Brochetas de Camarón al Chiltepín

These brochetas come from the Sinaloa coast, the stretch of Pacific beach between Mazatlan and Altata where the shrimp boats unload at dawn and the palapa cooks have a fire going by ten in the morning. This is beach food, but do not confuse beach food with simple food. Five ingredients done right is harder than thirty done badly.

The chile is what makes this dish what it is. Chiltepin is the wild ancestor of every cultivated chile in the Americas. It grows untamed on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Occidental in Sonora and northern Sinaloa, picked by hand, sold by the gram. It is small, round, and ferocious. Sinaloan cooks use it the way other cooks use black pepper, except chiltepin bites and then disappears. The heat is sharp and quick. It does not linger like a habanero. That is the chile this dish demands. No me vengas con atajos sustituting cayenne or chile de arbol. Find the chiltepin or wait until you can.

The fire matters too. Mesquite is what they burn on that coast because mesquite grows in the dry country behind the beach and because it puts a smoke into the shrimp that gas grills cannot fake. The shells take the char. The flesh stays sweet. The chiltepin butter melts down through the seams and pools on the platter. Three minutes a side, lime at the table, tortillas warm. That is the whole dish. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Sinaloa.