Tacos de Cazón Veracruzanos

Tacos de cazón are from Veracruz. From the Sotavento, the low green country where the Papaloapan river spills into the Gulf, where Tlacotalpan keeps its painted arches and Alvarado keeps its salty tongue and the cazón comes off the boats in the morning. Campeche cooks cazón too, layered into pan de cazón, and people confuse the two. Don't. This is the everyday Veracruz version: shredded shark stewed down and folded soft into a warm corn tortilla. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

Look in the pot and you can read the history of the coast. Jitomate, epazote, chile: the Indigenous hand. Green olives, capers, olive oil: the Spanish hand, because Veracruz was the port where those things first walked into Mexico. And the Sotavento itself, cradle of son jarocho, carries La Tercera Raíz, the African root this country took too long to name. Three roots, one pan. This was Lenten food, the fish that fed the coast on Fridays through Cuaresma when meat was off the table, and it stayed because it is good, not because the calendar said so.

The technique is plain but it is not careless. You poach the cazón gently, just until it turns from glassy to white, and you stop, because shark left too long on the heat goes to rubber. You shred it fine. Then you build the guiso and you cook it dry, dry enough that it won't soak through the tortilla. The epazote is not decoration. It is the backbone of the flavor, that resin-and-mint pungency no other herb gives you. And the fat is olive oil, not lard. This is the one corner of Mexico where the Spanish hand reaches all the way into the pan.

I recorded this guiso from a señora frying fish on the malecón in Alvarado, a woman who had been making it since before I was born and who told me, without my asking, that the olives go in nearly whole, the capers go in last, and you taste before you salt because the sea already did some of the work. She was right about all of it. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.