Quesadillas de Cazón Veracruzanas

This is from the Sotavento, the low, hot, green south of Veracruz where the Papaloapan river runs out to the Gulf. Tlacotalpan, Alvarado, Cosamaloapan. This is where the cazón comes off the boats and goes into the masa. Not Campeche, which has its own cazón and its own pan de cazón, and we can argue about that another day. Today we are in Veracruz.

A quesadilla de cazón has no cheese. None. In Mexico City they will ask whether you want your quesadilla with cheese or without, and people have nearly come to blows over the question. In the Sotavento nobody asks, because the cazón is the filling. This is a comida de vigilia, a Lenten dish, made in the weeks when the church set meat aside and the Gulf gave up fish instead. Shredded shark braised down with jitomate, green olives, capers, and chipotle, folded into corn masa and pressed on the comal.

Look at what is in the pan and you will see all three roots of this coast on one plate. The corn masa and the epazote are Indigenous, older than the conquest. The olives and the capers came off Spanish ships through the port of Veracruz. And the culture that cradles this food, the son jarocho coming off the radio, the rhythm of the whole Sotavento, carries the African inheritance the port also brought, whether the history books care to say so or not. This is La Tercera Raíz. Three roots, one quesadilla.

My mother was from Jalisco and never made these. I learned them from a woman named Doña Chofi who worked a comal in the market at Alvarado, selling them wrapped in paper, three for whatever the morning fishermen could pay. She told me the filling has to be dry or the masa splits on the comal. She was right. I have made them a hundred times since and that is the one rule that never bends. The filling must be dry. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.