On April 2, 2011, Pati’s Mexican Table premiered on television. The national public television series features Mexican chef Pati Jinich sharing authentic Mexican cooking. Each season, Jinich explores a different region of Mexico, taking the viewer along on her culinary journey.

Pati Jinich was born on March 30, 1972, in Mexico City. Her grandparents were from Eastern Europe and moved to Mexico before and during World War II. Jinich was greatly influenced by her grandparents’ cooking, which often featured traditional Eastern European and Ashkenazi foods with a Mexican twist. She grew up eating matzo ball soup with jalapeños, meat stews with salsa, and chicken with tamarind, apricots, and chipotle peppers.

In 1998, Jinich moved with her husband to Dallas, Texas. While writing her thesis on Mexican democratic institutions, she began to teach Mexican cooking to her friends and neighbors. She also acted as a consultant on a local Mexican cooking show. Two years later, she and her husband moved to the Washington, DC, area, where she obtained her master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University. She worked as a policy analyst at Inter American Dialogue but kept feeling drawn back to food. Encouraged by her husband, she attended night classes at L’Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, Maryland; shortly thereafter, she quit her job to pursue food full-time.

After writing and pitching many food articles to magazines that incorporated Mexican politics and culture alongside the ingredients, Jinich became the resident chef at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington in 2007. She created a Mexican cooking curriculum that quickly sold out, as well as her own blog. One thing led to another, and Jinich’s blog, called Pati Jinich, grew into a website featuring her recipes, multiple TV and video series, and cookbooks.

Jinich’s show Pati’s Mexican Table won three James Beard Awards and was nominated for an Emmy multiple times. In 2021, she made her debut on PBS Primetime with the series La Frontera. She has published three cookbooks, called Pati’s Mexican Table (2013), Mexican Today (2016), and Treasures of the Mexican Table (2021).

Jinich continues to fuse her Mexican and Jewish identities in her cooking. In 2009, she taught a Mexican-Jewish cooking class at the Lubavitch center. She cooked her favorite Passover food: gefilte fish à la Veracruzana, with tomatoes, olives, capers, and pickled peppers.

Sources

Elfin, David. “In Salsa Bowl, Mexican and Jewish History.” Jewish Food Experience, December 20, 2015. https://jewishfoodexperience.com/in-a-salsa-bowl-mexican-and-jewish-history/.

Nathan, Joan. “A Taste of Passover, With a Mexican Accent.” New York Times, March 31, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/dining/01seder.html?_r=1.

Pati Jinich. Accessed June 9, 2022. https://patijinich.com/.

Patricia, Jinich. “What am I? Chef Patricia Jinich on being Mexican-Jewish and reflecting her culture in the kitchen.” Global Jews, May 8, 2013. https://globaljews.org/articles/identity/what-am-i-chef-patricia-jinich-on-being-mexican-jewish-and-reflecting-her-culture-in-the-kitchen/.