Chicharrones de Harina Norteños

These are from the north. Sonora claims them loudest, but you will find chicharrones de harina sold from cellophane bags hanging at every tienda and street stall from Hermosillo to Mexicali to Ciudad Juarez. Northern Mexico is wheat country. Flour tortillas are northern. So is the pasta-wheel duro you are about to fry. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the south can keep its corn chicharrones. These belong to us up here.

The duro itself is wheat flour, water, salt, sometimes a little baking soda, rolled thin, cut into shapes, and dried hard as glass in the desert air. You do not make them at home. You buy them dried from a Mexican market and you fry them. That is the whole recipe. The transformation happens in the lard. A pale, plastic-looking disc drops into hot manteca and within seconds it puffs into an airy, crisp curl two or three times its original size. It is one of the most satisfying things to watch in a kitchen.

The seasoning is northern: lime, sea salt, ground chiltepin, the wild bird chile that grows on the Sonoran hillsides and that norteños use the way central Mexico uses arbol. Most plaza vendors finish them with Valentina or Huichol and a squeeze of Maggi for the kids. My notebook has a page with the words 'chiltepin molido, sal de mar, limon mexicano,' copied from a senora who sold them in bolsas de celofan outside the cathedral in Hermosillo. She did not give me a recipe. She told me the order: salt first, chiltepin second, lime last. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.