Papas a la Mexicana Sinaloenses

This is a Sinaloa side dish. It belongs on the parrillada table next to the carne asada, the frijoles puercos, the stack of flour tortillas wrapped in a cloth. It is everyday cooking, the kind of pan a mother makes on a Tuesday and a tio reheats on Sunday morning to fold into a burrito with the leftover meat from the night before.

The name tells you the dish. A la mexicana means the trio that carries the colors of the flag: white onion, red tomato, green chile serrano. Three ingredients, plus the potato and the lard, and that is the recipe. There is no shortcut here because there is nothing to shortcut. What there is, is doing each step right. Cubes the same size. Lard, not oil. Potatoes browned before the tomato hits the pan. Serrano with the seeds in. Mexican oregano crumbled between your palms over the skillet at the end.

In the Noroeste the tortilla is flour, not corn. Sinaloa is wheat country and cattle country, and the flour tortilla is what you tear apart to scoop these potatoes off the plate. Anyone who tells you to use corn here did not grow up eating this food. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this skillet belongs to the north.

My mother was from Jalisco and she made her own version, but I learned this one from a senora named Dona Chayo in a kitchen in Los Mochis who served it next to machaca and refused to call it a recipe. She called it lo de siempre, the usual. That is what this dish is. The usual. And the usual, when it is done with respect, is the most honest cooking there is.