It's fake cochinita pibil tonite.

[spindrifter]

Don't have enough time to slow roast the pork, so it will be a bit of a modification: one thick boneless pork chop--achiote paste, garlic, coriander, paprika, chili powder and peppers, orange juice and red wine vinegar. Don't have any red onions, so I will sweat some regular onions and serve with Mexican rice and green salad.

[NMDemDist2]

1. i did a stir fry (my 2nd attempt ever)

what is achiote paste? where do you get it? what does it taste like?

cuz it all sounds pretty darn good what you have going on there.......

[spindrifter]

2. Achiote or annato

is basically a coloring agent, although the paste has a kind of bitter taste--which I cannot really sort out with the orange and vinegar marinade, anyhow. THe paste is a combination of achiote and some other herbs/spices that the package doesn't identify. The color the achiote seeds impart is a reddish brown which you have seen in tamales, I'm sure. It is/has been used for color in lots of other food, including butter.
I got my achiote when I was in the Yucatan a few months ago, but it is widely available at Mexican food stores and on the internet. I had never had Yucatecan food before and had a wonderful introduction through a family that we rented a room from.

[mike_c]

3. someone once asked me if they were blocks of red hash in my freezer....

I couldn't find achiote locally, so I brought the biggest package I could find back from Mexico, then cut it into small blocks and froze them for long term storage. Here's another recipe:

Belize stew chicken. This is the national dish of Belize, available anywhere that food is sold (and more often than not the only item on the menu):

1 whole chicken, cut up into pieces
1 large onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
a few cups of chicken stock
2-3 Tbsp achiote paste
juice of 1 lime
Salt and pepper to taste
a couple Tbsp of oil

Mix the achiote and lime juice with some salt to a lumpy red paste. Coat the chicken pieces roughly, then brown in hot oil in a large heavy skillet (a cast iron dutch oven is perfect). Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Scrape in any remaining achiote-lime mixture. Add chicken stock to half cover the chicken pieces or more and some additional salt and pepper to taste, scrapping up any browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Cover and simmer for about an hour, adding additional liquid if necessary, but reducing to a rich red-orange gravy at the end. Serve over rice and beans, with Belikan beer if you can find it. The dish is NOT spicy, but it's customary to serve a bottle of Yucatan style habanero sauce alongside.

[spindrifter]

4. Sounds great!

I can see why people thought your achiote was hash bricks.
To me there is something very comforting about the color the achiote imparts--especially on a cold or wet winter day.

[Reciprocity]

5. This reminds me of a scene in Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

In the movie Johnny Depp sits with each informant or killer at a different restaurant, where he orders the same dish of slow roasted pork (puerco pibil) and a shot of tequila to wash it down and insisting that the person he meets try it as well.

Agent Sands (JD): El, you really must try this because it's puerco pibil. It's a slow-roasted pork, nothing fancy. It just happens to be my favorite, and I order it with a tequila and lime in every dive I go to in this country. And honestly, that is the best it's ever been anywhere. In fact, it's too good. It's so good that when I'm finished, I'll pay my check, walk straight into the kitchen and shoot the cook. Because that's what I do. I restore the balance to this country. And that is what I would like from you right now. Help keep the balance by pulling the trigger.

On the DVD the director Robert Rodriguez has a ten minute cooking school that shows how to make puerco pibil.

Puerco Pibil transcribed from the DVD

5 lbs pork butt
5 Tbsp annatto seed
2 tsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp ground pepper
8 allspice seeds
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup white vinegar
5 lemons
2 habanero peppers
2 Tbsp salt
8 garlic cloves, minced
Splash of Tequila
Banana leaves for wrapping (or foil)

A very nice slow roasted pork (adapted from Robert Rodriguez's recipe from the Once Upon a Time in Mexico .
In a clean coffee grinder (yes, a coffee grinder), grind the annatto seed, cumin seed, pepper, allspice, and cloves into a fine powder. Chop up the habanero peppers, removing the veins and seeds. If you want to kill your diners, leave a few seeds in. But these peppers are mucho caliente as they are. (Have your boys put a chopped piece on the tip of their tongues for proof.)
Mix the orange juice, vinegar, the ground powder and the peppers with the salt and the garlic in a medium bowl. Add that splash of tequila into the mix now. Stir it all up until it's somewhat smooth. Trim the pork butt and cut into roughly 2 inch cubes.
Place the cubes in a large ziplock bag and pour the mixture over the meat. Seal and shake around to ensure the meat is thoroughly covered in the sauce.

Now, if you wanna be cool, you can line a large pan with banana leaves and then pour the meat/sauce concoction on top of that, pulling the banana leaves back across the top and holding it down with foil to make sure none of the flavor nor steam escapes. However, in the event that you live in a place where banana leaves are hard to find line the pan with aluminum foil, dump the meat/sauce, cover the whole deal with foil.
Turn your oven on 325 degrees and let this pork roast for 4 hours. (A little longer doesn't hurt.) You can serve this over white or mexican rice. I think white rice is the way to go since it creates such a great visual picture and that the flavor of the meat is offset so well by the rice.

[spindrifter]

6. Looks like a great recipe, Recip.

The only thing I would do differently would be pull the pork.
I kept running into great cochinito sandwiches that people eat at breakfast--on the bus, at home, wherever. They use the hamburger bun-sized rolls for them.

[bleedingheart]

7. can this be done in a crockpot?

[Reciprocity]

8. My thoughts exactly.

The thought of the stove on for 4 hours really adds to the cost of the dish.