Lomitos de Valladolid

Lomitos de Valladolid is from Valladolid. Not from Mérida, not from Cancún, not from the catch-all category of "Yucatecan food" that tourists eat without learning the difference. This dish belongs to the colonial city in the eastern part of the state of Yucatán, halfway between Mérida and the Caribbean coast, and the cocineras there will correct you if you suggest otherwise. Cada estado, su propia cocina, y cada ciudad también.

What makes it Valladolid and not somewhere else is the combination of three things: pork loin cut small and simmered until it gives up but does not fall apart, a sauce built on tomatoes charred on the comal until the skin turns black, and the chopped hard-boiled egg scattered over the top at the end. The egg is not a garnish. It is part of the architecture. Without it, you have made pork stew. With it, you have made lomitos.

The naranja agria does the acid work. If you cannot find a true sour orange, mix regular orange with lime in equal parts, but understand you are compromising. Sour orange has a perfume that lime cannot replicate, a bitter floral note that is the signature of Yucatecan cooking from cochinita pibil to escabeche to this dish. The chile xkatik, the pale yellow chile that grows on the peninsula, brings a slow, fruity heat that does not overwhelm. The whole habanero perfumes the pot without burning it down, as long as it stays intact.

I traveled to Valladolid for the first time in 2009 and ate lomitos at the Bazar Municipal, served by a señora named Doña Aurora who had been making it on the same stove for thirty-four years. She watched me eat my first bite and waited. When I asked her what was in the sauce, she said: "Tomate quemado, ajo quemado, naranja agria, y paciencia." Burned tomato, burned garlic, sour orange, and patience. That is the recipe. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.