Robalo Empapelado en Hoja Santa

This dish is from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow Zapotec belt of Oaxaca where the Pacific almost meets the Gulf and the cooking belongs to the women of Juchitan and Tehuantepec who run the markets and the kitchens with equal authority. Robalo is the fish of those brackish lagoons. Hoja santa grows wild in the courtyards. The banana leaf comes off the same plants that shade the patios. Three ingredients of the same place, cooked together. That is what a regional dish actually is.

Hoja santa, the sacred leaf, is the soul of this empapelado. It tastes of anise, sassafras, root beer, and something green you cannot quite name. It is not a substitute for anything else and nothing else substitutes for it. If you cannot find it fresh, do not make this dish today. Make it the week the leaves arrive. Mexican grandmothers cook with what the mercado is selling, not with what looks good on a Pinterest board.

The technique is empapelado, wrapped in paper, except the paper is leaf. The banana leaf seals in the steam and gives a faint smokiness. The hoja santa lays directly on the fish and perfumes it from both sides. There is no sauce. There is no fancy cut. There is robalo, leaf, tomato, onion, garlic, chile, lard, salt. The discipline of the dish is the absence of clutter. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the Isthmus does not need to dress this fish up.

My mother never cooked Isthmus food. She was from Jalisco. But I sat in the kitchen of a senora in Juchitan named Dona Felisa for four afternoons in 2014, watching her wrap empapelados for the lunchtime rush at the market, and I copied what she did into the same notebook my mother left me. Dona Felisa did not measure. She sized the hoja santa to the fish with her hand and tied the package with a strip of leaf in three seconds flat. Saber cocinar es saber vivir. She lived this.