Papa Loca Sonorense

This is Sonora. Cattle country, wheat country, mesquite country. The state where the meal revolves around the parrilla and where the men and women who tend the fire know how to coax flavor out of an open grate the way a Oaxacan cook coaxes it out of a comal.

The papa loca is a taqueria invention from Hermosillo and Ciudad Obregon, born in the late-night spots where the parrilla is already loaded with carne asada and somebody decided to throw a few russets onto the coals next to the meat. The potato roasts in the mesquite smoke. The asada comes off the fire chopped fine, the way they cut it on the wooden boards out front. Queso Chihuahua melts into the hot flesh of the potato and crema makes it loose. Salsa de aguacate, bright with chile serrano and lime, floods the whole thing. It is excessive, generous, and exactly the kind of food you eat with your hands at a folding table in the desert at midnight.

Mexicans from other states sometimes look at Sonoran food and call it heavy. Sonorenses look back and shrug. This is ranch food. You spend the day moving cattle and you do not come home to a delicate plate. Flour tortillas de harina belong here, not corn. Queso Chihuahua and queso menonita belong here. Beef belongs here. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and the cocina of Sonora was built on the parrilla, with mesquite smoke in the air and chiltepin on the table.