Ten Minute Cooking School: Puerco Pibil

After director Robert Rodriguez learns us how to make a movie with digital video all by yourself in 'Ten Minute Flick School: Fast, Cheap and in Control' and 'Inside Troublemaker Studios' he shows us how to cook "puerco pibil" in 'Ten Minute Cooking School'. He cooks the dish Johnny Depp's character likes so much in 'Once Upon a Time in Mexico'.

Rodriguez himself holds the camera while he is explaining how to cook the dish. From time to time he lays down the camera because he needs his hands for cooking. He makes sure that even these simple shots look pretty good. All together this is another nice extra from Rodriguez, showing us how cool he is and giving us a nice dish that seems pretty hard to make.

One of my favorite movies ever,The Shawshank Redemption is a modern day classic as it tells the story of two inmates who become friends and find solace over the years in which this movie takes place.Based on a Stephen King novel,this movie makes us feel different watching this film than most others as this is an incredibly realistic film.Tim Robbins stars as Andy Dufresne who is convicted of murder and Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding who is a fellow inmate and close friend of Dufresne and Bob Gunton as Warden Samuel Norton who is the Warden of Shawshank State Prison and is a character who has mixed feelings and emotions towards everyone around him and a character who is sometimes easy to like and at other times easy to despise.This film is easily considered one of the greatest films of all time and I definitely agree with this fact.It was nominated for seven Academy Awards including (Best Picture, Best Actor - Morgan Freeman, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Sound) but didn't win any due to tough competition from the film Forrest Gump.I personally think that Tim Robbins should have been nominated for the Best Actor award as he really gave the performance of his career.Bravo to this brilliant modern day classic!

Robert Rodriguez's comment that not being able to cook is as bad as not being able to f*** is actually a crudely put truism based on the physiological and psychological pleasures enjoyed from participation in the respective recreational activities. It takes someone with at least a modicum of talent in the kitchen to be able to appreciate the sensual pleasures of the consumption of carefully prepared food (and good wine) to further appreciate the same kind of emotion generated by the intimacies of the world's oldest sporting activity! The emotions involved in both should be able to render a grown man close to tears. Sound weird? Then you aren't the kind of person that can truly appreciate the wonderful enlightenment that participation in either brings. I have cooked dishes at home that have reduced me to tears when I have sat down to eat them, and have tasted wines that have had the same effect. As regarding the fairer sex? I can only say that emotion is viewed as a strength by women, not as a weakness.

The overriding danger of having such a "cool" focus in a film like "Puerco Pibil" is that the young, uninitiated wannabes will latch on to it and denigrate the real meaning by cooking it for themselves and serving it up at their lame "Hey, I can pretend I'm really cool!" parties to try and impress their friends (for friends actually read "Hangers-on"). If you're as cool as you think you are you will cook the dish (several times) and just revel in the all-consuming emotion that is generated by the taste explosion in your mouth. You may then just want to share that feeling (as does Johnny Depp's character) with someone close.

Cool is not letting people know you think something is cool. "Puerco Pibil" is destined to become a cult dish: that can not be in doubt. But it is because it has been mentioned in a film, not because it is the most marvellous food on this planet. (Don't even go there McCorporate Death Burger!) Don't reduce Robert Rodriguez's recipe to a mere social point-scoring exercise.

Be Cool. Stay Cool.

This dish ROCKS! Takes a long time to prepare but it is well worth it.

The Recipe-

Puerco Pibil(Slow Roasted Pork)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

What you need-

White or Spanish Rice

5 LBS Pork Butt

(Achiota Paste)

5 TBSP Annatto Seeds

2 TSP Cumin Seeds

1 TBSP Pepper Corns

8 Whole All Spice

½ TSP Cloves (Sticks)

Couple of Habanero Peppers (No seeds or veins) (Sub Jalapenos if desired.)

½ Cup Orange Juice

½ Cup White Vinegar

2 TBSP Salt

5 Lemons

8 Cloves of Garlic

the finest Tequila you can find

How to do it-

Use a coffee grinder to grind Achiota Paste to a fine powder. Liquefy Achiota Paste and all other ingredients in a blender. Add a splash of the finest Tequila you can find.

Cut Pork Butt into 2' squaresm place meat in a large ziplock bag and pour in Achiota Paste.

Line a large baking pan with the banana leaves, add meat to pan, cover with more banana leaves, then seal the pan with tin foil.

Bake at 325 degrees for 4 hours.

Serve over a bed of white or Spanish rice.

Enjoy!!!

I got this recipe back in 1/05 when I bought the film and finally made it yesterday. Fantastic. One of the best Mexican dishes I've ever eaten. At bit costly, but worth every step. I had some trouble with annatto seeds. Couldn't find them locally, but wholespice.com had them. Great website. Wholespice, if you can't the other spices, also has cloves, cumin, and allspice. It has just about every spice you can possibly think of. Banana leaves were impossible to find so I had to go on with out them. The tequila he uses is Casa Noble, which is top of the line, and runs about $50 a bottle. I also found out that if you don't want to buy coffee grinder that a mortar and pestle works great. It's cheaper and you can find them at stores like Tuesday Morning. If any of you are like me and hadn't worked with garlic much before in cooking, don't do what I did and buy eight bulbs of garlics. You'll have more garlic than you know what to do with. Buy one bulb and break it open, and inside you'll find about ten to fifteen cloves. There's your eight. I don't know what to do with my seven bulbs of garlic I have leftover. I guess I could make another batch of pibil. Enjoy.