Cecina de Yecapixtla con Crema y Frijoles

This is from Morelos. Specifically from Yecapixtla, the small town in the eastern part of the state where every block holds a cecineria and the smell of salt-cured beef sits in the air from sunrise. The cecina is the dish. Everything else on the plate is built around it.

Yecapixtla cecina is beef cut by hand into one continuous paper-thin sheet, salted, and air-dried on wooden racks in the sun. The cecineros of Yecapixtla have done this the same way for generations and they protect the technique with the seriousness of guildsmen. The cut is what makes it. A thick slice of salted beef is not cecina. It is salted beef. Cecina is the sheet, the translucence, the way it cooks in seconds on a hot comal and develops crisp edges without ever going leather. If your butcher cannot get you real Yecapixtla cecina, find a Mexican carniceria that imports it, or wait until you can. A substitute is a compromise, not an upgrade.

The rest of the plate is the Morelos breakfast and weekend table: bayo beans cooked with epazote and refried in lard, thick crema de rancho that pools and clings, crumbled queso fresco, a salsa molcajeteada of charred tomato and serrano, warm corn tortillas, sliced avocado. Nothing fancy. Nothing precious. This is the food that fonderas and home cooks in Cuautla and Yecapixtla and Tepoztlán have served every day of their working lives. Saber cocinar es saber vivir. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Morelos.