Asked what surprised her most while travelling the border, Jinich works through vegetarian pozol from a canyon in Chihuahua and Mennonite boiled empanadas before arriving at the Rio Grande Valley, whose Tex-Mex she notes is unlike the Tex-Mex of San Antonio or Laredo. She says Mexicans habitually treat Tex-Mex as the low end of Mexican food, or as not Mexican at all, and calls the discovery humbling.
I think that phrase that you use, we all eat from the same plate, puts it all in perspective. Like it is not an us versus them. It is not like what this country or what that country gets. And it is the spirit that pushed me to do from La Fronte, to go from La Frontera to Panamericana. We all are richer in all ways when we share the lessons learned. So that phrase that says we eat, we all eat from the same plate came from a man. Well, I heard it a lot, but the man that first told me that it was in the Santa Elena border crossing in New Mexico, which is right bordering El Paso. And it's a border crossing of cattle, not people. And there's thousands and thousands of cattle that cross every day. And it's a continuous back and forth. So here's how it goes. The Mexican cows are made pregnant by the seed of American male cows, whatever they're called. And the cows are pregnant. And the entirety of their pregnancy, they're grazing on Mexican fields, which are, you know, it's the competitive advantage. It's cheaper to have the cows grazing in Mexico than it is in the U.S., the huge plots of lands. And then they have their babies in Mexico. So these are already Mexican-American babies, right? And then they cross to the U.S. when they're, I don't know, after a few months of feeding in Mexico. And then they cross to the US and then they grow in the U.S. and they're, you know, they're giving much more food and they're getting ready to be sold in the U.S. And then they're harvested in the U.S. And they are sold in the U.S. as U.S. prime. But they are Mexican-American proud. You know, they already went back and forth. And then some parts of the cow are sold to the U.S. Some parts of the cow, like tongue and arrachera, are then sold back to Mexico. And then some are even marinated as a ratchera and then sent back to the U.S. So there's this coming back and forth. And so this saying of we all eat from the same plate is like we're all eating from the same cow. We're all sharing in what it took to make this cow come to your plate. And it is a very nose-to-tail approach. You know, there's not going to be any waste. There is Going to be this appreciation for the sacrifice of the animals that are making it to our plate. And it is this acknowledgement of the collaboration between countries and communities that make this happen. Well, that was one long story, but that's just one example. I mean, there are families. I sat down at tables in La Frontera where one brother was growing vegetables south of the border, and one brother was selling the vegetables north of the border. And one was Mexican, and one was American. And they're brothers, and it's a family. And they live under different codes of conduct, different languages, different laws, different rules, but they're a family and they share this business together and they're enriching these two countries at the same time.
What were some things that you tasted as you met all these people along the way that really wowed you and stuck in your mind?
So many. I mean, from the very pre-Hispanic ancestral muni pozol, which I hadn't tried deep in the canyons in the copper canyon, in the copper canyon of Chihuahua, there's a mini canyon inside of a copper canyon called the Sinforosa Canyon. And there I tried this munipozol, which is, you've tried pozole, which is a hominy with chicken or with pork. It can be red, green, white. The muni pozol is a vegetarian kind of pozol that uses hominy and pinto beans or mayo beans or some kind of like earthy, creamy bean of northern Mexico. And both are cooked separately and then brought together with their broths. And then they're seasoned with nothing but jalapeño. And then you serve them and you add a little crumbled queso fresco and a little roasted tomato salsa. And it's such a delicacy. It's so exquisite. So when people think about Mexican food or, you know, fronterizo food as being unhealthy, cheesy, greasy, I'm like, here, try this nutritious, delicious bowl of, you know, nothing animal in it. Of course, if you want ad queso, which I always do. But that was very surprising. The people in La Frontera were extremely welcoming and generous and kind and warm. And they were so happy to have me and my team or me when it was just by myself when I was researching and scouting because they were so happy that I was there to talk about their personal life, what they cook, what they eat, what they gift the world with their work and not about politics. There's always this political piñata hanging, you know, as a shadow when you have conversations about the border. And people were just like, finally, we get to have the microphone to talk about the things we love, to talk about our human nature, to talk about our families or traditions. And I could tell you so many foods. So the muni pozol was one, the boiled empanadas with the Mennonite community in Sabinad was another. But then of course, the different kinds of Tex-Mex food that I tried in the Rio Grande Valley, which are very different from the Tex-Mex foods from San Antonio and from Laredo. And this was very humbling because I think that Mexicans always think about Tex-Mex food as the lower end of Mexican food. It's not even Mexican food. And we have to understand that Tex-Mex food is its own beast of original cuisine. I mean, beautiful beast with many micro variations. And it's just humbling. I think people just shared so much food, so many stories. They were just so giving.
Those beans that you mentioned sound so amazing. I want to zero in on some of the recipes a little bit more. There are a bunch of different beans toward the front of the book, and they all sound so good and so varied. Can you tell us about a few more of your favorites?
Oh, yes, there are so many. I'm obsessed with beans. Let me tell you about a different kind of bean that I learned about when I was visiting the Thon Offem in southern Arizona, especially this wonderful cook named Amy Juan. She was the first one who gave me the tepari beans to try. And the tepari beans are, you know, going back to going back to our roots, going back to the heritage beans and. Grains that have somehow been lost in the fod of commercialness, of you know, it's like, why do we only have to have one kind of banana when there are dozens and dozens of bananas or tomatoes or, you know, the tepari beans? I don't know if you've tried them. They're tiny, they're adorably cute. And oh boy, are they powerful and rich in taste? They're beans that have a very concentrated flavor because they grow in extreme weather. So they have to fight to survive and they have to fight to grow in these severe heat, severe, dry area. And so they're very intense. The same thing happens with chiles. When you see chiles from the Yucatan or from Sonora or from Chihuahua, like the tiny little chilte beans, which are like the mother of all chilies, they're feisty and spicy as hell because they have to fight to survive. So talking about the beans, the tepari beans, I tried them in tamales. I tried them in a kind of humus and they're just extremely rich. I would venture to say, Maggie, that they're kind of meaty. They're very, very intensely flavored, almost meaty, mushroom-y, full of umami, just a lot of flavors. So I have tepari beans in the book. I have tepari tamales. Another incredible thing is that in La Frontera, like you can steam tamales, of course, but a lot of people, because there's so much grilling and there's so many comales outside on the fire that people will grill or roast the tamales in big like cast iron pans or griddles. And cooking a tamal over the fire rather than steaming it just gives it that smoky fire roasted personality, which is so intense and so delicious. Plus the texture, because the tamal, if the masa is done right and it's nice and moist and airy and puffy, will be nice and moist and airy and puffy inside, but then it will create a little bit of a crust on the outside because of being cooked over the heat. So talking about those bean tamales over the fire, insane. But then there's the poison beans, which are ridiculously delicious, which I tried in the state of Navolon, where Monterrey is. And poison beans are beans that are cooked with the sauce of roasted adobo pork. So you can just imagine there's a recipe in my book for the adobo pork, which is cooked with orange rind and different kinds of dried chilies. See, so it's these unexpected flavors, a lot of cum in oregano. And then the sauce that remains, you use that to season the beans. So think about barbecue beans. Well, these are poison beans, and there's not one recipe because every family has a way to make the assala beans. And then there's also the chihuahua style beans, which I think are one of my favorite. I am a deli meat-obsessed person. I love Italian sub-sandwiches, cold-cut sandwiches. So think of the chihuahua-style beans as like a French potash, you know, like one of those like French bean dishes that have sausage and lamb and rabbit and chicken and all those things. But in Mexico, it's very humble. It's ham and sausage and chorizo and so delicious. And you eat it like a soup with, you know, you roll a corn tortilla. I can tell you many more beans. There's a chile de arbole refried beans that I tasted in Baja that you can eat with your lobster burrito. I made the lobster burrito feast to my son Juju's friends and their parents. When I was testing the recipes, he wanted to have these friends over and I said, okay, let's invite them. Let's invite the parents. And I made this lobster burrito feast. I think it's probably one of the best meals that I've cooked at home. It had the guajilio red rice, the chile de arbol refried beans, the fresh lobsters, which I got from my fishmonger, which I fried in butter and lard, made fresh flour tortillas. You take this burrito, which is so humble, but then you pack it up with these feelings, like the rice, the beans, the salsa de tomate, which can stand on its own. And then the fresh lobster, it was such a feast. They keep asking me to do it again. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not frying 15 lobsters again. Not anytime soon.
That sounds unreal. Real. How are the salsas in this border region across this region different from what you might see elsewhere?