Baked Unwrapped Tamales with Dried Shrimp

The Zapotec name refers to various kinds of tamales containing fish or seafood, made throughout the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Once I bought a gueta bi’ngui’ in a very poor fishing village of the Isthmus and was handed a large banana-leaf package that I unwrapped to find a whole fish inside—head, eyes, fins, tail, and all—lightly coated with masa, in a savory tomato sauce. This dried-shrimp version, which I encountered at a cocktail party in Juchitán, is dramatically different: “naked”