Tacos al pastor

Ingredients

• Pork shoulder — sliced thin700 g
• Dried guajillo chillies4
• Dried ancho chillies2
• Pineapple200 g
• Achiote paste — or a teaspoon of ground annatto30 g
• White vinegar60 ml
• Garlic4 clove
• Ground cumin1 tsp
• Mexican oregano1 tsp
• Corn tortillas12
• Onion and corianderto taste
• Limeto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Seed the chillies and toast them in a dry pan until they smell — twenty seconds a side, no longer, or they turn bitter. Cover with boiling water for fifteen minutes.

   18 min

2. 2

   Blend the softened chillies with half the pineapple, the achiote, vinegar, garlic, cumin and oregano to a smooth paste. Season it.

   5 min

3. 3

   Coat the pork in the marinade and leave it at least two hours, ideally overnight. Do not go past a day: the pineapple will soften the meat to mush.

   120 min

4. 4

   Get a pan searing hot and cook the meat in batches, two minutes a side. Do not stir until dark edges appear.

   15 min

5. 5

   Sear the rest of the pineapple in the same pan and dice it. Chop the meat roughly, warm the tortillas twenty seconds a side and build: meat, pineapple, onion, coriander, lime.

   8 min

About the dish

Al pastor arrived in Mexico with Lebanese migrants: shawarma on a vertical spit, with pork in place of lamb and local chillies in place of the spices. The pineapple on top of the spit is the Mexican addition, and it is not only for flavour — its enzymes tenderise the meat.

There is no spit at home, but the principle survives in a pan. Slice the meat thin and cook it in batches over a very high heat: crowd the pan and the pork steams instead, and the caramelised edges never appear.

The dried chillies need soaking, not just grinding. Guajillo gives colour and a light acidity, ancho gives sweetness and depth, and together they make the flavour paprika cannot stand in for.

Worth knowing

• — Warm the tortillas in a dry pan and stack them under a cloth — they stay soft and do not crack when folded.
• — Every taco gets two tortillas. That is not extravagance: one goes soggy from the juices and the second holds.
• — With no achiote, a pinch of sweet paprika supplies the colour, but nothing replaces annatto's sour note — add a little more vinegar instead.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

610 kcal

Protein

36 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

55 g

More from Mexico

• Guacamole — Avocado, lime, onion and chilli crushed with a fork. No blender and no sour cream: both turn it into a dip rather than guacamole.