Pati Jinich's new cookbook celebrates the "misunderstood" borderlands
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Pati Jinich's latest cookbook takes her hit PBS show about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and brings them to the table. Photo: Courtesy Triple 7 PR
If you're craving homemade tortillas and real-deal tacos, good news: Local Mexican cooking star Pati Jinich's newest book just hit shelves.
Why it matters: The "Pati's Mexican Table" host has transformed years of travel for her hit PBS series "La Frontera" into a cookbook that takes home cooks to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands — birthplace of burritos, nachos, Caesar salad and margaritas.
- "They're often misunderstood, but everybody wants a bite of them," Jinich tells Axios.
The big picture: In Washington, the border is a political hotbed. Jinich wants people to understand it as something else: a thriving, deeply interconnected region with shared cultures, economies — and seriously good food.
- "La Frontera is everything that gets lost in Washington," she says. "It's a thriving space — people don't understand the partnerships, the blood ties."
Zoom in: "Foods of La Frontera," out this week, gathers 125 recipes from both sides of the border, from Mexicali stir-fries and Mennonite pizzas to crispy shrimp taquitos and chocolate tres leches cake.
- It also makes a delicious case for reconsidering what some dismiss as Tex-Mex fusion — and what counts as "authentic" Mexican food.
The intrigue: Northern Mexican states have traditionally cooked from a more limited desert pantry, Jinich says, while generations of proximity to the U.S. have made American ingredients a natural part of the mix.
- And Tex-Mex itself isn't monolithic: "A Laredo breakfast taco has nothing to do with an Austin breakfast taco," she says.
🍔 Dig in: Jinich's smashburger taco may look like a TikTok trend, but Jinich says border communities have eaten versions for decades.
- The logic: "North and south of the border, if you run out of bread, you add a tortilla."
For a first recipe, Jinich recommends flour tortillas from scratch.
- Forget the plasticky supermarket wraps. A real flour tortilla is closer to "a very thinned-out flaky biscuit," she says.
- Making them is "therapeutic" — a gateway to realizing food you might only order at a restaurant is doable at home.
Zoom out: It's a big year for Jinich, who got her start in Washington working at a think tank and teaching cooking classes, and now lives and tests her recipes near Chevy Chase.
- She picked up two James Beard Awards, and "Pati's Mexican Table" just launched its 15th season, focused on the border state of Coahuila.
- Season two of "Pati Jinich Explores Panamericana" premieres Oct. 26, traveling through the American West and Southwest.
The bottom line: Jinich hopes her cookbook is an homage to borderland communities — and an invitation to stop trying to neatly sort their food into Mexican or American, traditional or blended.
- "It's like the food is having the conversation that people are afraid to have," she says.
And with a smashburger taco in hand, her takeaway is even simpler: "When Mexican and American mix, beautiful things happen."