Even during his days off, Raul Morales gets spotted by fans. On a recent visit to Universal Studios Hollywood, Morales, owner of Taqueria Vista Hermosa in Los Angeles, was waiting in line when he heard shouting.
“People called out ‘Chef Al Pastor! Chef Al Pastor!’” Morales said, laughing. Morales, who was born in Mexico City, came by the nickname through decades of hard work.
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He’s the third generation of his family to make al pastor tacos, their fresh tortillas filled with richly seasoned pork shaved from a rotating vertical spit.
“My recipe is very special, and very old,” he said.
Yet while Morales’ family recipes go back generations, and similar spit-roasted meats like shawarma and doner have been around for hundreds of years, his tacos represent a kind of cuisine that’s as contemporary and international as it is ancient and traditional. When you thread meat onto a spinning spit to roast it, it turns out, it doesn’t stay in one place for long.
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‘Any place you have a pointy stick or a sword’
Roasting meat on a spit or stick is likely among humans’ most ancient cooking techniques, says food historian Ken Albala, a professor of history at the University of the Pacific.
Feasts of spit-roasted meat appear in the Homeric epics The Iliad and The Odyssey, writes Susan Sherratt, emeritus professor of East Mediterranean archaeology at the University of Sheffield, in the journal Hesperia.
Iron spits that might have been used for roasting appear in the Aegean starting in the 10th century BCE. Such spits have been unearthed in tombs associated with male warriors, Sherratt writes, noting that roasting meat may have been a practice linked to male bonding and masculinity.
“I think the reason that it’s associated with men is partly because of hunting, and the tools, or weapons, that replicated what you would do in war,” Albala said. “When you celebrated a victory, you would go out and sacrifice an animal to the gods, which would basically be like a big barbecue.”
Roasting meat is not as simple as dangling a hunk of meat over the flames. When roasting, meat is not cooked directly on top of the heat source, Albala says, but beside it, which can generate richer flavors.
“Any place you have a pointy stick or a sword, people are going to figure out very quickly … if you cook with it off to the side of the fire, it’s going to taste much more interesting,” Albala said.