Pámpano en Hoja Santa

This is a Campeche dish. The Gulf coast, the fish coming off the boats at Champotón and Seybaplaya, the kitchens of the city of Campeche where seafood is not a special occasion but a Tuesday. Pámpano en hoja santa is what a coastal cook makes when she has good fish and she trusts the leaf to do the work.

Hoja santa is not optional. The name means sacred leaf and the flavor is the reason: anise, sassafras, a faint root-beer perfume that comes alive when you pass the leaf over a flame. There is no substitute that does the same thing. Avocado leaf is closer to anise but smokier. Banana leaf alone gives you the steam but not the perfume. If your market does not carry hoja santa, find one that does before you make this dish. In Campeche it grows in backyards. In the United States, Latino markets in cities with peninsular Mexican communities carry it fresh year-round.

The chile is xcatic, the pale yellow Yucatecan chile that looks like a güero but tastes fruitier and lands softer on the tongue. Charred and sliced into rings, it sits on top of the fish like a signature. The habanero goes in whole, never cut, because in this dish it is perfume and not heat. The fat is manteca de cerdo. Yes, lard with fish. The peninsular kitchen has been doing this since before anyone told it not to and the small amount of pork fat smeared on the hoja santa carries the leaf's oils into the flesh of the fish.

My mother did not cook peninsular food. She was from Jalisco. I learned this dish from a señora named Doña Carmela in the market of Campeche, who taught me to toast the banana leaf for exactly five seconds and to never, ever skip the lime soak on the fish. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, she told me, and then she laughed because she had been saying it for fifty years and her daughters still rushed the lime step.