Cochinita Pibil

Here’s the email I posted back to the chef who gave me the recipe:

Ok, so we made this for my little nephew's first birthday (which I suppose was more an excuse for us adults to get together than it was for the kids ;) ) and it turned out FANTASTIC!

We used a paste of achiote seed, cumin, oregano, pepper, allspice, chile seco, salt, garlic, and OJ then coated a couple of pork butt roasts. My brother hacked off a couple of banana leaves that hung over his fence from his next door neighbor, then we kinda seared those over his bbq and removed the spine, and ended up with perfectly pliable leaves to wrap the pork in. After we tied the roasts up using some strips off the extra leaves, we put them in gallon-sized ziplock bags with a marinade made of leftover paste, oj, grapefruit juice, and lemon juice. The marinade kinda soaked in through the leaves and added a bit more flavor overnight, I think.

The next day we slow roasted the two roasts still wrapped in the banana leaves for about 3 hours or so. When we opened them up, the meat just fell off the bone. We served it that day with warm corn tortillas, queso fresco, and a variety of salsas (best one for this was just onion with habaneros and a splash of oj).

The best, tho, was the day after. We had quite a bit of leftovers, and it was the first day of regular season football. We completely shredded the remaining meat and rolled it into what was left of the six thousand corn tortillas that my brother had bought at Costco, and made the world's greatest taquitos ever. Half a case of avocados, a gallon of sour cream, all the remaining salsas and a few cases of corona later, and not a single scrap of the cochinita pibil was left.