Pati Jinich Cooks the Bold Flavors of the Mexican Border

The Dinner Plan

In this episode of The Dinner Plan, James Beard Award-winning chef and host Pati Jinich discusses her new cookbook, 'Foods of La Frontera,' and her upcoming

Key takeaways

• Pati Jinich's new cookbook 'Foods of La Frontera' reflects a decade-long exploration of border cuisine across Mexico and the U.S.
• Traveling along the Mexican-American border has deepened her understanding of both cultures and reshaped her cooking at home.

Main topics

• Cuisine of the Mexican-American border
• New cookbook 'Foods of La Frontera'

Notable quotes

"I have become 50 percent domestic and 50 percent nomad, but whenever I'm home, I'm 100% in it."

Conclusion

Pati Jinich's journey along the Mexican-American border has not only insp

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Before we get into the show, I gotta tell you about the Dinner Plans Big Big September Giveaway. We're giving away a huge stack of new cookbooks, a Cuisinart 10-in-1 Air Fryer Toaster Oven, a big set of beautiful wooden kitchen utensils from Earlywood, a cutting board set from Epicurean, an olive wood chef's knife from Maiden, plus so much fun stuff for your pantry, like Danish mustards from Little Zing, Salsas from Salsa Tatamata, coffee from Sightglass, spices from Diaspora Co., popcorn from Bjornkorn, grains from Bob's Red Mill, easy-squeeze bottles of tahini from Sum, and delicious heat-and-eat meals from Brooklyn Deli. You've got to enter by September 23rd over on The Dinner Plan's newsletter at thedinnerplan.substack.com. That's thedinnerplan.substack.com. Speaker 3 (0:57) Welcome to The Dinner Plan, where we start every week with fresh cooking inspiration. I'm your host, Maggie Hoffman, and today I'm chatting with Patti Hinnich, the James Beard Award-winning and Emmy-nominated host of La Frontera and Patti's Mexican Table, which is in its 15th season, and the author of a bunch of cookbooks, including Mexican Today, Treasures of the Mexican Table, and a new one that's coming out this fall called Foods of La Frontera, Recipes and New Taste Frontiers from Both Sides of the Border. Patti, I'm so happy to see you today. Thanks for coming on the show. Speaker 2 (1:32) Of course, I'm so happy to see you, Maggie. Delighted that we can connect and see each other. This is amazing. I Speaker 3 (1:39) mean, we've worked together over the years just over email, but Speaker 2 (1:42) never face to face. So this is fun. Speaker 3 (1:44) So we were just talking, you are one busy lady. For folks who haven't been keeping up with all of these projects, can you tell us a few of the things that you have going on right now? Speaker 2 (1:55) Yes, of course. And you know, this fall is where all my projects. Come together. I have my new cookbook, Foods of La Frontera, which I hope that you have already coming out September 15. And this is a book that I've been working on for like 10 years. It has a lot to do with my docu-series La Frontera, but it has above and beyond of what I did in the docu-series. I'm very excited about that. But then I also have... The 15th season of my long-running cooking and travel show called Patty's Mexican Table come out the first week of September. And that focuses on the border as well because it's in Coahuila, which is a northern Mexican state that's south of Texas. And it's just like mind-blowing. I'll tell you all about that. But then a month later, at the end of October. I have season two of my new docu-series called Panamericana come out. And Maggie, in Panamericana, I'm trekking the entire Panamerican highway from Alaska to Argentina. Season one did Alaska to Canada, which aired last year. And this year, we crossed the lower 48 from Montana to Arizona and right at the border. So everything that I'm doing, it's so much content, so many stories, is all La Frontera. And it just happened. Congratulations. It's just a lot. I really think I'm at my best when I juggle a lot of things. If I have a lot of balls in the air, juicy, you know, like one thing just prompts the other. I can focus. I can be very efficient. I can be very productive. I'm like, if I have less things, I start getting sluggish. And you know how it is. As you start gets older, you realize that you have less time moving forward. So for me, it's like I want to do more. I want to do more. I Speaker 3 (3:58) mean, I want to hear all about it and hear some of your stories. But within all that juggle, what are you cooking at home? Like, how does dinner fit into all that? Speaker 2 (4:08) Maggie, I love my home so much. I realize I've become 50 percent. domestic and 50 % nomad but whenever I'm in my 50 I'm 100 % in it so right now I'm home and I am harvesting my fruit trees I planted some fruit trees like 12 years ago they weren't giving any fruit for like five six seven years I was thinking like what is happening to these fruit trees and suddenly I have plums that are just covering the floor of apricots figs, I have cherries, I have limes, I have lemons. So I'm harvesting all of those things and I'm making jam. I spent some time in the Middle East this summer, so I'm preserving lemons. I always have projects going on in my kitchen, but they're projects that can withstand the test of time and can withstand my coming and going because... The moment I start settling at home and I'm 100 % domestic, I start itching to pack again. And then I hit the road and I'm loving it. And then I'm itching to come home. So I have my sourdough starter that is in a really great shape. So every week that I'm home, I'm making one or another kind of bread. Every Friday, I make challah. I have my preserved lemons that I'm telling you about that I'm obsessed with. grinding my own dried chilies. And I think I spent like half my time here in this office that you're seeing and half my time in the kitchen. And I'm just cooking a lot. When I'm home, I'm cooking three meals a day. So Speaker 3 (5:45) if you get home after a bit of traveling and you have some of those preserved lemons around, what are you doing with them? Speaker 2 (5:51) It can be farro. It can be brown rice. And then I just I love cooking my rice or my pasta with homemade chicken broth. My freezer is stocked to the brim with homemade chicken broth that I really concentrate and use for a lot of things. So one of those grains I'll cook with chicken broth and then I'll chop some toasted walnuts or pine nuts or pecans. And then I'll add chopped preserved lemons and then I'll chop some dates. And I have a delicious, it can be a side dish, it can be a whole meal. Preserved lemons also for like oven roasted chicken. Preserved lemons just to chop and munch. I love preserved lemons so much. What have you been cooking lately, Maggie? Speaker 3 (6:41) You know, I was really inspired by an eggplant salad I saw in a new book. I'm not sure if you've seen it yet, called Cooking Thai. Yes. It's Pam Chachamuan Vivet. wrote the book. She has a Kincao restaurant in San Francisco. And it's this beautiful book. And I've just sort of been like trying to absorb it a little. And I didn't follow the recipe exactly. But I started with her dressing, which is sort of like a dressing, a marinade. You can use it for different things. And it's just this classic, simple mix of like fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar. You could use brown sugar if you don't have palm sugar. And then you top it with fried shallot, which is obviously delicious. fresh herbs, like if you have garden basil or mint or cilantro, and it can be served hot or room temperature. So I made the eggplant in advance. Actually, we had people coming over, and so I just had these beautiful little slender eggplants, so many of them. But of course, it cooks down quite a bit. And then just tossed it with the dressing a couple of minutes before, and then all those little crunchy bits and fresh bits, and pretty fun. Speaker 2 (7:49) Oh, that sounds delicious. That's such a brilliant combination. Sometimes I think September is really Speaker 3 (7:55) it. It's the best time to cook because we have all those things. We have those plums. We have those eggplants, the last of the tomatoes. Like it's kind of everything you could wish for. Speaker 2 (8:04) I do agree. You know, I have a hard time deciding if spring or fall are my favorite seasons. I feel nostalgic equally for both. You know, I'm not a beach person. I'm not like the mosquitoes and the heat and the muggy and the sweaty are not like my thing. I love picnics in the fall. I love picnics in the spring. And during the winter, I can cozy up and make soups and stews. And I'm a homebody when I'm not traveling. So I love being home. So I hibernate. If I'm not traveling like a nomad everywhere, I'm just hibernating at home. So I would say that. This sounds like not very friendly, but I think I'm not a fan of summer. I Speaker 3 (8:50) think that's allowed. And the soup chapter of this new book is so inspiring. But let's back up a little bit. Tell us a little bit of the story of how this book came to be. Speaker 2 (9:01) So as my husband says, I go a thousand directions and he's always telling me, come back, Patty, come back, focus, focus. So I will tell you. As a Mexican, I moved to the U.S. many, many years ago when I got married and I switched from political analysis to cooking. I started Patty's Mexican Table and I went back and forth every season to a different region of Mexico, come back to the U.S. and try to help people, you know, enrich their homes and kitchens with the flavors from the different regions of Mexico. And as I continued to do that, I realized how little I knew. about my home country, and I started getting really hungry for learning more. But at the same time, Maggie, I started, my boys were born here in the U.S., and I started touring the U.S. for my books, for the show, and realized all the misconceptions I had about the U.S. and how little I knew about the U.S. And then one day, it was September 16, actually, of 2016. I was invited to come to San Antonio to the PBS station. I love collaborating with the PBS stations around the U.S. I think they just take the pulse. They're the heartbeat of the communities they inhabit. They invited me to come to San Antonio and they asked me if I could give a talk at a school right in Laredo, right on the border. So it was my first time going to... the Rio Bravo, the Rio Grande, like I was standing there and I asked him if I could take some time to visit the river. And I felt this intensity that I hadn't felt before, where I suddenly, you know, I'm Mexican, so I live in the world of magical realism all the time. Like suddenly I felt like the energy and the waves and I felt the weight of the history of the Rio Bravo and the Rio Grande and the... drawing the pain and the dreams and the hopes and the food that has been created there. And I felt this urge, like this responsibility, this like mission to come do something at the border, because this is where my two countries meet. Because unbeknownst to me, I started growing really deep roots in the U.S. And so I felt that I needed to do something at the border. And since then, I started pitching, you know, that show. I want to come to the border. I want to do the entire border. And it took me a while. It took me like three years to have that happen. And in order to do the first season of La Frontera, which people can watch in the PBS Food YouTube channel, there's