It’s that time of the year again when all of a sudden, every single person who grew up Catholic and has roots in Latin America gives up eating meat once a week. During this time, the sales of fish, shrimp, and the rest of the mariscos kingdom dishes go way up everywhere. In Los Angeles, the uptick is notable in our city’s sprawling Mexican food scene as soon as you start to see random signs advertising "fish tacos" on windows.
“Our sales grow twofold on Fridays during Lent, easily, sometimes more,” Raul Ortega of Mariscos Jalisco tells L.A. TACO. This seasonal preference for a taco de camarón over carne asada should serve as a warning if you find yourself craving a fish or shrimp taco on a Friday for the next 40 days—be prepared to wait in line.
Beyond ceviche tostadas and fried mojarras (tilapia), is Mexico’s nearly forgotten art of comida cuaresmeña. The lenten dishes that were born out of the Catholic tradition and representative of Mexico’s Virreinato period in the 1800s, before Mexico’s independence when the country was still called “New Spain.” This was a historic time during Mexico’s food history because it was when Mexico’s Indigenous ingredients started to integrate with the European foodways. This is when Mole Poblano received its famous hungry nun origin theory and when we started to see more domesticated proteins from Europe like cows, chicken, and pork started to become the norm over bugs, spirulina, and wild game.
A dish that is a perfect edible snapshot of this critical time in Mexican cuisine history is tortitas de camarón (shrimp fritters), a unique dish made from dried shrimp that became forever attached to Lent for its rich and potent crustaceous flavor. The dish can be found in every corner of Mexico because it is the perfect amalgamation of old-world Mexico with new-world technique: eggs whites are beaten until stiff peaks (then you add the egg yolks back in, of course), dried shrimp is added with a bit of flour, you form lil’ patties, you fry them until golden brown and delicious, you stew them in a velvety sauce made dried red chiles, you add tender stewed nopal strips to make it a wholesome dish that is packed with nutrients, then you eat it with rolled-up toasted corn tortillas for a highly satisfying meal.
You’ll notice some regional variants, like in Central Mexico they can add romeritos (a tender green that looks like rosemary but tastes like spinach) or switch up the dried chiles needed to construct the salsita.