Chiapas-Style Roasted Pork (Cochito Horneado Chiapaneco)

Chiapas, with its strong mayan background, gives us an interesting example of the miracle of mexican cuisine, where you see the combination of the local indigenous cuisine intertwined with meat and ingredients from Europe. Even within Chiapas, where maize is a very common ingredient, other ingredients will vary radically to include sometimes flowers and herbs in some areas, all the way to seafood and exotic meats elsewhere. Today, let’s examine this classic dish from Chiapas, the cochito horneado.

In certain traditions from Chiapas, this dish is prepared with a suckling pig and serving and eating this dish becomes an event in itself; for practical reasons I just put pork meat here.

Recipe for Cochito Horneado

Ingredients:
* 7 guajillo chiles
* 6 ancho chiles
* 10 allspice kernels
* 3 sprigs of thyme
* Salt to taste
* 1/4 cup lard
* 3 lb. pork meat,
* 8 cups of water
* 1 head of lettuce

Preparation:

1) Over high heat, cook the peppers in two cups of water. Once cooked, blend with thyme and allspice in your blender without putting more water than necessary, what we want here is a thick sauce.

2) Rub the meat with the chile paste and let it rest in the refrigerator for 3 hours.

3) Melt the butter and sear the meat a little bit. Add water and slowly cook in the oven. When the meat has cooked, let it cool down. Take the meat out of the broth.

4) Put the broth in a crock pot and the meat on a baking tray. Put them in the oven separately but at the same time, bake for 1 hour at 400 °F.

5) Take the meat out of the oven, cut the meat into cubes and mix with the broth.

Serve on a serving plate; shred the lettuce very thinly and arrange the meat over it; with plenty of tortillas on the side.