-4 hours.

If you do have the little packets, I would recommend taking them out about 30 minutes shy of the 3.5 hour mark and placing them over a charcoal grill for about 30 minutes.

Let them rest for another 30 minutes then shred your meat and dig in.