Overheard with Evan Smith

- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy; Claire and Carl Stuart; Christine and Philip Dial; Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, ellergroup.com; Diane Land and Steve Adler; and Karey and Chris Oddo.

- I'm Evan Smith.

She's the James Beard Award-winning host of "Pati's Mexican Table" on PBS.

And she's the bestselling author of four cookbooks, most recently, "Foods of La Frontera."

She's Pati Jinich.

This is "Overheard."

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This is "Overheard."

(upbeat music) (audience applauding) (Pati laughing) (audience continue applauding) Pati Jinich, welcome.

- Thank you so much for having me, Evan.

I love it here already.

- I love that.

And it's an honor, I have to tell you, to have you.

I am such a fan.

You are so great at everything that you do.

It is just a treat to meet you.

Congratulations on this book.

- Thank you so much.

- What a success!

So this is the byproduct of 10 years of travel along the border, from San Diego to Brownsville, almost 2000 miles.

- Yes.

- Why?

- Because I started a show called "Pati's Mexican Table" after moving to the US.

And I was very nostalgic about Mexico.

And I wanted to break myths and preconceptions about who we Mexicans are.

And I started that show and started going back and forth, the US and Mexico, going to a different state of Mexico each time.

Had three boys, born in the US.

After 10, 12 years of doing that, Evan, I wanted to, like, really show the world who we Mexicans are.

And I realized that I didn't know as a Mexican who we were.

And I felt this really magnetic pull to come to the border, because unbeknownst to me, I had grown really deep roots into the US as well.

I had three boys.

We had already built a home.

I had switched careers to a career that I love so much.

And at the same time, I was strengthening my roots to Mexico and I felt this deep love for both, and I felt this responsibility to do right by both.

And that led me to the border.

- It's amazing.

And of course, the border is not one thing, right?

Let's just talk physically about the journey that you took.

Again, San Diego to Brownsville, the border between California and Mexico is not the same as the border between Arizona and Mexico, or New Mexico and Mexico, or Texas and Mexico.

So what differences did you see as you progressed?

- I mean, it is just, first of all, the US-Mexico borderlands is 31 million people.

So when people think about the US-Mexico border, they're thinking about a line, they're thinking about, as our mutual friend Alfredo Corchado calls it, the political pinata.

And people just have one image: people trying to cross.

And it is people that have blood ties, business ties, collaboration ties.

I would say, Evan, that one commonality, and I will talk about the diversity, one commonality is that sister cities across the border, El Paso, Ciudad, Juarez, San Diego, Tijuana, they go by a single name.

- Matamoros in Brownsville.

- CaliBaja.

Exactly.

- Even Ambos Nogales, Ambos Laredos, they have much more in common between each other than with cities in their own states or their own countries.

- Right, but of course, you and I are old enough to remember.

You look young.

I do not.

But nonetheless, we're both old enough to remember that in the pre 9/11 days, the ability to go back and forth across the border to those sister cities was a fact of life and a feature of life in those communities.

And of course, over the last 25 years, it's gotten a lot more complicated.

- Exactly.

And it's gotten more complicated, and it is harder to find the nuance.

And I felt like I needed to do that.

And so I trekked from San Diego-Tijuana, to Brownsville-Matamoros.

And what I found was so full of awe and inspiration that after I did the docu-series, I had to go back to do the book because I just didn't have the opportunity to fit it all in a docu-series.

What did I find?

I find Syrian Lebanese communities in El Paso.

I found Chinese Mexican American in Mexicali.

I found Japanese, American, Mexican, Akaushi cattle farmers in the Rio Grande Valley.

I found Mennonite communities, like, deep in Chihuahua.

And it's so diverse, so rich.

At the same time that you get the diversity, you get the microcosm of all of Mexico 'cause people from the entire country are going to the border 'cause it's a magnetic pool.

Then you have the diversity of the Southern US, which I think people don't know much about, you know, Southern US states.

It's parts of the countries that are forgotten by both countries that are rich and diverse.

But you also have the migrant flows into that region as we talk, you know, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Jews, you know.

And so you get all of that diversity.

But then you get the liminal space.

What happens when two countries and two cultures are rubbing against each other 24/7?

And I had that quote at the end of my docu-series, and I pushed for that quote.

And it goes, you know, "They say the grass is greener on the other side, but what happens when you live right on the fence?"

And that is what the people in the borderlands are living every minute of their lives.

They're resilient, they're accommodating.

It's a place that defies expectations, and I try to explain it as a twilight zone- - Yeah, well, I think- - Of sorts.

- That the thing about this book, this book that struck me is it's a cookbook, and we're gonna come to the food.

There's plenty of recipes in the cookbook.

You make the point that the border both connects us and divides us, right?

And in fact, you don't even like to use the word border.

You say you prefer to say La Frontera because borders are about stopping.

They're about limits.

La Frontera, the frontier is about, it's a beginning, not an ending, right?

- Exactly.

- And I think that's a really interesting way to think about this conceptually, because people when they hear the border these days in this polarized, politicized world where every time you talk about the border, it's kind of negative.

- Very negative.

- Right?

You've turned that narrative, I think, upside down in this book.

- Exactly.

And I feel that the border and the people from the borderlands, I've never been with people as warm and welcoming and inviting and generous and so giving.

And there's just something that happens in the US-Mexico borderlands that you can't understand if you're not there.

- Right.

And that comes across.

Again, I think the possibility created by this frontier, you know, life knows no borders, food knows no borders, thematically that works.

And I actually think there's an additional twist to this that I hadn't considered before, but that you wrote in this book, and that is that there's kind of a third space.

- Exactly.

- There's a Spanish phrase for this that you have in the book, where it's neither here- - Ah, (speaking in Spanish) si, si, si.

- Right.

Neither here nor there.

(In Spanish) Ni de aquí, ni de allá.

- Yeah.

- And I even felt so at-home in the US-Mexico borderlands because I grew up as a Jewish Mexican girl and I kind of stood out, you know, in a class of 150 kids.

My maiden last name is Drijanski.

I was the only Drijanski there in the middle of Ramos, Lopez, Gomez, Martinez.

(audience laughing) And I would come back home saying, "Why can't I be a Gomez or a Lopez or Martinez?"

(audience laughing) And I tell this story.

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, I was invited, I was chosen by my class to play Virgin Mary.

(audience laughing) And it was a dream- - As a blue-eyed Jewish girl growing up in Mexico City, (Pati laughing) of all the people they could have picked to play the Virgin Mary, they picked you.

- It was Pati Drijanski.

Exactly.

- There it is.

Right.

Yeah.

- And it was a dream because for Mexicans, you know, the Mexican flag is here.

It's the eagle standing on the cactus eating the snake.

For Guadalupana, the Virgin is, here's the flag, the Guadalupe is here.

Like, I was gonna get to hold baby Jesus.

Like, it was a dream.

You caught it in the Rosca every year.

And there I was with the veil, with the baby, and my Polish grandmother is in the audience.

She almost had a heart attack.

- I bet.

(audience laughing) - And I used to go to mass with my friends on Sunday.

And then after the play, we passed the church and I did the cross and she's like, "You're killing me."

(audience laughing) But I lived with these, I call it a happy-tear.

Fridays I would do Shabbat with my grandparents, you know, some fled the pogroms from Poland.

Others on my mother's side, they fled the Second World War.

Most of their family killed in Auschwitz, so live with that heavy weight of the Jews.

And then I would do Posadas with my friends.

I would go to church on Sundays.

And the most fun, the most incredible thing is that I ate all the food.

So I grew up with that, feeling like I didn't belong here or there.

Then I married my husband.

We moved to Texas, and I'm too Mexican for Texas.

So it was like "that accent is too much".

People couldn't understand it.

I would get, like, comments that were plain, like, "You don't look like my gardener."

"You don't look like..." "Where's that last name from?"

"You sound Mexican."

So it was this... And I was a political analyst by then.

- Your academic background is actually political science.

- Political science.

- And you have a graduate degree in Latin American studies.

Like, I mean, you actually came to food later.

- Much later.

- But you understand the complexity of this whole thing.

And by the way, your story is a profoundly American story.

The way we talk about immigrants, people with your situation today, is totally divorced from the reality of it.

- Exactly.

- You are the American story.

- Well, my kids are first generation.

- Right.

- I am the immigrant.

I'm the one who came, Evan.

And I will always be the one who came.

And from Mexico, I will always be the one that left.

And it's been a journey and I have found my mission and my calling with the US-Mexico borderlands and with "Panamericana" which I'm doing now, which is a new docu-series where I'm inviting people to reimagine- - And the second season of that series is gonna be on in about five weeks- - Yes.

- Four weeks.

And it is more of a traveling around the whole country, not just the borderlands.

- It's the entirety of the Americas.

I'm very ambitious, Evan.

My husband is very scared, (audience laughing) because I'm traveling a lot.

In fact, every time I come back from a trip, I'm worried that he may have changed the lock.

(audience laughing) - Well.

Let me warn you.

There's not good Mexican food every place in this country.

- No.

But, so "Panamericana" goes from Alaska to Argentina, 'cause it was like I found my place in the border 'cause being not from here, not from there, in La Frontera, everyone is that way.

Everyone is trading worlds.

Everybody's switching codes.

And so I felt very at home because labels and categories, it's not that they lose their meaning, but they expand their meaning in this liminal space, in this twilight zone with delicious food.

Like, you can sit at a table with the same family and you have a brother who's border patrol, a brother who's a priest, a sister who drops water on the path.

And they all are... You know, it's like life happens in a different way.

It's not that people don't judge 'cause of course we are humans and we are flawed and everybody judges.

- Of course you judge.

- But it's just a different way.

I think we would all learn so much from the people from the borderlands, 'cause they have no choice but to adapt and be resilient.

But with "Panamericana," which is what I'm most excited about, I'm going from the top of Alaska, that was season one, Alaska to Canada, to the bottom of Argentina.

- Amazing.

– So season two crosses the lower 48: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona.

And it's been the most incredible journey in that I started doing that, trying to, of course, invite people, let's reimagine what it means to be an American in the entire sense of the word.

Why do we call ourselves American only in the US?

Everybody who's in the Americas is American.

And if we can understand the rest of the Americas- - But you know that's controversial these days.

- But when you put food in front of people- - Right.

It's the great equalizer, isn't it?

- Exactly, like, people are more interested in learning about, you know, the food.

And you invite people and you say, "If you get to learn more about the sister countries, then you can actually understand who we are better because the threads of who we are communities that come from these countries.

So it's a win-win.

So why don't we do it?

- So I wanna ask you about the TV shows, plural, because there's "Pati's Mexican Table," there was a "La Frontera" docu-series, there's the "Panamericana" docu-series.

But I wanna just say one more word about this book, which is that the recipes in this book really range.

It's everything from poison beans to crazy corn, right?

There's meals, there's side dishes, there's everything that you could possibly want.

And again, you did not skimp on this.

- Oh no!

- There are so many recipes in this book, and the nature of these recipes, it's really something that everybody has an entry point.

If you are an amateur cook in your house or if you're more experienced, you can find a way into this.

And to that point, I also appreciated that there are some techniques and some explanations that go along with this, how to sweat chilies properly, which I honestly was like, this is actually useful.

So on the TV thing, so you've written now four bestselling cookbooks.

You have these three extraordinary shows.

What is the difference between doing a cookbook and a TV show?

What is the through line in common, and what are the differences as you think about what your job is, one medium versus the other?

- Okay, so I love your question so much.

Like, you're a fabulous interviewer.

Like, of course you know that.

Of course you know that.

(audience applauding) You're insightful.

- Aw-shucks.

Aw-shucks.

- You're, like, insightful.

And I mean, it's just- - Thank you.

- This is thoroughly enjoyable, and let's make it longer, please.

I was gonna say, so for the TV shows, I've evolved so much, Evan.

I started, when I first started "Pati's Mexican Table," the demand was from, you know, from media and from the production companies that I worked with, that I had to translate for camera.

I was doing Mexico, but I was talking to people in Spanish, and I needed to tell camera, "Oh, he just said this."

Or I would need to repeat the question in English.

And that broke the magic, broke the moment.

And I was also taking people to the Mexico that I knew.

That changed to, "I'm gonna take you to where I haven't been 'cause that's what I wanna learn."

It was this incredible growth that I need to go where I haven't been, and my viewers became my companions.

I'm not telling them.

They're learning with me.

And I've learned to be, I try to be a better interviewer by stepping more aside.

And when we're in Spanish-speaking places, we subtitle.

And I think people really appreciate.

The difference between books and shows is that with the shows, and now is where my political analysis historian backbone is really helpful.

I'm a super nerd.

I love deep research.

And I will ask you about your parents, your great-grandparents.

I will get to the Big Bang if you let me 'cause that's where I wanna go.

But I have to make myself really vulnerable.

When I'm going to meet people and they invite me to their families, to their homes, to their spaces, I come raw and I come vulnerable and I come open, and I connect so intensely and so deeply.

And it's just that they maybe- - But also, let me say, Pati, and I'll give you this credit, you come humble.

A lot of people who have cooking shows, I'm not gonna say who I'm thinking of, but I am thinking of very specific people, it's about them.

When you go see... So we're in the 15th season of "Pati's Mexican Table," and one of the episodes that's already been on, you go to this ranch and it's kind of largely about Cabrito, right?

You were with these people and they were front and center.

You were not front and center.

You were the enabler of their stories being told by them.

- Like, I'm holding myself from going over there and giving you another hug.

- It's okay.

(audience laughing) (audience applauding) We'll just edit that in later.

That's all right.

- Just because they told me not to move the chair.

- That's okay.

(audience laughing) But I do think that that's one of the reasons that this show is so successful and why it's so easy to watch, is you're not making this about you.

With regard to the moment we're in for cooking shows, everybody is a foodie now.

This show's been on for 15 seasons.

I don't know if you went back 15 years, if everybody was a foodie then, but everybody thinks they're a foodie and an expert now.

How do you sort that in terms of how you think about the work you do?

- I think that is fabulous for me and for people.

And I was gonna give you a hug 'cause you watched the show.

- Oh, of course.

- Thank you so much.

I'm so... You know, you can't take it for granted 'cause people have so many choices of what to watch and what to do with their time.

- Right.

But I really genuinely enjoy it.

I'm not a professional, but I do cook and I do care about food and I would much rather gravitate to somebody who's gonna expand my horizons as opposed to being same stories I'm already getting and have that stuff reinforced.

So what about that?

So everyone's a foodie.

- Everyone is a foodie.

This is such a phenomenal question, Evan.

Like, it is so true.

And it is like a wonderful pinata for people in the food world.

Why?

Especially the Mexican food world.

Because when I moved to the US, you could find a jalapeno if you were lucky.

These days you can find every possible fresh and dried chilies, piloncillo, spices.

You can find the grinders for the chilies... So in terms of ingredients and tools, everybody wants to have a molcajete, even if they're not gonna use it, as you say, because everybody's a foodie.

Everybody wants to feel that they can have that culture, that, like, authentic tool and ingredient.

So it's incredible because then you're talking to people who actually know what a molcajete is, even if they're not gonna use it, they may wanna think that they will use it one day, which is just as good.

- It's good.

- And everybody knows a lot about food too.

Now, we are fully, fully, like, just flooded with bad food and quick recipes and fast things.

You know, what is the thing to do now?

Is it the five-ingredient thing?

Is it the two-minute recipe?

And here is where I believe that my view on long-term legacy and quality has allowed me to have the place that I have today, which I was ready to drop the towel 10 times because public media, you have to fundraise, you have to... I executive produce, I produce.

So it's a lot of work that I'm very grateful for, but as you know, it's very hard.

But like saying, I believe in the long term and I believe that every recipe that you try to make in that book, it better work 'cause I tested it a thousand times, you know?

And so I think that my content and people like me can float and shine and be useful in the long term.

By the way, all the gifts from La Frontera that don't receive due credit, the Caesar salad comes from Tijuana, the nachos come from Piedras Negras, the burrito from... And this is food.

Talking about the moment that we're living today, this is food and people and places that are being judged.

This is food that people is like, "Mm, that's not really Mexican.

That's not really American."

But guess what?

Everybody wants a bite.

Everybody wants to jump into a nachos.

Everybody wants to bite into a burrito.

So I started... It's been a humbling journey for me too, Evan, 'cause I started trying to do Mexican food and Mexican culture right and authentic.

And I was so wrong.

In this book, I mean, I'm glad for the journey I've had that's led me to this.

Now I'm not trying to do Mexican food right, or culture.

I'm doing the food as I find it and as it's real.

And I've embraced my multicultural identity and the foods that I find knowing that, what I found is much more beautiful because Mexican food and culture are borderless.

So that's why you get Tex-Mex.

That's why you get the New-Mex-Mex.

That's why you get Cal-Mex.

- Cal-Mex.

- And everybody wins 'cause it's just more, it's delicious food.

And some people are scared with the borderless, but the fact that you have new regional cuisines, like extraordinary Tex-Mex, you guys.

I used to not really like Tex-Mex when I moved to the US 'cause I didn't understand it.

And also Tex-Mex has gotten more-Mex, which is great, 'cause more Mexican ingredients, honestly.

But so in terms of people being scared, the fact that there are new things and new dishes that evolve as people move homes, move from one country to the other, create new recipes, that doesn't take away from the classics.

You're not gonna lose, you know, a mole poblano, which in its time was an original recipe and a new weird recipe.

You're not gonna lose it because I made a new pine nut mole when I went to Coahuila that has fried- - And I saw, there was a show this season that I think had that.

And the ingredient that really struck me was it was like red pine nuts or pink pine nuts.

- You guys, I, (audience laughing) I mean, I just can't.

(audience applauding) Like, oh my gosh.

Like, the attention to the... I'm like dead.

- I paid attention.

- I'm dead.

No, but you were saying what I do, you know, and I put so much effort in what I do.

I've been interviewed many times.

- No one brings up the pink pine nuts?

- No one brings up the pink pine nuts.

- I was looking at the pink pine nuts going, "I've never seen pink pine nuts."

- They are exquisite.

- It looked great.

- They're sweet.

- They look good.

- They're creamy.

- Yeah.

- They're so luxurious.

- They look great.

- And they come from Coahuila, like a state that not many people know about.

And Coahuila and Texas were once one.

I come from Mexico.

We love soap operas.

You know, Coahuila and Texas were once one, before the US was a US, before Mexico was Mexico, everything was New Spain.

And before then it was the Indigenous nations that lived in the Americas.

And this is what I found in my new series, "Panamericana," which I wanted to do trying to find what has been the promise of the Americas and who has that promise been solved or given.

And it's, you know, all the immigrant waves of people that have come, my grandparents, that wanted to come for freedom, for safety, and what did they find here?

Realizing that wherever I go, from the top of Alaska, now I'm at the border again in Nogales, I keep finding the native people that haven't been allowed to make the Americas their home.

And in the end, we're all hunkering to belong.

We're all longing for a home.

And so I think that when you connect through food, it's just so much easier to digest the beauty and the pain.

- You know, it's hard to hate somebody when you're sitting across the table from them.

- And when they feed you, like say you and I really don't like each other, which is impossible 'cause now I love you so much, but it's like- - It's on camera.

Right.

- It's on camera.

But say, you know, we come from different political, religious values, et cetera, and we know about each other and we can stand each other.

But for whatever reason, you're asked to make me the soup that your grandmother made, and your grandmother is really dear to you.

And you make it, and by making it, you're pouring yourself into it.

And then you see me, someone you don't like, eat something you love.

You're grateful already.

- It fixes everything.

Unfortunately, we're out of time.

- No!

- I'm sorry.

(audience laughing) - Come on.

- I wanna tell you that it is a joy to talk to you.

This book is so great.

It will be, keep it very close to me in my house.

And I wish you great luck with the series and everything else you're doing.

- Thank you so much.

- Pati Jinich.

Give her a big hand.

(audience applauding) Thank you very much.

(audience applauding and cheering) Visit our website at austinpbs.org/overheard to find invitations to interviews, Q&As with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes.

- I always ask my kids, 'cause they're Mexican American, like, "What percentage do you feel Mexican today?

And what percentage do you feel American today?"

And they used to try to match the hundred, and they would ask me, (speaking in Spanish)?

And I would say, "Well, today I'm feeling like 95% Mexican and like 82 American."

And they would say like, "That doesn't add," but that's the way I feel things, you know?"

- You know what?

Forgivable.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Overheard with Evan Smith" comes from Hillco Partners, a Texas government affairs consultancy; Claire and Carl Stuart; Christine and Philip Dial; Eller Group, specializing in crisis management, litigation, and public affairs communication, ellergroup.com; Diane Land and Steve Adler; and Karey and Chris Oddo.

(bright music)