I took a long weekend vacation last week so I wasn’t constantly bombarded with Trump’s fascist regime destroying our country for a few days. The most fun thing I followed was news of his possible demise. Wouldn’t that have been fabulous?
Meanwhile, the fascists just keep getting more and more crazy and I’m getting tired of writing about them. We only have one more dish to go from the Sea World Seven Seas Food Festival sample list after this one. Then we’ll start on this years’ Epcot Food & Wine Festival. I don’t think I’ll tie that one in to fascism, though.
So, for the fascism side, let me just say this: Trump is setting up a military takeover of D.C. and perhaps some other major blue cities (those he thinks he can get away with, anyway). And he’s now trying to start a war in Venezuela. This is all so that he can try to end elections. The batshit nut job really believes that if we’re in a war, he can pause elections and rule until he dies.
But one thing he will definitely try to do is void the midterms. He’ll declare the elections were rigged and congressional Republicans will refuse to seat newly elected Democrats. There will be protests, and there will be violence and death.
Hopefully he’ll die before that can happen and I seriously doubt J.D. “couch-fucker” Vance can control the party as well as Trump has. That being said, I watched a fabulous video a day or so ago, probably on Tik-Tok, from an old guy who gives us the history of the fascist Republican movement and tells us that Republicans in Congress are not cowed by Trump, as we might like to believe. They aren’t challenging him because he’s doing exactly what they want him to do.
So, even when Trump farts off to oblivion, we’ll have a big fascist problem on our hands. Keep your fingers crossed and go find something good to eat.
Speaking of good things to eat…Tacos al Pastor!
I confess, I thought maybe al pastor meant…like, something you eat outside. Or…street food. But as we were working with this recipe, we found a note at the bottom saying that we could substitute pineapple juice for orange juice turning these adobo chicken tacos into tacos al pastor! So, I’m thinking, hmm. Does pastor mean pineapple? No. No, it doesn’t. Al Pastor means “to the shepherd.” All I can find out is that al pastor meats are marinated in a blend of spices and pineapple juice. How did pineapple juice get related to shepherds?
Who cares?
We used said recipe just for the marinade and cooking of the chicken, but with tenderloins instead of thighs. We substituted dried spices for the seeds, etc. 1 whole clove is about 3/4 tsp ground cloves. 1 tsp coriander seeds is about 3/4 tsp ground. And we did equal parts for the annatto seeds to powder. And, as I said, we used pineapple juice.
According to Sea World, their tacos al pastor was: “Mazina tortilla, Chipotle ancho adobo chicken with Pineapple Slaw and Cilantro Crema.”
We noticed that this chicken looked covered in sauce. But our recipe wasn’t the same. The chicken was grilled or fried once out of the marinade (we baked ours in the oven) and didn’t look saucy at all. So, we intended to use part of the adobo marinade from the recipe on the finished taco, but it was way too salty. It worked fabulously for a marinade, but would be inedible by itself. That left us without adobo sauce.
In hindsight, we should have just made another batch with little to no salt. Instead, we went out and purchased this:
We prepared it according to the directions, using water, and it was so gross I couldn’t stand it. I’m so glad I tasted it before putting it on my taco. So, we went with some sriracha in the taco instead. We also left off the cilantro crema because we don’t like cilantro. And I have no idea what the crumbly stuff is in the picture. It looks like some kind of cheese. We didn’t add any other toppings to try to make it look as close to the picture as we could.
I made the pineapple slaw by just making normal slaw and adding pineapple to it. It was pretty darn good.
Here’s my taco al pastor!
Very tasty. But once again…a lot of work making the adobo marinade. It did add flavor, but you’d get plenty of flavor with just some broiled spiced chicken and good stuff on the taco along with it.
Go on out and try some for yourself!