Ensalada de Bodas Sonorense

This is from Sonora. It crosses into Baja California and Sinaloa, but it lives at the wedding tables of the Noroeste and that is where you should picture it. Cold, sharp, sliced thin, set in a glass cazuela next to the carne asada and the flour tortillas. A counterweight to the meat and the lard. Without it, a Sonoran wedding plate is unbalanced.

The rice vinegar will surprise people who think Mexican cooking only knows white vinegar and lime. It does not. The Noroeste was settled in part by Chinese laborers who built the railroads in the late 1800s and stayed to open mercados, restaurants, and farms across Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja. Their fingerprint is in the food. Rice vinegar in this slaw. Soy sauce in the marinades for carne asada in some Hermosillo households. Whole Chinese-Mexican restaurants, the cafes de chinos, in Mexicali that have been there for four generations. This is real history and it is on the plate. Do not strip it out and call it more authentic. You would be making it less so.

My notebook from the Sonora trip has this recipe written out by a senora named Esperanza who hosted me in Hermosillo for a week. She made it for her granddaughter's wedding the day I left. She told me three things: shred the cabbage by hand, soak it until it goes translucent, and never use white vinegar. I have made it her way for fifteen years and I have not improved on it. Cada estado, su propia cocina.