Spicy KANKUN Cochinita Pibil

Lookin' for some hot stuff, baby, this evening?

As a fan of Mexican salsas, extremely hot chile sauces, and KANKUN in particular, I was excited to get a couple bottles of their 85% Habanero sauce in the post.

I repeat, "a couple bottles".

85% habanero is, as they say, muy picante, so this supply will last me a while.

While I'm a big fan of pouring hot chile sauces on everything I eat, I have also been trying to think of ways to use this salsa as an ingredient. And because habaneros are typical of the Yucatán, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make cochinita pibil.

I last wrote about Yucatecan pit-cooked (pibil) dishes when I made pollo pibil (pibil-style chicken). And ever since I've been looking forward to making the equally popular pork version: cochinita pibil.

To recap, the pibil dishes are meant to be cooked in a Yucatecan cooking pit called a pib (it's a Mayan word). You dig a hole, line it with hot stones and ashes, lay your food in the pit (wrapped in a protective covering like a banana leaf), and bury the lot.

Then let it slow-cook to perfection!

Well, I don't expect you to dig a hole in your back garden (if I tried this at home, Mrs MexiGeek would pit-roasting me in it).

Instead, you can compromise by slow-cooking cochinita pibil in the oven.

What you CAN'T compromise on, though, is the seasoning, which here means achiote paste.

Achiote paste or recado rojo is made with the hard red seeds of a tree native to the Americas. It is quite easy to make, lasts months in the fridge, freezes well, and is useful for other Yucatecan dishes (so don't be afraid to make a big batch).

Even better, recado rojo is made of easy-to-find ingredients, except for the achiote itself, which is available from specialist shops and on-line suppliers (it is often sold as "annatto", the Brazilian name).

Homemade achiote paste and the molcajete it was made in.

These same suppliers often sell ready-made recado rojo, so you can use that and save yourself a step.

The other thing a pibil dish requires is the juice of Seville (or bitter) orange. These are available year-round in the Yucatán but are restricted to January in Europe.

I bought a big bag last year and froze the juice, so I'm sorted, but you can also make mock bitter orange juice by combining two parts grapefruit juice with one part orange juice, then adding a dash of lime juice.

You can get the orange and grapefruit juices out of a carton but I would definitely recommend using fresh lime.

All pibil dishes, whether cooked in an actual pib or not, are traditionally wrapped in a banana leaf, which not only keeps the meat soft and moist but also imparts a characteristic flavour.

Banana leaves are available from some Asian grocers (look for ones with Thai ingredients), but if you can't find any, just wrap the pork in parchment (en papillotte, as the French would say).

If you have a good quality casserole dish, you could even do without the parchment.

Or you could make this dish in a slow-cooker (whether you use banana leaves or not).

KANKUN Cochinita Pibil

Ingredientes

Marinade
1 recipe recado rojo (about 50 g)
90 - 100 mL Seville orange juice (or bitter orange substitute)
1 - 2 teaspoons KANKUN Habanero Sauce (or to taste)

Pork
1 - 1.5 kg pork shoulder or loin
A banana leaf or cooking parchment (optional)

Procedimiento

First I made the marinade.

In a bowl, I combined the achiote paste (recado rojo) and Kan-Kun with enough Seville orange juice to loosen it to a pourable consistency. This turned out to be about 100 mL, which covered the pork nicely.

Then I added the KANKUN Habanero sauce. I used just about two teaspoons. Normally I would taste in between to get the balance right, but I'm not sure if you should eat raw achiote paste, so I had to test it using sense of smell.

If the mainade is gritty (which is likely if you made it in a molcajete), blend it with a hand-blender until it's smooth.

The three amigos of the Yucatan: achiote, bitter orange, and habanero!.

Then I prepped the pork.

My partner in crime Wee Sadie had bought me banana leaves from a shop on Leith Walk ages ago. I started trying to unfold the leaves (they are HUGE) and cut two pieces large enough to line my casserole dish and wrap around the pork.

Please resist the temptation to steal banana leaves from the Royal Botanic Gardens.

You will have to wipe the leaves clean and cut off any edges that are starting to go brown or curly. Some people also recommend you pass the leaves briefly though a flame so they soften a bit, but I found the ones I used were malleable enough without this step.

Handle them carefully, though, because they do like to rip at the seams!

I lined a casserole dish with one of the leaves, laid the pork in the dish, and poured over the marinade. 

But don't just pour the marinade. Massage it in with your hands. Work that flavour!

After I washed my hands (do this frequently: achiote is also a powerful dye!), I covered the pork with the other leaf and tucked it down on all sides so the pork was wrapped fairly tightly.

Snug as a bug!

I put the lid on and left it to marinate in the fridge overnight. If you're not into waiting 24 hours to cook something, at least give it an hour or two. But the more time, the better.

When you're ready to cook (which is hopefully the next day), preheat the oven to 180° C (160° fan) and cook for 3 to 4 hours.

I had to leave this to the ever-capable Mrs MexiGeek, because I was at work. The pork went in at 17.30, as per my instructions.

I checked it at 20.00 (after 2 and a half hours). I was looking for the pork to be soft, moist, and tender, so I even peaked under the banana leave and gave it a bit of a "test shred". I deemed it should go back in until at least 21.00.

Now it's ready.

You'll need to use your judgement here, but your pork may need as much as five hours, depending on your oven and the size of your cut of pork. If you're doing the slow-cooker method, my estimate would be 10 hours on low or 2 hours on high followed by 3 hours on low. (This is based on successfully doing carnitas in a slow-cooker.)

When the pork is done, remove it and shred it like pulled pork or carnitas: it should fall apart easily. 

I then poured the remaining marinade and cooking juices from the dish over the shredded pork and gave it a good mix.

Like the greatest ever carnitas. The serving dish is hecho en Mexico too!

You can serve the shredded pork with warm tortillas and make tacos, or serve with a traditional Mexican rice dish.

I chose Mexican red rice, but I didn't use enough tomato, so it didn't come out very red. Also, I used diced chiles poblanos instead of peas. 

Still, it looked and tasted awesome:

And of course I added some extra KANKUN. Because some like it hot!

Another classic way to serve cochinita pibil is shredded on top of panuchos, which are Yucatecan tortillas stuffed with refried beans.

But whatever you choose, make sure you top the pork with Yucatecan pink picked onions (cebollas en escabeche) and serve some more Kan-Kun Habanero sauce for those who really want to crank up the heat!

The thing I love about the pibil dishes, and really all Yucatecan food, is that it's a million miles away from the stodgy Tex-Mex cuisine that people sometimes assume is real Mexican food. 

These flavours are vibrant, fresh, and yet deep and complex. 

In particular, the pibil pork (as opposed to the chicken dish) is rich, but the citrus of the bitter orange (and the cebollas en escabeche) cuts through it nicely, which the achiote paste adds deep, complex undertones. 

And of course, the KANKUN. I used just about two teaspoons in my marinade, and the flavour (and heat) of the habanero sauce was present throughout the whole dish. It was not too spicy, though. I'd say I hit upon just the right amount. 

(Mrs MexiGeek found it scrumptious as well.)

And again, habaneros, with their characteristic fruity flavour, are the perfect chile to complement this dish. 

And this is a serious habanero sauce. KANKUN use true habaneros for this sauce, not Scotch bonnets (which are related to habaneros, but not really the same thing). This commitment to using the authentic chile is important, because you need that true habanero flavour in a dish like this.

Of course, habaneros are one of the hottest chiles; some of them can reach 350,000 Scoville Heat Units, I think. They're certainly over 100,000. So for readers who think they might not be able to cope with that, I have some final advice. 

I added KANKUN's new habanero salsa to the marinade, but many cooks make the marinade without any chile, instead serving some chile salsa on the side.

This approach works well if you or the people you're serving people don't like too much chile heat, as each diner can take as much or little extra salsa as they choose.

So if you or any of your guests are a bit wary of the fiery habaneros, feel free to halve the quantity of KANKUN, or even leave it out of the marinade and just have a bottle of KANKUN on the table, for the hardcore chileheads.

Mexican things you can do with a Seville Orange

You know what's freaky about being MexiGeek?

I set out to make something complicated like pollo pibil, and this is my shopping list:

2 chicken breasts
2 onions (1 red, 1 white)
1 head of garlic
Tomatoes
Seville oranges

Everything else I already have on hand (with one exception, see below).

I must have a very Mexican store cupboard.

But before I get ahead of myself, let's introduce the star of this post: the Seville Orange.

The Seville orange is famous for two reasons:

1. No one in Seville eats them; practically the whole crop is shipped to the UK, where...
2. ...the Brits just use them to make marmalade!

(There are some French dishes that use them too.)

In Europe, including super-hot, practically North Africa Seville, these oranges are only in season in January.

In tropical Yucatán, Mexico, they are available all year round.

In Mexico they are called naranjas agrias ("bitter oranges") and, since being introduced by the Spanish, have become an integral part of Yucatecan cuisine.

So if you're tired of making marmalade, why not try making pollo pibil with cebollas en escabeche?

Pollo Pibil

Pibil means "cooked in a pib" (literally it means "covered"), and a pib (a Mayan word), is a "pit barbecue".

Basically it's a hole in the ground filled with hot ashes or stones. You put your food in it (wrapped in something like a banana leaf), then cover it with more hot ashes or stones and let it cook slowly for a long time.

Before you freak out, I don't expect you to dig a hole in your garden. I sure as hell didn't.

You can cook pibil-style food in an oven, a steamer, or even a slow cooker/crock pot.

What makes a non-pib version of this dish worthy of the name "pibil" is the marinade, a mixture of Seville orange juice with the famous Yucatecan achiote spice paste, recado rojo.

The other thing a pibil dish usually needs is a banana leaf.

I'm sure it is possible to get banana leaves in Edinburgh, but I haven't found out where yet. They are meant to be available from "Asian grocers", but I don't know what "Asian" means in that context.

I went to a Chinese grocer while members of my MexiGeek crew searched Leith Walk's exotic shops, but no dice.

Once upon a time I was going to put off making this dish until I had sourced banana leaves, but when I realized Seville oranges would only be in season until the end of January, I decided to bring my plans forward.

You can always "fake" some Seville orange juice by combining normal orange juice with some grapefruit juice - Seville oranges really do taste like a combination of orange and grapefruit (I ate one raw with my lunch) - but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to use the real thing.

So I had to go "French" and steam my chicken en papillote (i.e. wrapped in baking parchment).

There are actually two famous pibil dishes: chicken (pollo pibil) and pork (cochinita pibil).

Because I wanted to make panuchos (fat tortillas stuffed with refried beans) as well, I was strongly considering the pork.Cochinita pibil is served shredded, and panuchos are usually topped with shredded meat.

Pollo pibil is not served shredded, or on top of panuchos. Instead it is served as a meal in itself, usually in or on the banana leaf, if you've got one.

There is a Yucatecan shredded chicken dish called pollo en escabeche ("pickled" chicken), which I while make some other time.

But in the end I went with the chicken anyway because pork isn't "in season" yet, and chicken doesn't really have a season.

Obviously, when cooking Mexican food in the UK, you can only take seasonality so far, but as this meal started with a seasonal ingredient (the oranges), I wanted to keep up the theme.

How to cook pollo pibil

This is one of those multi-day affairs.

Day 1 (Two days before serving)

Make Yucatecan achiote paste (recado rojo).

Ironically, this is kind of inauthentic of me, because if I really lived in the Yucatán, I'd probably just buy some recado rojo from the markets, rather than make my own.

If you want to make this dish, but don't want to make the recado, they do sell pre-made stuff at Lupe Pinto's and from the Cool Chile Company (and some other places).

Some recipes don't even require recado rojo, calling for ground achiote (annatto), which is also available from Lupe Pinto's.

I have even seen some simplified recipes call for turmeric in place of achiote.

Achiote does indeed impart a vaguely "curry" flavour, so this is quite a clever substitution, but keep in mind your sauce will be yellow instead of red.

Being a MexiGeek, I like making my own recado.

As usual, I took the recipe from Rick Bayless, but the basic idea behind Yucatecan recado rojo is 1 tablespoon of achiote plus a bit more than 1 1/2 tablespoons of garlic (say, 5 cloves) and 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar.

To this, add a pinch each of "the usual Yucatecan spices", which are black pepper, allspice, cinnamon, and Mexican oregano, and, if you like, half a pinch each of cumin and coriander seed.

If the paste is too runny, and a teaspoon and a half of white flour.

This needs to sit in the fridge overnight.

Day 2 (The day before serving)

Mix the juice of two Seville oranges with your achiote paste (or just mix achiote, black pepper, allspice, cinnamon, and Mexican oregano with the Seville orange juice) and some blitzed habanero to taste.

I used dried habanero, but fresh is also good if you've got it. Be careful, though, cuz it's fecking hot!

If the marinade looks gritty, put it in the blender until it's smooth.

Smear this over two chicken breasts and leave to marinate in the fridge overnight.

By the way, achiote is a natural dye, so wash or at least rinse everything it touches ASAP, unless you're happy for it to remain that shade of red forever.

Day 3 (The Big day! So exciting!)

Slice some white onion and tomato about 5-7 (no more than 10) mm thick.

Lay two slices of onion and two slices of tomato on each of your banana leaves (or baking parchment, in my case).

Then put one chicken breast in each leaf/sheet, on top of the tomato slices.

Cover the chicken breasts with the remaining marinade.

Top each breast with two more slices of onion and two more slices of tomato.

Wrap the parcels up tightly (I used a "French seam") and steam on high for 30 minutes.

When it was done, I opened the little parcels and carefully placed each chicken breast - onions, tomatoes and all - on top of what I originally meant to be a panucho but ended up being a variation of a tortilla doblada (more on that in a future post).

I swear there's a chicken breast under that tomato!

Then I tipped the remaining sauce into a frying pan, added more Seville orange juice, and fried it until it reduced a bit. (Frying sauce like this is very common in Mexican cooking).

I served the extra sauce in a jug on the side. It was fairly hot from the habanero, but Mrs MexiGeek and I agreed it could have gone a shade hotter.

We're just hard like that.

Cebollas en escabeche

The other thing you can do is make Yucatecan pink pickled onions (cebollas en escabeche).

I've written about these before, but it's worth repeating.

Recently I saw a recipe for these in Good Housekeeping or somewhere, which is amazing in a way, but they left all the seasoning out!

Yes, the basic idea behind pink pickled onions is thinly sliced red onion, boiling water and red wine vinegar. The magazine recipe got that much right.

But once again, you need some Yucatecan spices: allspice, Mexican oregano, and a pinch of cumin, for example.

Also, I would add a habanero, either finely chopped fresh habanero or, to tone down the heat, drop a whole fresh or dried one in as the onions pickle and then take it out before serving.

These flavours impart that special yo no se que (je ne sais quoi) that make food taste Yucatecan. Also, except for the oregano and chiles, these spices are readily available in all British supermarkets, and you can substitute normal oregano for the Mexican variety, and Scotch Bonnet peppers for the habaneros.

The onions should pickle for four hours. Then strain the liquid and cover the onions with a couple tablespoons of Seville orange juice.

I still say this the best condiment in the world ever.

Here they are again on top of a fried tortilla.

Altogether this makes one of those meals that can really open your eyes to the diversity of Mexican food.

We're a million miles away from the rich, earthy cuisine you get further north, and nowhere near stodgy Tex-Mex.

This dish is bright, zesty, citrusy, and surprisingly mild in the chile department (unless you overdo the habaneros). The red colour looks menacing but comes entirely from the achiote, which is not "hot".

I still need to try it with actually banana leaves though.

Maybe I'll do the cochinita pibil when pork comes into season.

The Seville oranges will be off by then. Fortunately we juiced the rest of them and popped it in the freezer!