Last year this time I was somewhere in Bangkok. I was sitting in a beautiful park with monitor lizards and beautiful flowers with trees full of weird squirrels and birds I hadn't seen before. Ahh glorious.
The winter before I was here in Montreal, and the winter before that I spent six months in Mexico. Ahh glorious.
Now I am smack in the middle of Montreal plateau , the area where everyone would go if travel were still a thing. People here on Hive are talking about spring and getting their seeds ready to plant in different parts of the world. I am green with envy as I look out my window and see the only view I have in this studio apartment.
This is it
If I poke my head out the window I see a little bit more.
This is what I see
This is not the greatest view or weather but one thing I do have is a fully functional kitchen where on my days off I can do what I want.
So although I am not in the tropics I can make tropical-ish food that will help me imagine being somewhere warm. Today I am returning to Mexico in my mind.
There is a dish made in Mexico which in most cases in done with pork or chicken but I would say pork would be the most common.
This is made with typical dried chili and has a sweet kind of taste brought on by the marinating of the meat in pineapple and/or orange juice. I believe this dish has some Lebanese influence.
We do a Pastor taco at work at the vegan restaurant, with mushrooms and an imitation chicken which is super greasy but the sauce taste good. I'm using mushrooms and soy curls since I saw them in Chinatown the other day. I've never seen them before so I grabbed them.
The Pastor is usually a marinade for the meat but I am doing like in the restaurant where my Mexican chef makes a sauce then we cook it with the other stuff. She will not share the recipe but that's not a problem because there exists plenty of them online. After investigating the general ingredients I put together my own recipe based on the recipes found and what I had.
For the sauce I used around 4 guajillo peppers and 3 ancho peppers with some chipotle in adobo from a can.
I first deseeded the dried peppers then boiled them, but you could fire roast them or fry in oil.
After I sauteed them in a pan with 4 chopped Roma tomatoes. 4 minced garlic and a chopped onion.
After it was blended with two chipotle peppers from a can, around 2 tablespoons of achiote paste, one cup of orange juice which was fresh squeezed and pineapple juice from frozen fresh pineapple which I drained the juice from, and the juice of 1 lime. I reserved the pineapple for the garnish later.
The spices added were: 1 teaspoon cumin seeds toasted and ground, 3 whole cloves toasted and ground, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon chili powder, salt and pepper.
If you taste the sauce and you find it bitter, don't worry. After it's cooked with everything, the bitterness of the peppers goes away.
I ended up with more sauce then I needed but that's okay because now I have it handy for more tacos later.
For the filling I started with king oyster mushrooms. At work we use shimeji mushrooms but I am not a fan of those for this kind of thing.
I shredded them then put them in the oven to dry them out for a meaty texture. I believe authentic pastor is usually from meat that has been roasted on a spit.
The mushrooms had shrunken much more than I thought they would so this is why I added the soy curls that I randomly purchased from Chinatown.
I didn't know how the soy curls would cook. I ended up adding some veggie broth along with the sauce. They were not softening up as much as I thought they would. After the added broth they were perfect. I just simmered everything with a cover.
I made my own tortillas. At work we use store bought tortillas. I really notice a difference in the ones I make and the store bought. It is not possible for us to make them in the facility that we have and the amount that we sell. Even in Mexico, people just run to the tortilla factory to get them fresh off the press.
If you buy a tortilla flour just mix it with warm water. I start with 2 cups flour to 2 and a half warm water. I am no expert but after it sits for ten minutes it is perfect. You may have to add more water or flour to get a playdough consistency to work with. Or if you want to avoid all of this just get them already made. For me it's kind of therapy.
I don't have a tortilla press but then again I like camping. If I were stranded with no food except tortilla flour and water I would make do with what I had. In this case it was parchment paper, a plate and a rolling pin.
You have to get the tortillas as thin as possible but not too thin that they'll break. It's like a pancake. You have to throw the first one out. You have to treat them like a new born baby, peeling them away from the parchment or plastic wrap then place them in a non stick pan. Or you could just get store bought and save the headache.
For one of the toppings on the taco, I made a chipotle mayo. I used vegan mayo that I made from cashews, onion powder, garlic powder, nutritional yeast, salt, juice of a lemon and olive oil. I added 1 chipotle from the can and blended.
Aside from chipotle mayo and fresh pineapple, I decided to add some chimichurri sauce that I had made. I blended a bunch of flat leaf parsley with olive oil and around 4 cloves of garlic, juice of a lime, 2 jalapenos, 1/2 cup of red wine vinegar and olive oil. Add salt to taste. There are many different recipes of chimichurri that vary but this is how I made this. Parsley is the main ingredient. It is usually in heavy oil base as well. Mine was not so much.
The most important garnish in my opinion for El Pastor is the pineapple. With that you have a tropical dish and it really comes across. The taste of the corn from the flour and the taste of the Pastor ingredients brought me to one of my favorite places that is Mexico.
There are quite a few variations of this dish depending on the region or the family recipe. Also the veganized version changes the game as well. The flavors that are common come from the basic combination of the dried peppers, the achiote, the orange and/or pineapple juice, the cumin, cloves and oregano. It is my opinion that the achiote paste should not be left out for this dish.
Have a nice day everyone!