Ensalada China Mexicalense

This is a Mexicali dish. From Baja California, from the border city that has the only Chinatown in Mexico that still functions as one. La Chinesca, they call it. The neighborhood where Cantonese laborers settled at the turn of the twentieth century, came to build the railroads and the cotton fields, and stayed to open restaurants that fed an entire region. Ensalada china is one of those restaurants on a plate.

The dressing is what makes this dish itself and not a generic coleslaw. Rice vinegar, soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, sugar, lime, garlic. The Cantonese half is the vinegar, the soy, and the sesame. The Mexican half is the lime, the cilantro, and the chiles toreados that come on the side. This is not fusion food invented for a cookbook. This is what a hundred years of two cultures sharing a kitchen in the desert produced. If you leave out the rice vinegar because it sounds wrong in a Mexican recipe, you do not understand Mexicali. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Baja California's includes soy sauce.

Mexicali eats this cold, in a wide glass bowl, alongside chow mein and fried rice and arrachera. The cafes in La Chinesca have been serving it like this for generations. The chiles toreados, blistered serranos splashed with soy and lime, are the bridge that tells you which side of the border you are on. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and in Mexicali it means knowing that two traditions can sit on the same table and neither one has to apologize.