* HOST: Ever since our prehistoric ancestors first put food to fire, people have contrived ingenious, and not always conventional ways to harness the flames.

Today, on Project Fire , we're grilling out-of-the-box with tacos al pastor.

It sure takes me back to the taco stands of the Yucat�n.

A Project Fire mystery box.

Whoa.

And a volcano pineapple.

How's that for a high drama dessert?

From the Pearlstone Campus in Reisterstown, Maryland, I'm Steven Raichlen and this is Project Fire .

* ANNOUNCER: Steven Raichlen's Project Fire is made possible by...

This is The Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at biggreenegg.com.

Fire Magic, combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill, crafted in America for over 80 years... Green Mountain Grills, wood fired pellet grills... Blue Rhino...

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

And by the following... * CREW MEMBER: Ready?

Looks like we're about to go into some more cloud cover.

STEVEN: Just one problem.

We don't have a vertical rotisserie.

[inaudible] one of those, and then... CHRIS LYNCH: Just slice it?

Okay.

STEVEN: Yeah, that's great.

Thank you.

Tacos al pastor belong to a distinguished family of dishes that include Turkish doner, Greek gyro, and Middle Eastern shawarma.

All are cooked on a vertical rotisserie, which gives each portion a crusty end cut.

There's just one problem.

Most people, myself included, don't own a vertical rotisserie.

I have a workaround.

I give you the Project Fire tacos al pastor.

* Like, so many Mexican dishes, it starts with a marinade.

These are guajillo chilies, dried chilies with an earthy, almost fruity flavor.

You soak them in water for one hour until they're soft and pliable, then make a slit, open up the chili, and scrape out the seeds.

You can find chilies guajillos at any Mexican market, or order them online.

Place the soaked guajillo chilies in a blender.

There's another ingredient that may be out of your wheelhouse, achiote, annatto seed.

It has a minerally tangy flavor and a beautiful, vivid orange color.

Add that to your blender as well.

Next, our aromatics.

We'll add ground cumin, dried oregano, a combination used throughout Mexico and South America.

Then for a sweet touch, ground cinnamon, and anise seed.

It should us a little licorice-y flavor.

Next, add finely chopped garlic, fresh thyme, fresh bay leaves, chopped tomatillos, which will add a pleasant acidity, freshly ground black pepper, and a good spoonful of salt.

Finally, add the guajillo chilies soaking liquid, and distilled white vinegar.

Now, place the lid on the blender, and puree the ingredients to a thick paste.

* Let's take a taste here.

* Mmm, tart, earthy, aromatic, spice scented, but not particularly fiery.

Now for the pork.

I'm using a boneless pork shoulder.

I like pork shoulder, because it is very well marbled and it's intrinsically tender.

So, I'll cut it in half, then I'll cut each half in half.

This will make it easier to slice thinly.

Then, stand it on its side, and cut your pork across the grain into slices that are one quarter inch thick.

Now, take your marinade, pour a little into your baking dish, then layer your pork slices on top.

Next, spread some thinly sliced onions, kind of break those up into rings, pour on more marinade, then more pork, and then layer on a little bit more thinly sliced onion.

Last of all, the remaining marinade.

In the Yucat�n, this marinade is known as a "recado rojo."

Marinate the pork for at least four hours, or as long as overnight.

[fire swooshes in] In lieu of a vertical rotisserie, I'll direct grill the pork on a gas grill.

So, we start by cleaning the grill with our stiff wire brush, then oiling the grill with a half onion dipped in oil, and drawn across the bars of the grate.

Here's the marinated pork.

Arrange it on the hot grate.

* After a minute or so, give each slice of pork a quarter turn, so it grills evenly.

* Now, here's the other element that makes tacos al pastor so unique: grilled pineapple to pair with the meat.

And arrange the pineapple slices on the grill grate.

Once the pork is browned on the bottom, turn the slices over.

Likewise, give a quarter turn to each pineapple slice, and once the pineapple's brown on the bottom, turn it over.

When the pork is firm to the touch, it's ready, so I'll transfer it to a wire rack.

I like working on a wire rack, because it keeps the pork from getting soggy on the bottom.

And here's your pineapple.

The last step is to warm the tortillas.

I have white corn tortillas.

It's a quick grill, 20 seconds per side will do it.

And just keep them covered until you're ready to serve.

So here's how it goes together.

We'll set out three tortillas, then take a slice of pork and a slice of pineapple.

Now, cut the pork and pineapple into thin slivers.

These thin slivers correspond to carving the edges off the pork and pineapple on a vertical rotisserie.

Place the slivered pork and pineapple on the warm tortilla.

Now top with diced avocado, purple cabbage, chopped fresh cilantro, and finally, pico de Gallo, the basic Mexican salsa.

Roll this up.

Mmm, I love the crusty pork, the sweet pineapple, the salsa, the aromatics, the creamy avocado, and it sure takes me back to the taco stands of the Yucat�n.

Now, you know how to make tacos al pastor, no special rotisserie needed.

[fire swooshes in] NORA SINGLEY: Watch out.

Roll out the red carpet.

CHRIS: The talent's here.

[laughter] NORA: Steven can kind of grill anything, so we wanted to blow him away.

CHRIS: I think this one's going to really challenge him to bring out the big guns.

NORA: This is new; I think to both of us.

CHRIS: Yes.

NORA: Have you ever done this before?

CHRIS: No, no, no.

NORA: I certainly haven't.

CHRIS: It's a mystery.

NORA: It's his.

CHRIS: Indeed.

Shall we cover it?

NORA: Please.

Careful, careful.

CHRIS: Yeah.

NORA: Okay.

CHRIS: All right.

NORA: Great.

[fire swooshes in] STEVEN: It's time for another Project Fire mystery box.

I don't know what's in the box, but I can't wait to find out.

Oh, my goodness.

Whoa.

[laughs] You know, I've grilled a lot of things in my travels on the world's barbecue trail, but I have never seen one of these.

It's a sunflower.

I did see on the internet that you can grill these things whole.

This is not as immediately apparent as some of the other mystery ingredients, but I've got some ideas, so let's see.

I'm going to take a few sun-dried tomatoes, maybe the shishito peppers.

That'll be cool.

What are these guys?

Marcona almonds.

Cool.

I definitely need the figs.

I definitely need the goat cheese.

Bread, that could work.

I've got butter and bacon.

Yeah, I think, I'm good.

[fire swooshes in] I feel like I'm sailing into uncharted waters here, but let's see.

I guess the first thing, I'm going to cut off the stalk, and I'll set that aside.

I got an idea with the leaves.

Then, the next thing, I want to do is just clean up this sunflower head.

So, I'll pull off the petals, and then these are like little kind of flowery things and I don't think they're edible, so I'm going to scrape those off.

Each of these little bumps is going to become a sunflower seed.

I think, we want to pull these green leaves back, but I want to keep the whole head together, I don't want this to fall apart.

It's kind of a fibrous texture, almost like foam core.

I'm not sure what that's going to taste like, but we'll find out.

Then, I think we need to cut off the stem, trim a little bit more of this off.

By way of a marinade, I'll grate some fresh lemon zest over the bottom of the sunflower, and then a little freshly squeezed lemon juice, and extra-virgin olive oil, and finally, some coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Again, a little bit more lemon zest, and then more of the lemon juice, then more extra-virgin olive oil, and finally, coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

I'm thinking I want to do both an indirect grill and direct grill.

Indirect grill to soften up the sunflower head, direct grill to finish it, give a nice sear.

And to set up a gas grill for indirect grilling, you light the outside burners, you leave the inside burner off.

Now, we need a basting mixture for the sunflower head, and I was thinking bacon, shishito peppers, and shallots.

We have a big, beautiful slab of bacon.

I'll cut off this fatty end, and we'll use the bacon fat to oil the grill grate.

Then, slice the bacon crosswise into about quarter inch thick slices.

I'm thinking that the smokiness of the bacon will go really nicely with the sunflower.

Then, I'm going to cut the bacon slices crosswise into these little bacon slivers.

I'll just put the bacon in the skillet.

Meanwhile, I see the grills about 400 degrees.

I'll oil the grill grate.

Now, I don't really know what a cooked sunflower head feels like, so I'm going to test it in its uncooked stage, and it's pretty firm.

So, I imagine when it's cooked, the skewer will go through easily.

We'll indirect grill the sunflower head until it's tender.

I'm not sure the cooking time, I'm betting maybe 20 or 30 minutes.

My bacon is starting to brown.

Meanwhile, I thought, we would flavor this bacon mixture with some shishito peppers, which I'll just slice crosswise, and add your shishito peppers, and stir that in.

And next, I'll take some of these cherry peppers.

I think, I'll cut them crosswise.

* Then, I have a shallot, and thinly slice the shallot.

I want about a half cup of butter.

We'll add that to the mixture here.

So, this will be the basting mixture for the sunflower.

We're playing the smokiness of the bacon against the heat of the peppers, against the earthiness of the shallot.

The basting mixture is ready.

I can see the bacon is crisp, and we'll start basting the sunflower with this bacon butter mixture.

Okay.

You want to keep about a 400 degree temperature in here, we'll baste every few minutes.

And meanwhile, I had an idea to use the sunflower leaves.

My thought here is I'll soften the leaves up just about 30 seconds per side on the grill.

I mean, this is what you would do with a grape leaf or a squash leaf, so maybe it works with a sunflower leaf.

Once, the leaf starts to wilt on one side, we'll just soften it up on the other side.

Okay, we'll take this one off, and we'll treat this one the same way.

Turn it over.

There we go.

And while we're at it, let's turn the sunflower over.

Ooh, maybe this is going to be kind of like an artichoke.

And we'll baste the bottom as well.

Goat cheese has a natural affinity for figs, so I'll cut the figs into slices.

Take the sunflower leaf and take a couple of slices of fresh goat cheese, and then we'll shingle the figs on top.

Roll this up, tuck in the sides, and then we'll continue rolling.

It's almost like a grape leaf.

And then, I'm going to cut a length of string, we'll come like this, and tie off a knot.

For the second sunflower leaf bundle, a couple of slices of fresh goat cheese, and I'm thinking some slivered sun-dried tomato, and some chopped Marcona almonds.

We'll roll this up, * and here are your sunflower leaf bundles.

Finally, a couple of slices of grilled bread.

Okay.

I'll just brush the bread with a little bit more of this bacon pepper butter.

We're almost ready here, the last thing, I want to do is oil these sunflower leaf packets.

Wow.

The sunflower is browning up nicely.

I'll check it with a skewer, and it feels pretty tender, so you know what?

I'm not going to turn this over and direct grill it, I think, it's pretty good now, and I don't want it to fall apart.

What I will do, I'll just brush it again with a little bit more bacon pepper butter, and to continue browning, I'll light this rear rotisserie burner, and place your goat cheese packets directly over the fire.

Pretty quick, a couple minutes per side, just to brown up the leaf.

Let me grill off the bread.

And this is super quick.

Once, the goat cheese packets are browned, just turn them over.

Here's your grilled bread, and this guy.

All right, and now for the sunflower.

So, I'll just slide the spatula under it, put it on the plate.

That's, that's pretty cool looking, isn't it?

And then, I'll just spoon some of this bacon pepper mixture around it, and to finish the sunflower up, a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, a little sea salt, and there you have it, grilled sunflowers, grilled sunflower leaves with goat cheese.

So, I'll cut a wedge out of the sunflower.

Mmm, interesting.

And we'll take a spoonful of the bacon pepper mixture on the side.

For our sunflower leaf, goat cheese packets, I'll snip the string and unwrap the packet.

This is the one with sun-dried tomato and Marcona almonds, and there's your goat cheese with fig.

Here goes.

Take a bite.

* Mmm, interesting.

It's very mild, kind of chews like corn, tastes vaguely like an artichoke, with a slight nutty flavor, and you've got two different textures.

The sunflower seeds themselves are crunchy, and the bottom of the sunflower is creamy, almost like, an artichoke heart.

Mmm.

Of course, how do you go wrong with bacon and peppers?

Now, let's try the goat cheese.

So, I'll break off a piece of toast.

First, I'll take some of the goat cheese with the sun-dried tomato.

Mmm, I love that contrast of the tart sun-dried tomato and the creamy goat cheese, and you know, grilling in the leaves imparts a mild smoky flavor.

So, let's see how the fig tastes.

Mmm.

And here you have the sweet crunch of the figs, the creamy goat cheese.

Actually, that one is my favorite.

So folks, maybe this was a first for you, it was certainly a first for me.

Chris and Nora, great job with the mystery ingredient.

* I have a dramatic dessert for you, a pineapple volcano.

When buying pineapples, look for a fruit with a yellow rind like this.

This is a sign of ripeness and sweetness.

Now, twist the pineapple and the crown in opposite directions to remove the crown.

Lay the pineapple on its side, and slice off the top and the bottom.

Now, stand the pineapple up, and slice off the rind.

It's almost like removing slices in the shape of barrel staves.

Lay the pineapple on its side, and making V-shaped cuts, remove the eyes.

Removing the eyes this way gives you these decorative ridges, which will crisp up when you grill the pineapple.

* Alright.

Next, stand the pineapple upright, and remove the core.

* Come out like that.

* Now, thread the pineapple onto a rotisserie skewer.

Tighten the prong.

Now, make the spiced sugar.

Start with turbinado sugar.

Add ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground allspice, and ground cloves.

Whisk the spices into the sugar.

Now, paint the pineapple on all sides with molasses, * and don't forget to get the ends.

Next, sprinkle the molasses-coated pineapple with your spiced sugar.

This is going to be a study of sweets, the sweet pineapple, the sweet molasses, and the sweet spiced sugar.

Once, your pineapple is sugared, give it a light sprinkle of salt.

Salt has an uncanny way of heightening the sweetness.

Now, place your pineapple on its rotisserie spit into the rotisserie motor and switch on the rotisserie, and you'll spit roast the pineapple.

And now for the high drama, a roofer's torch.

So, I'll light.

* There's more than just theatrics to this.

That blast of flame cooks the sugar and molasses to a hard candy crust.

Remove the spit from the rotisserie motor.

We'll just loosen this prong, pull it out, then stand the pineapple up on a platter.

Fill the cavity with 151 rum.

* Light the rum, and there's your volcano pineapple.

So, we just let it burn down, then I'll cut it up and serve it.

[fire swooshes in] Tip it on its side, slice it.

To serve with your volcano pineapple, a dollop of cinnamon whipped cream.

Take a slice.

* Mmm, sweet, juicy pineapple, caramelized candy crust, cool, creamy whipped cream.

How's that for a high drama dessert?

So that's our show on the improbable grill.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time.

ANNOUNCER: For recipes and more live-fire cooking, visit stevenraichlen.com.

You can also follow Steven Raichlen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Steven's book, "How to Grill Vegetables," and the classic, "Project Smoke," can be ordered online at stevenraichlen.com, or call this phone number for ordering and customer service.

Steven Raichlen's Project Fire was made possible by...

This is The Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at biggreenegg.com.

Fire Magic, combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill, crafted in America for over 80 years... Green Mountain Grills, wood fired pellet grills... Blue Rhino...

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

And by the following... STEVEN: Which one would you like me to take?

CREW MEMBER: That front right one looks pretty amazing.

STEVEN: That one?

STEVEN: That one?

STEVEN: That one?

CREW MEMBER: No, this one right here.

STEVEN: That one?

CREW MEMBER: The front one.

STEVEN: That one?

CREW MEMBER: No, that one.

The other one.

STEVEN: Well, how about I taste this one?

CREW MEMBER 2: I'm confused, which one?

STEVEN: I'm going to take this one.

CREW MEMBER 2: Okay.

STEVEN: This is great.

This is, this is such a hoot.

Yeah, I think I'm good.

Oops.

Sorry.

* *