Caldo de Camarón Seco Sinaloense

This caldo is from Sinaloa. The same coast that gives the country its aguachile and its chilorio also feeds the interior of the state, where the dried shrimp from Bahía de Topolobampo and the marshes around Escuinapa makes its way inland in burlap sacks and ends up in pots like this one. The fresh shrimp pays the boats. The dried shrimp feeds the family.

The broth is built in three parts. Toasted dried shrimp, ground to a coarse powder, gives the caldo its body and its sea. A salsa of guajillo and pasilla, charred tomato, and onion fried in manteca gives it color and depth. Potato and carrot give it the weight that turns a caldo into a meal. Skip the toasting of the shrimp and the broth will taste like fish water. Skip the frying of the salsa and the chile will taste raw. These are not optional steps. They are the recipe.

This is Lent food, vigilia food, the kind of dish a Sinaloense home cook makes on a Friday when meat is off the table, but it shows up on weeknights all year because dried shrimp keeps in a jar and the rest of the ingredients are whatever the mercado is selling that week. My notes from a kitchen in El Rosario, Sinaloa, have one line written across the top of the page: 'sin camarón seco no hay caldo.' Without dried shrimp there is no caldo. Cada estado, su propia cocina. This one belongs to Sinaloa.