Chef Lupita
Almejas Tatemadas de Loreto
Loreto's pit-roasted clams, planted hinge-up in beach sand and tatemadas under a fast fire of dried romerillo brush, the resinous Baja desert shrub that gives this dish its smoke.
Culinary Explorer
A cooking platform built around craft, culture, and the stories behind what we eat.
Mariscada Horneada al Chiltepin Sonorense
Created by
Sonora's coastal shellfish bake from Hermosillo and Bahia de Kino, built on garlic butter, lime, and the wild desert chiltepin that defines the northwest. Family-style in a clay cazuela, eaten with flour tortillas the way they do it in the north.
Main Dishes
Mexican
Special Occasion
Dinner Party
Celebration
35 min
Active Time
30 min cook•1 hr 5 min total
Yield6 servings
This is a Sonoran dish. Specifically from the coast around Hermosillo and Bahia de Kino, where the shrimp boats come in at dawn and the marisquerias build their menus around what got pulled from the Gulf of California that morning. Sonora is a coastal state, and the cooking of its coast does not look like the cooking of Veracruz or Yucatan. It looks like itself: garlicky, lime-forward, sharpened with the wild chiltepin that grows in the desert sierras.
The chiltepin is the ingredient that makes this dish Sonoran and not generic. It is a tiny round wild chile, harvested by hand in the hills of the state's interior, and Sonorenses guard it the way Oaxaquenos guard chilhuacle. It hits clean and sharp, no slow build, no smoke. If your chile vendor does not know what a chiltepin is, you are not at the right vendor. Look for it at any market that serves a Sonoran or northern Mexican community, sold in small glass jars by weight.
Flour tortillas belong on this table. Not corn. The north of Mexico is wheat country, has been since the Spanish brought the grain and the Sonoran soil agreed with it, and the tortillas de harina sonorenses are paper-thin, foldable, and made for sopping up garlic butter and shellfish liquor. If someone tells you flour tortillas are not authentic, they have never been north of Zacatecas. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
My mother was from Jalisco and did not cook this. I learned the dish in 2009 from a senora named Refugio who ran a marisqueria out of her own front room in Bahia de Kino, three tables, no menu, whatever came off her son's boat that morning. She baked it in a cazuela the size of a steering wheel and brought it to the table with a stack of tortillas and a small jar of chiltepines for the diners who wanted more heat. That is how it is done. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
The chiltepin (Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum) is the wild ancestor of all cultivated chiles in the Americas and grows abundantly in the Sierra Madre Occidental of Sonora, where it has been harvested by the Yaqui, Mayo, and Tohono O'odham peoples for thousands of years before the Spanish conquest. The state of Sonora declared the chiltepin a cultural heritage species in the 1990s, and the wild harvest remains a seasonal economic activity for rural Sonoran families, with the dried chile commanding higher market prices per kilogram than saffron in some years. The mariscada baked in clay reflects Sonora's dual identity as both a coastal fishing state, with the Gulf of California producing the bulk of Mexico's farmed shrimp, and a wheat-and-cattle interior whose flour tortilla tradition arrived with Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
large raw shrimp (camaron del Pacifico)
Quantity
1 pound
shell on, deveined through the shell
bay scallops or quartered sea scallops
Quantity
1 pound
firm white fish such as cabrilla or rock cod
Quantity
1 pound
cut into 2-inch chunks
clams (almejas chocolatas if you can find them)
Quantity
1 pound
scrubbed
mussels
Quantity
1 pound
scrubbed and debearded
unsalted butter
Quantity
1 whole stick (1/2 cup)
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
1/4 cup
head of garlic
Quantity
1 whole
cloves peeled and finely minced
white onion
Quantity
1 large
finely diced
Roma tomatoes
Quantity
3
finely diced
fresh chile guero (yellow wax chile)
Quantity
1
thinly sliced
dried chiltepin
Quantity
1 tablespoon
lightly crushed between your fingers
dry white wine or Tecate beer
Quantity
1/2 cup
fresh lime juice
Quantity
1/2 cup (about 4 to 5 limes)
fish stock or clam juice
Quantity
1/4 cup
dried Sonoran oregano (oregano del monte)
Quantity
1 tablespoon
crumbled
bay leaves
Quantity
2
kosher salt
Quantity
1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste
fresh cilantro
Quantity
1/2 cup
chopped
lime halves (optional)
Quantity
for serving
whole chiltepines (optional)
Quantity
for the table
warm flour tortillas (tortillas de harina sonorenses) (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| large raw shrimp (camaron del Pacifico)shell on, deveined through the shell | 1 pound |
| bay scallops or quartered sea scallops | 1 pound |
| firm white fish such as cabrilla or rock codcut into 2-inch chunks | 1 pound |
| clams (almejas chocolatas if you can find them)scrubbed | 1 pound |
| musselsscrubbed and debearded | 1 pound |
| unsalted butter | 1 whole stick (1/2 cup) |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 1/4 cup |
| head of garliccloves peeled and finely minced | 1 whole |
| white onionfinely diced | 1 large |
| Roma tomatoesfinely diced | 3 |
| fresh chile guero (yellow wax chile)thinly sliced | 1 |
| dried chiltepinlightly crushed between your fingers | 1 tablespoon |
| dry white wine or Tecate beer | 1/2 cup |
| fresh lime juice | 1/2 cup (about 4 to 5 limes) |
| fish stock or clam juice | 1/4 cup |
| dried Sonoran oregano (oregano del monte)crumbled | 1 tablespoon |
| bay leaves | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste |
| fresh cilantrochopped | 1/2 cup |
| lime halves (optional) | for serving |
| whole chiltepines (optional) | for the table |
| warm flour tortillas (tortillas de harina sonorenses) (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Wide cazuela de barro (12 to 14 inches) or heavy enameled cast iron skillet
- •Sharp paring knife for deveining shrimp
- •Stiff brush for scrubbing clams and mussels
- •Thick wooden board or trivet to bring the cazuela to the table
Instructions
- 1
Prepare the shellfish
Soak the clams and mussels in cold salted water for 20 minutes so they purge their sand. Discard any that stay open when tapped. Pat the shrimp, scallops, and fish dry on a clean kitchen towel. Cold seafood is happy seafood. Wet seafood steams in the oven instead of taking on color, and you want color. Heat your oven to 425F (220C) while you build the base.
If you cannot find cabrilla, ask your fishmonger for any firm Pacific white fish that holds its shape. Tilapia falls apart and is not the right fish for this dish. - 2
Build the sofrito base
Set a wide cazuela de barro or a heavy oven-safe skillet over medium heat. Melt the lard with half the butter. Add the diced onion with a pinch of salt and cook for five minutes, until translucent and starting to gild at the edges. Add the minced garlic, the whole head of it, and stir for one minute. Garlic is not a seasoning here, garlic is a main ingredient. The kitchen should smell like a Hermosillo marisqueria at noon.
- 3
Add the chiltepin and tomato
Crush the chiltepines between your fingers as you add them to the pan. They are tiny, round, and they hit harder than they look. Sonorenses pick them wild from the desert hills around the state, and the heat is sharp, immediate, and clean, not the slow burn of a habanero. Add the diced tomato, the sliced chile guero, the oregano, and the bay leaves. Cook for five minutes, until the tomato breaks down and the fat turns orange. La manteca es el sabor.
Sonoran oregano is not Mexican oregano from Oaxaca and it is not Mediterranean oregano. It grows in the Sierra Madre Occidental and it carries a resinous, almost piney note. If you cannot find it, use Mexican oregano. Do not use Italian. - 4
Deglaze with wine and lime
Pour in the wine or beer. Let it bubble hard for a minute to cook off the raw alcohol. Add the lime juice and the fish stock. Bring to a simmer and let it reduce for three or four minutes, just until the liquid tightens slightly. Taste it. It should be bracing: garlicky, sharp from the lime, hot from the chiltepin, with the tomato rounding the edges. Adjust salt now. Once the shellfish goes in, you will not stir it again.
- 5
Layer the seafood in the cazuela
Pull the cazuela off the heat. Layer the fish chunks across the bottom first, they take the longest. Tuck the clams and mussels in next, hinge-side down so they open upward into the sauce. Scatter the shrimp and scallops across the top. Dot the surface with the remaining butter cut into small pieces. Do not stir. The seafood cooks in layers and each one needs to find its own place in the sauce.
- 6
Bake until everything opens
Slide the cazuela into the hot oven, uncovered. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes. The mariscada is ready when every clam and mussel has opened wide, the shrimp have curled and turned coral, and the scallops are opaque through the center. Discard any clam or mussel that refused to open. They were dead before they got to the pot and you do not eat those. The sauce should be glossy, with the butter and rendered shellfish liquor pooling between the shells.
Do not cover the cazuela. The point is to bake, not to steam. A covered pot gives you a wet stew. An uncovered cazuela gives you the slightly caramelized edges that make this dish what it is. - 7
Finish and bring to the table
Pull the cazuela from the oven. Scatter the chopped cilantro across the top. Bring the cazuela straight to the table, set on a thick wooden board so it does not crack the surface. Set out warm flour tortillas, lime halves, and a small clay bowl of whole chiltepines for the diners who want to crush their own over the top. Eat it together, family style, ladling sauce over tortillas and pulling shells apart with your fingers. Asi se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Buy your shellfish from a fishmonger who can tell you what boat it came off, not from a supermarket case. Mariscada is honest cooking and it cannot hide bad seafood. If the clams smell like anything other than clean ocean, walk away. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
- •Chiltepin is sold dried in small jars at any mercado that serves a northern Mexican community, and online from Sonoran specialty importers. Do not substitute chile de arbol or pequin. They taste different and they hit differently. If you cannot find chiltepin, wait until you can. The dish is named after the chile.
- •The cazuela de barro matters. Clay holds heat evenly and brings the dish to the table looking like what it is. If you do not have one, use a heavy enameled cast iron skillet, but do not use a thin sheet pan. The seafood needs the thermal mass to cook gently and the sauce needs depth to pool.
- •No me vengas con atajos. Do not pre-cook the shellfish in the pan and finish in the oven. The whole point of baking is that everything cooks together in one layered movement, and the timing is what makes the shrimp tender and the clams just opened.
Advance Preparation
- •The sofrito base, through the deglazing step, can be made up to one day ahead and refrigerated in the cazuela. Bring it back to a simmer on the stove before layering in the seafood and baking.
- •The shellfish must be cleaned and held on ice in the refrigerator for no more than four hours before cooking. Mariscada is not a make-ahead dish past that point. The pleasure is in the freshness and the pleasure does not survive a second day.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 450g)
Calories
510 calories
Total Fat
27 g
Saturated Fat
14 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
13 g
Cholesterol
240 mg
Sodium
960 mg
Total Carbohydrates
12 g
Dietary Fiber
1 g
Sugars
3 g
Protein
50 g
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