Introduction:

Tacos al Pastor is perhaps the best taco you could ever try. The problem is that good tacos are hard
to find the United States since the recipe is such a secret. 

In Mexico city there are taquerias dedicated mostly or even exclusively to tacos al Pastor. Tacos al
Pastor are made from pork meat that has been marinated in a secret recipe and then cooked in a
rotisserie with pineapple on top. The tacos should be very small (almost like 2 bites size) and
garnished with cilantro (coriander), chopped onion and the pineapple. Add your favorite hot sauce. 

This space was empty for a long time and I apologize for it.  The recipe I started with was not bad,
but it was not as good as I wanted it to be. I sent this recipe to Mexico City to be reviewed but
nobody would talk much about it. Then in my last visit I wanted to have someone review it but I
encountered the same problem. 

The fact is that everyone seems to have a different list of ingredients for the marinade and nobody
wants to share it.  It is after all their business to keep their recipe different and better from others as
well as secret. 

Below is the recipe I started with, if you experiment with it and improve on it, please tell me about it.
Other ingredients mentioned are achiote and red vinegar. 
                                                           

  In the picture above, a cook is catching directly into the tortilla the pineapple he just cut from the
  top. Next you can see a view of a typical Tacos Al Pastor restaurant in Mexico City. The pastor
                       faces the street so that people can see it.

This recipe serves 4. 

Ingredients:

     10 chiles Pasilla 
     10 chiles Guajillo 
     1/2 garlic bulb 
     1/4 litter White Vinegar 
     1/4 tsp. Cumin 
     5 cloves 
     salt 
     pineapple (fresh or canned) 
     2 lbs thin pork meat 
     1 onion 
     Fresh cilantro (coriander) 
     1 Beer 
     2 Limes 

Pre-cooking:

     Cut the pork meat in thin stakes or slices if necessary. Normally each stake would rest on top
     of each other while marinating and cooking. 

     The following is the recipe for the marinade, this is a lot so you won't have to make it very
     often. 
       
     Take the seeds out of the chiles, cut them in little pieces and mash them together with the
     garlic, cloves, and cumin, avoid touching the chiles and vinegar with your bare hands if
     possible. The vinegar and chiles can "cook" your hands, trust me. A food processor would
     help here. 
     Boil the ingredients from the above step in the vinegar until it makes some sort of a heavy
     paste. Making sure that it won't burn, so mix it often. 
     Once fully cooked drink the beer while you let the marinade cool down. 
     Apply the paste to the meat putting one steak on top of the other. At a real taqueria they
     would form a top that eventually goes into the rotisserie. Since we do not have the rotisserie
     you simply pile the meat together and store in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight. 
      

Cooking:

     In a taqueria they would roast the "top" of meat with pineapple on top of it so that the juice
     gives the meat some of its flavor. The meat would be rotated constantly as the cook cuts very
     small slices of meat and pineapple to be served in a taco. 
     Chop the cilantro and onion. 
     Without a rotisserie, our only choice is to cut the pork in small bits so that it can be eaten
     easily in a taco. 
     Use a frying pan and cook the meat with small pieces of pineapple making sure the pork is
     fully cooked and just about to burn in some 
     cases (well roasted). 
     Cut the limes in quarters. 
     Serve the tacos with chopped cilantro, onion, and the limes. 

Tips:

      I definitely need some this time. Or perhaps you'd like to send me a rotisserie. 
     Squeeze a lit bit of lime juice in the taco before you eat it and add habanero salsa. 
     If you only have large tortillas, cut them using a small plate of the size you want and a knife. 
     For microwave, add 17 seconds per tortilla and heat them between paper napkins. 