Revoltijo de Romeritos con Tortitas de Camarón

Revoltijo is Ciudad de México's dish. Specifically a centro and Estado de México dish, and it lives on two tables every year: Nochebuena and Viernes Santo. If you grew up in the capital, you know the smell, mole frying in lard, the wet green tang of romeritos coming out of the colander, the salty brine of camarón seco being ground in a molcajete. That smell is December.

The romeritos themselves are the heart of it. They are not rosemary, despite the name, and they are not spinach. They are a wild, succulent, salty-leaved plant (Suaeda torreyana) that grows around the salt flats of the central valleys and shows up at the mercado from late November through Easter. Their season is the dish's season. When the romeritos are gone, the dish is gone. Mexican grandmothers cook with what the mercado is selling today.

My mother was from Jalisco and she did not grow up with revoltijo. She married into it. Her notebook has a page with my paternal grandmother's instructions copied in pencil, including a note in the margin that says 'no escatimes en el camarón seco', do not skimp on the dried shrimp. She was right. The ground camarón seco is what seasons the mole. It is the salt, the umami, the thread that ties the wild greens to the chiles to the fritters. Without it, you have mole with vegetables. With it, you have revoltijo.

This is a fasting dish that does not taste like a fasting dish. The Church forbade meat during Lent and on Christmas Eve vigil, so the cooks of central Mexico built a plate around shrimp, eggs, and wild greens that is richer and more layered than most meat dishes will ever be. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, especially when the calendar tells you what you cannot eat.