Pati Jinich is host of the popular Emmy and James Beard nominated PBS series Pati's Mexican Table, author of two cookbooks, and resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington, DC. This is her official website where she shares recipes from her show and new recipes in her blog, plus upcoming events, recent news, and more.
My first formal job, after switching careers from political analysis to cooking, was as chef and cooking instructor of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington DC. This was 2007. A year before, I had created a curriculum that aimed to open, one class at a time, a window into Mexican cuisine, history and culture for anybody living north of the border. What I didn’t know, when I began preparing it, was that classes were to be for a crowd of 100 people…
Tamales are practically required on so many December holidays. Take Posadas. And Christmas. Not to mention New Year’s. Wait, of course, that spills over to January with Día de Reyes. Then it continues in February for Día de la Candelaria… It seems to me that the tamal coloradito is particularly festive because, aside from tamales screaming out for celebration on their own, this one is filled with quite a stunner of a mole sauce. And moles are cause for celebration, too! Pair the two into one bite, and you have a happy crowd.
Bacalao Navideño recipe from Season Five of Pati’s Mexican Table
“In the convents around Mexico during the colonial era, the nuns became serious cooks, says Pati Jinich, author of ‘Pati’s Mexican Table’ and host of the PBS series of the same name. The church was a major power, and it was in the kitchens of the convents where traditional Spanish recipes started to take in…
When I was about 10 years old, my parents developed a habit of traveling during the December holidays without my sisters and I. Don’t ask me why they thought it was a good idea. It was an awful, terrible, horrible idea. The sweet highlight was that our babysitter Sari, whom we call Nana Tochito and…