Al pastor

• 1. Introduction

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  Al pastor is a Mexican taco whose name means "herdsman style," a phrase that sounds like it belongs to a pasture rather than a street stall. Yet the dish is a staple of taquerías across Mexico, and it has crossed the border into the United States. The name is only the first puzzle. What did "herdsman style" describe before anyone put it in a tortilla? How did a dish with roots in Lebanese kitchens become one of Mexico's best-loved street foods? And why do cooks in the Middle East now sell a Mexican-flavored version of their own recipe?

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• 2. Roast Over the Fire

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  Long before the taco, the Mexican countryside had a way of cooking called asado al pastor. Cooks skewered whole animals, commonly veal, bull, cow or mutton, or large pieces of meat, on a stake called an estaca. The stake stood over an open fire. The style also went by asado del pastor, carbonada and asado a la estaca. Its only rival among country roasting methods was barbacoa.

  In 1845, Manuel Galvan Rivera published a cookbook titled Diccionario de Cocina o El Nuevo Cocinero Mexicano en Forma de Diccionario. He sorted roasts by method: over fire, on a gridiron, or in an oven or pan. The fire-roasted kind he called "del pastor." He described carbonada as "lean slices of bull, pork, cow, etc., roasted after being cooked or raw, over embers or on the grill." Meat cooked that way, he added, was often called asado del pastor too.

  The spit roast belonged to country celebrations. Rodeos, herraderos (cattle branding celebrations), jaripeos and bullfights all featured it. So did the patron saint festivities of a hacienda and family picnics. The nineteenth-century writer Domingo Revilla wrote in the mid-1840s that the banquet at a herradero came down to asados al pastor and barbacoa of whole calves, bull or mutton.

  Revilla also noted a map of preference. Asado al pastor was more common in Tierra Adentro, the Bajío region and western Mexico, and beyond. Barbacoa was more common in the Mezquital and Apan valleys and nearby parts of central Mexico.

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• 3. A Bull for the President

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  On the 16th of September 1856, a whole bull was roasted al pastor in the middle of the Alameda Central in Mexico City. The roast was part of a Mexican Independence celebration. Among the guests was President Ignacio Comonfort. Victoriano Salado Álvarez collected the anecdote, and the narrator claims to have been there himself.

  The narrator imagines how absurd the scene would sound if someone proposed it later. A table set in the park, with every citizen entitled to a slice of the meat. The shoemaker, the pot-painter and the tinsmith greeting the President with hands full of grease. People, he says, would think the person proposing it belonged in an asylum. Then he settles the matter: "I saw it, took part in it, and enjoyed it immensely."

  He describes a well-timed banquet and an enormous crowd, with the pleasure and good humor to match. Word had gone around, as it always did, that Comonfort would be killed in the middle of the feast. As always, the President laughed at the warnings.

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• 4. The Lebanese Connection

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  In the nineteenth century, a vertically grilled meat dish called doner began to spread across the Ottoman Empire under several names. The version from the Levant was called shawarma. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a wave of Lebanese immigrants brought it to Mexico.

  Most of those immigrants were Christians. They had no religious dietary rule against eating pork, which mattered for what came next. By the 1920s, pork had mostly replaced the lamb. The Mexican-born children of the immigrants began opening restaurants of their own.

  The Central Mexican region of Puebla is where the dish is said to have originated, and where it remains most prominent. Later, in Mexico City, cooks began marinating the meat with adobo, the traditional Mexican marinade, and serving it on corn tortillas. That change produced the al pastor taco.

  No one knows exactly when the taco took the form people eat today. Some agree that it became popular in the 1960s.

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• 5. Anatomy of a Trompo

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  The cooking device behind every al pastor taco is the trompo, a vertical rotisserie whose name literally means spinning top. The meat on it is pork, soaked in a marinade of dried chilies, spices and pineapple. Achiote paste is typically added. A charcoal or gas flame cooks the stack slowly while it turns.

  Guajillo chile, garlic, cumin, clove, bay leaf and vinegar are common in the marinade. Many versions also include cinnamon, dried Mexican oregano, coriander and black peppercorns.

  As the outside of the stack browns, the cook shaves it off with a large knife in thin slices. The slices drop into a small corn tortilla. Finely chopped onions, cilantro and diced pineapple go on top. A wedge of lemon or lime and a salsa are optional.

  The same meat turns up in many other dishes. Alambres, huaraches, tortas and burritos all use it. So, remarkably, does pizza.

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• 6. Names Along the Route

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  Travel north or to the coast and the taco changes its name. In Baja California and some other coastal and northern places, the taco al pastor is called taco de trompo or taco de adobada. In Nuevo León, Durango and Chihuahua, tacos de trompo are the ones served on corn tortillas. When the same meat comes with cheese on a flour tortilla, it is called a gringa.

  A close cousin is the taco árabe, which literally means Arab taco. It came out of Arab-Mexican cuisine in Puebla in the 1930s. The meat is shawarma-style, carved from a spit, and it mixes Middle Eastern spices with indigenous Central Mexican ingredients. The bread is different: a pita-style flatbread called pan árabe, meaning Arab bread.

  Mexican immigrants have carried these tacos into the United States. They have become popular in Chicago and Los Angeles, two of the largest Mexican and Mexican-American population centers in the country.

  The route also runs backward. In the early 2000s, a chicken version marinated in the al pastor style was brought back to the Middle East. It is sold as "shawarma mexici." It comes wrapped in a thin flatbread with garlic mayonnaise, dill pickle and french fries.

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