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Yucatán's cantina tuna salad, built on naranja agria, minced habanero, celery, and hierbabuena. Eaten cold on saltines with a slice of habanero on top and a Montejo beer in the other hand.
This is from Yucatán. Specifically from the cantinas of Mérida and the family kitchens of Valladolid, Tizimín, and Progreso, where a bowl of ensalada de atún sits on the counter at midday next to a stack of galletas de soda and a plate of sliced habanero. It is botana, the food you eat while you are drinking, and it is also lunch on a hot day when the kitchen does not want to be turned on.
The Yucatán Peninsula does not cook like the rest of Mexico. The naranja agria, the bitter orange the Spanish brought and the Maya cooks absorbed into everything from cochinita pibil to escabeche, is what makes this salad yucateco and not a generic tuna salad. If you have it, use it. If you do not, mix lime with a little sweet orange and you will get close, but understand what you are missing. Naranja agria has a perfume that lime does not have, a soft bitterness underneath the sour. It is the citrus of Yucatán the way lime is the citrus of Jalisco.
The other thing you need to understand: there is no mayonnaise in this salad. None. Mayonnaise is for Sonoran tuna sandwiches and American school lunches. The Yucatecan version is dressed with the juice of the bitter orange and a little olive oil, and the body comes from the tuna and the finely diced vegetables. The habanero is not optional. Hierbabuena is not optional. These are the ingredients that make it the dish it is.
My mother never made this. She was from Jalisco and she would have looked at habanero with suspicion. I learned it in Mérida from a woman named Doña Cristina who ran a small cantina off Calle 60 and who showed me how to dice the onion finer than I thought necessary and to drain the tuna harder than I wanted to. No me vengas con atajos. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
The use of naranja agria, Citrus aurantium, defines Yucatecan cuisine and distinguishes it sharply from the cooking of the rest of Mexico; the fruit was introduced by the Spanish in the 16th century and was adopted into Maya cooking as the principal souring agent, displacing or coexisting with older native acidulants. Canned tuna entered Yucatecan home cooking in the early 20th century alongside the rise of Mexico's Pacific tuna fleet and became a staple cantina botana in Mérida by the 1940s, when small bars served it on saltines as a free accompaniment to beer. The dish belongs to a broader Yucatecan category of cold, citrus-dressed preparations that includes salpicón de venado, escabeche oriental, and the various ensaladas made with jícama, cabbage, radish, and beet, none of which resemble the lettuce-and-dressing salads of central or northern Mexico.
Quantity
2 cans (5 ounces each)
drained well
Quantity
1/2 medium
finely diced
Quantity
2 ribs
finely diced
Quantity
1 small
seeded and finely diced
Quantity
1
stemmed, seeded, and minced (use half for less heat)
Quantity
3 tablespoons
or 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice mixed with 1 tablespoon fresh sweet orange juice
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
2 tablespoons
chopped
Quantity
1 tablespoon
chopped
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
to taste
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| good-quality tuna packed in oildrained well | 2 cans (5 ounces each) |
| red onionfinely diced | 1/2 medium |
| celery from the heartfinely diced | 2 ribs |
| tomate saladetseeded and finely diced | 1 small |
| chile habanerostemmed, seeded, and minced (use half for less heat) | 1 |
| fresh naranja agria juiceor 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice mixed with 1 tablespoon fresh sweet orange juice | 3 tablespoons |
| good olive oil | 2 tablespoons |
| fresh cilantrochopped | 2 tablespoons |
| fresh hierbabuena (spearmint)chopped | 1 tablespoon |
| kosher salt | 1/2 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| freshly cracked black pepper | to taste |
| galletas de soda (saltine crackers) (optional) | for serving |
| sliced chile habanero (optional) | for serving |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
| pickled red onion (cebolla morada en escabeche) (optional) | for serving |
Open the cans and press the tuna against the lid with the back of a fork. Squeeze out every drop of packing oil you can. Wet tuna makes a wet salad and the naranja agria has no room to do its work. Flake the drained tuna into a glass or ceramic bowl with a fork. Not too fine. You want the texture of the fish to show.
Stem the habanero. Slice it in half lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds and the white veins. Mince the flesh as fine as you can. Wash your hands twice with soap and do not touch your face for the next hour. The habanero is the soul of Yucatecan heat: floral, fruity, and ferocious. One chile is correct. Half a chile is for guests who are not ready. A whole one with seeds is for the cantina at three in the afternoon.
Add the diced red onion, celery, tomate, and minced habanero to the bowl with the tuna. Pour over the naranja agria and the olive oil. Add the salt and a good amount of black pepper. Fold everything together with a fork, gently, lifting from the bottom. Do not mash. The salad should look composed, not pureed.
Scatter the cilantro and hierbabuena over the top and fold them in with two or three turns of the fork. The hierbabuena is what gives Yucatecan tuna salad its perfume and separates it from any other tuna salad you have eaten. Skip it and the dish loses its address. Taste now. Adjust the salt. If it tastes flat, it needs more naranja agria, not more salt. The citrus does the lifting here.
Cover the bowl and rest the salad in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes. The naranja agria needs time to soften the onion and pull the flavors together. Serve cold, mounded on galletas de soda, with a thin slice of fresh habanero laid on top of each cracker for whoever is brave. Set lime wedges and a small dish of pickled red onion on the side. This is cantina food. Eat it standing up with a cold beer if you are doing it right.
1 serving (about 115g)
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