With a savoury blend of sweet pineapple, spicy chili meat and tart lime, you’ll be craving this Mexican dish from chef Dustin Gallagher even when it’s not Taco Tuesday.
ingredients
Marinade
Salsa Verde
directions
Begin by making the marinade. Heat a medium size skillet to medium-high heat and add in the dried chilis. Toast until chilis are fragrant and have slightly darkened in colour. Once toasted, remove from heat. Cut off the stem. Begin to deseed by cutting the chili open and shaking out the seeds. If prefered, keep some seeds to enhance the spice level. Place chilis in a medium bowl and cover with boiled water. Let soak until chilis softened.
While the chilis are soaking, preheat an oven to 400F. Peel tomatillo, garlic and onion. Chop onion into large pieces and combine everything into a roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes until everything has softened and begun to turn golden.
Once the tomatillo, garlic and onion are roasted, place them into a blender. Add in drained chilis, orange juice, orange zest, lime juice, lime zest, sugar, salt, cinnamon, cumin and coriander. Blend on high until very smooth.
Place strips of pork into a medium bowl and pour marinade over top. Toss and cover. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. While you wait, prepare the tortillas; see recipe below, as well as the salsa verde. Store cooked tortillas in a freezer bag until ready to use.
Combine everything into a mortar and pestle. Smash ingredients up until well combined and the consistency of an almost pureed salsa. Set aside until ready to plate tacos.
Once meat has marinated, remove from fridge. Heat a large cast iron skillet on high heat; adding oil once hot. Sear pork on each side, then place skillet into a preheated oven for about 15 minutes. While pork is cooking, heat another pan on high. Add in halved pearl onion, cut side down, and strips of pineapple. Leave onions to char on one side, but flip pineapple to sear on all sides. Once charred, remove from pan and set onto a cutting board. Chop pineapple into bite size pieces and separate the pearl onion halves into small leaves.
Remove pork from oven and let rest on cutting board for about 5 minutes for slicing. Once rested, cut strips of pork into 1 in. cubes. Toss cut pork back into pan to coat in remaining sauce and juices. To assemble; add pork, pineapple and onion to a tortilla. Top with a drizzle of salsa verde. Garnish with cilantro leaves, and lime wedges.