Gone Fishin’

We are currently on our way down to South Padre with Sharon and Eric. Tomorrow we will be going out on the Gulf for some deep sea fishing! I will be putting my mad fishing skills to work. I fully expect to catch a great white shark…then I will club it to death. I need to practice my clubbing skills for that trip down to Antartica…look out baby seals!

Have a good weekend!

The Day That Never Comes

Metallica’s new album, Death Magnetic, is right around the corner. The first video for the album is ‘The Day That Never Comes’, and it’s pretty good. Well, the video kind of sucks but the song is pretty kick ass. I’ve “sampled” the entire album (Thanks to mininova) and it lives up to the hype that’s been going around. Many so called fans say they haven’t released a good album since Master of Puppets, …And Justice for All, or The Black Album. I say every album from start to finish has been pretty good if not great, even St. Anger. But I think the latest album should satisfy those fans of the earlier stuff.

Check out the video for ‘The Day That Never Came’

It seems like Metallica is now embracing the internet. They are going to be releasing the album digitally prior to it hitting stores. Now only if they would follow Radiohead and let fans decide the price they want to pay.

Cochinita Pibil Recipe

A few years ago I saw the Robert Rodriguez movie Once Upon A Time in Mexico. The special features on the DVD included a ‘10 Minutes Cooking School‘ where Robert Rodriguez cooked up something called puerco pibil aka cochinita pibil (check the link for some more information about cochinita pibil). His presentation had me really interested in trying out the dish…plus it looked really good.

Even though the feature is listed as a 10 minute cooking school, it’s really more of a 5 minute one leaving a bunch of holes that you need to fill in yourself. I tried the dish out and it was just ok. At that point I had never had cochinita pibil before so I didn’t know what it was supposed to taste like. Luckily, we found a place in Austin that served it and it was damn good, damn, damn good. It blew the one I made completely out of the water. So I completely ditched Mr. Rodriguez’s recipe and went back to the drawing board. I have tweaked some thing hear and there resulting in some pretty delicious slow roasted pork. Now I want to share my recipe with you.

Before getting into the pork recipe, we need to make some pickled onions. If you want to fully enjoy the pibil you must have the onions with it.

Pickled Red Onions

1 cup boiling-hot water
1 medium red onion, halved lengthwise, then very thinly sliced lengthwise
1 fresh habanero or Scotch bonnet chile, halved, seeded, and deveined, then thinly sliced
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 teaspoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican), crumbled
1/2 teaspoon salt

Pour boiling water over onion in a small bowl and let stand until softened, about 10 minutes. Drain onion well and return to bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients.

Cochinita Pibil

3/4 cup Achiote paste*
10 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cup orange juice
Juice of 2 limes
8 bay leaves
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon ground thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
4 pounds pork butt, cut into 2-inch chunks
1 pound banana leaves
Big Ass Zip Loc bag or marinade container
Aluminum foil pan & foil

In a food processor or blender, blend the achiote paste, salt, garlic gloves, oregano, thyme, cinnamon, bay leaves, cumin, orange juice, pepper, and lime juice. You want to make sure you blend everything really well. Here is what mine looks like after blending;

Put your pork butt chunks into the big ass zip loc bag, then pour the marinade into the bag. Seal up the bag making sure to get as much air out as possible. Put the bag into the fridge and let it marinade for 24 hours. If you can’t give it 24, plan for at least 12.

After marinating, line your aluminum foil pan or baking dish with a layer of banana leaves. Use the longer leaves as you will be wrapping it around the meat. Dump the contents of the zip loc bag into the pan making sure the pork is evenly arranged. Take the overlapping portion of the leaves and wrap around the pork. Next, wrap the dish tightly in foil, you don’t want any heat to escape.

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Bake for 6 hours or until the pork is tender and easy pulled apart. Remove from the oven and let it cool down for a few minutes. Take some forks and pull the pork chunks apart. Now you’re ready to enjoy this great dish. I serve it up taco style with the onions but it’s great even without tortillas.

(The above picture is not mine, I found it on google. We have a bunch of pictures of preparing the pork but by the time it’s done we forget about the pictures and just eat)

If you go taco style, make sure you get some freshly made tortillas. It really adds to the whole dish. In my experience the ones found in the your local grocery store’s bread aisle takes away from the whole thing.

*Some Cochinita Pibil recipes call for grinding up annatto seeds. I’ve tried this and haven’t really liked the end result. The paste has been consistent for me. You can find the paste in many grocery stores that carry international foods.

Google Chrome

Google announced the release of their open source browser, Chrome. I came across this at MarketPlace via this link.

Being the one that likes trying out new things I quickly downloaded and installed it. Installation is painless as I would expect. After everything I’ve read about the browser I was expecting to be wowed…I haven’t been wowed. I don’t see myself moving away from Firefox anytime soon. It’s still too early to call this thing a dud, but it continues my lack of interest in the tools Google offers, besides the search of course.

I know I’m in the minority when I say Google’s offerings are pretty much crap, but I think way too many people eat up this stuff just because it’s from Google. But…anyway, I will continue playing with it trying to keep an open mind.

I invite you to share your thoughts on the new browser. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, go here: link.

sidenote: This update was made using Chrome.