Mazatlán-Style Seafood

When I started to think about which recipes I wanted to include in my book, my first idea was that I wanted to share with you a bit of where my family comes from, un pedacito de mi Mazatlán (a little piece of my Mazatlán).

One of the main reasons I cook the way I do is that the recipes I use have been handed down through several generations of powerful women. In fact, in the little town of Barron, which borders the largest river in Mazatlán, the town folk still tell stories of the women I am proud to call my ancestors. Women like my great-grandmother Julia, una gran señora (a grand woman) who would cook from the wee hours of the morning to feed the men who worked the fishing boats til well past sunset and the workers tending the nearby mango or chile crops.