Ensalada César Yucateca

This is from Mérida, not from Tijuana. The Caesar was born in Baja California in 1924, at Caesar Cardini's restaurant on Avenida Revolución, and Mexico has been adapting it ever since. The Yucatán took the idea and rebuilt it around its own pantry, because that is what the peninsula does with every dish that crosses the Gulf. Cada estado, su propia cocina.

The peninsula does not cook with lemon. It cooks with naranja agria, the bitter Seville-style orange that the Spanish brought to Mérida in the 16th century and that took to the peninsular climate the way achiote and habanero did. Naranja agria is the acid of cochinita pibil, of escabeche, of recado blanco. Putting it in a Caesar dressing is not invention. It is the peninsula speaking its own language. If you can find lima agria too, halve it and set it on the table for the diner who wants to brighten their plate at the last second.

The cheese is queso de bola, the Edam aged in red wax that arrived through the port of Sisal during Yucatán's henequen trade with the Dutch and Belgians in the 19th century. Queso de bola is the cheese of queso relleno, of papadzules served on the side, of the holiday table in Mérida. It has salt, bite, and a yielding texture that grates beautifully into a dressing. Do not use parmesan here. Parmesan belongs to Tijuana's Caesar. This one belongs to Mérida.

And where the croutons would go, you put codzitos: thin tortillas rolled into pencil-width cigars and fried in manteca de cerdo until rigid. My mother did not make this salad, she was jalisciense, but I learned it from a señora named Doña Adelfa who ran a fonda off Calle 62 in Mérida and who corrected me three times on the lard temperature before she nodded. Codzitos in lard. Not vegetable oil. La manteca es el sabor. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.