Tikin xic belongs to the coast. It is cooked in the fishing towns along the northern and eastern edges of the Yucatán Peninsula, in Campeche, and anywhere a palapa sits close enough to the water for the fish to arrive whole and still stiff. The name is Yucatec Maya and is usually glossed as dry fin, a reference to cooking the fish over heat rather than in liquid. In Tulum it is the dish that makes the most sense of where we are: a grouper or a red snapper, a banana leaf cut from the garden, and a fire.
It is weekend food and midday food. Nobody makes tikin xic for one person on a Tuesday. The fish is bought whole, opened out flat like a book, and that shape only works if there are five or six people around the table to pull it apart. On the beach it comes out on a metal tray with the leaf still under it, rice and tortillas alongside, a bowl of xnipec within reach.
The taste is earthy before it is anything else. Achiote gives color and a mild, slightly resinous, almost peppery flavor, and the sour orange cuts under it with a bitterness that lime alone lacks. Over coals the leaf scorches and perfumes the underside of the fish, the tomato and onion on top collapse into a loose sauce, and the thin edges of the belly go crisp. None of it is hot. The chile sits on the side so each person decides.
Two things go wrong most often. The first is treating achiote paste as a sauce and laying it on thick, which leaves a chalky, medicinal coat; the paste should be thinned with sour orange until it brushes on like paint. The second is to wrap the parcel tightly and put it in the oven, which steams the fish and gives you something pale and watery. Keep the leaf open or loosely folded, keep the heat below it, and accept a little char. Also, do not marinate for hours. Acid cures fish flesh, and forty minutes is enough to flavor it without turning the surface opaque and firm.
Ingredients
20 items · for 6For the fish
- 1 whole fish, 2 to 2.5 kg, scaled and gutted, butterflied (red snapper, grouper or sea bass)
- 2 large banana leaves, or enough to line and cover a tray
- Salt
- 3 tbsp mild olive oil or neutral oil
For the marinade
- 100 g achiote paste (recado rojo)
- 200 ml (3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp) sour orange juice
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1 tsp dried Mexican oregano
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 1/2 tsp fine salt
For the top
- 2 medium tomatoes, sliced into rounds
- 1 large white onion, sliced into thin rings
- 1 green bell pepper, cut into strips
- 2 fresh xcatik or güero chiles, left whole (optional)
- 1 lime, cut into wedges, to serve
For the xnipec on the side
- 1 habanero, stemmed and finely chopped
- 1 small red onion, finely chopped
- 1 tomato, finely chopped
- 80 ml (1/3 cup) sour orange juice
- 1/2 tsp salt
Step by step
8 stepsButterfly the fish
Ask the fishmonger to scale, gut and butterfly the fish, leaving the two sides joined along the back and the head on. If doing it yourself, cut down along the belly and open the fish flat, then run the knife along one side of the backbone to release it and lift the spine out, keeping the skin of the back intact. Rinse, pat dry, and season both sides lightly with salt. Lay it skin side down and score the thick part of the flesh two or three times on each side so the marinade reaches in.
Make the marinade
Blend the achiote paste, sour orange juice, garlic, oregano, pepper and salt until completely smooth. It should be the consistency of single cream and pour easily from a spoon. If it is thick enough to hold its shape, add sour orange juice a tablespoon at a time. A gritty or pasty marinade will taste of raw spice no matter how long it cooks.
Marinate briefly
Brush the marinade over the open fish, flesh and skin, working it into the scores. Cover and leave in the fridge for 40 minutes and no more than an hour. The surface will darken to brick red. Longer than that and the acid starts to firm and whiten the flesh, which gives a dry result.
Soften the banana leaves
Wipe the leaves with a damp cloth and cut away the hard central rib. Pass each leaf over a gas flame or a hot dry pan for a few seconds a side, until the colour shifts from matt to glossy green and the leaf becomes pliable instead of brittle. It will smell faintly of hay. Frozen leaves need thawing first and often only need a brief warming.
Build the parcel
Light a charcoal fire and let it burn down to even grey coals, or heat a gas grill to medium. Line a shallow metal tray or a doubled sheet of heavy foil with the leaves, letting plenty hang over the sides. Rub the leaf with a little oil, lay the fish on it skin side down and flat, then spoon over any marinade left in the dish. Cover the flesh with the tomato, onion and bell pepper, tuck in the whole chiles, and trickle the oil over the top. Fold the overhanging leaf loosely across the fish, enough to shade it, not a sealed packet.
Grill over coals
Set the tray over the coals and cook for 30 to 45 minutes depending on the size of the fish. The leaf underneath will scorch and smoke, which is what you want. After about 25 minutes, fold the leaf back so the top takes some direct heat and the onion begins to colour. The fish is done when the flesh at the thickest point near the head is opaque white, pulls away from the bone with no resistance, and reads 55 to 60 C on a thermometer. Without an oven thermometer, slide a knife tip in and hold it to your wrist: it should be hot, not warm.
Mix the xnipec
While the fish cooks, stir the habanero, red onion, tomato, sour orange juice and salt together in a small bowl. Leave it at room temperature so the onion softens slightly and turns pink at the edges. It keeps three days in the fridge and gets hotter as it sits.
Rest and serve
Slide the whole tray onto the table, leaf and all, and let it sit for five minutes so the juices settle. Serve straight from the leaf with lime wedges, warm tortillas, white rice and the xnipec on the side. People take the flesh in flakes with a spoon rather than in portions.
Notes from the kitchen
- Without sour orange, mix 2 parts lime juice, 1 part sweet orange juice and 1 part grapefruit juice. It is a close match and better than lime alone, which is sharper and one dimensional.
- With no banana leaf, cook the fish on oiled heavy foil and lay a few bay leaves or a bed of sliced onion underneath. The smoke from the coals still does most of the work. Avoid parchment on a live fire.
- Achiote paste sold in blocks varies a lot in salt. Taste the blended marinade before it goes on the fish and adjust, remembering it will concentrate as it cooks.
- Two thick fillets, skin on, will work if a whole fish is not available. Reduce the grilling time to 15 to 20 minutes and watch them closely. Leftovers are good cold the next day, flaked into tacos with xnipec.
This is the standard coastal household and beach palapa version, scaled for a home charcoal grill.
This photograph was generated with artificial intelligence and may differ from the finished dish.