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Pati's Mexican Table
series • cooking
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series • cooking
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A warm bowl of soup can be a true comfort food – and in the new season of Pati's Mexican Table, she discovers a comfort soup with a rich cultural heritage.
In this season, host Pati Jinich is travelling the state of Yucatán: "a tapestry of old world Maya culture weaved with new world Spanish tradition". Among the many wonderful experiences she shares is a visit to , near the city of Valladolid – "Think of it like a family-run Maya bed and breakfast," she explains – where visitors can take a Mayan cooking class, help prepare and then enjoy a Mayan dinner, or stay in rustic traditional huts. After gathering some of the ingredients from the gardens, she joins Zoila Cen and her mother Irma to learn dishes including soup made with a popular Mexican green called chaya, served with freshly made tortillas torn into the bowl, and heuvos encamadisos - fresh corn tortillas stuffed with eggs. The visit ends with a special treat: handmade chocolate, served with Xtabentún, a Mayan anise and honey liquor. "Irma's traditional way of offering gratitude to people, to food, to the culture," Pati explains in the episode. "When I have visitors, I like to spoil all who come here ... With my heart in my hand," Irma says.
She's one of many who are warm and welcoming as Jinich travels the state.
"The people I meet in Mexico are always welcoming and lovely, and they really invite us into their homes and share their food and introduce us to their family, and it's so special that I really try to just be a microphone for them to share their stories," Jinich says when we chat to her about the new series.
Pati visits the pink lakes where the Las Coloradas salt is produced. Credit: Darren Durlach / Pati's Mexican Table
The rich heritage and varied culture of the region is fully on show in this season of Pati's Mexican Table, from chef Julio Dominguez sharing his "grandmother's buttoned eggs" to visits to the vibrantly pink salt lakes of Las Coloradas and Temozoón, the birthplace of Yucatán’s signature smoked meat carne ahumada. We talked to Pati about some of the highlights of this season.
This season has an episode called 'Ode to the Egg'. The 'buttoned eggs' that chef Julio Ku Dominguez cooks for you in that episode are very unusual: "grandma's buttoned eggs", which are cooked in ashes. Why are they called buttoned eggs?
The eggs, rather than boiled in water, they're cooked in the ashes that come out of the firewood that's used in Yucatan to heat comals. A lot of food over a fire made with wood. And so there's always ashes, where people are cooking the tortillas, or um, tamales, and here they cook the eggs in the still-hot ashes. There's a certain smoky element to the result of cooking the eggs this way. They're called button eggs because after the eggs are cooked in the heat from the ashes, they sit on little seats that look like little buttons. And they're Julio's Grandma's button eggs because his grandma used to make them for him.
Pati Jinich with chef Julio Dominguez. Credit: Darren Durlach / Pati's Mexican Table
One egg dish has drawn tourists from around the world to the city of Motul, huevos Motuleños, and you met the lady who helped make this dish world-famous, Dona Evelia. You mention that it's a dish you often make at home, to share with visitors. Why do you love this dish?
She was so incredible and charming and hospitable, and she made the huevos Motuleños in the best possible way. She cooks a tomato sauce that has very ripe tomatoes and a lot of onion and just cooks that for a lot of time. And then she cooks pieces of ham that she dices. And so the smoky, salty taste of the ham infuses the tomato salsa, and then she adds peas, and she adds habanero chillies. She adds them whole, which adds a little bit of the fragrance and perfume, but not a lot of the heat. The great thing is that when you get the eggs if you get the habanero chilli, you can break it and add as much heat as you want. I love this dish so much because it really dresses the eggs. It's a chunky tomato sauce that has the sweet bite from the fresh peas and the salty taste from the ham and then you serve it with caramelised sweet plantains. And so you have a combination of savoury, spicy, sweet that's really delightful. This is a dish that is a speciality for breakfast, but people in Yucatan love huevos Motuleños so much that they eat them just any time of the day. In fact, Dona Avella serves her huevos Motuleños all day.
Motuleño eggs. Credit: Paul H. Christian / Pati's Mexican Table
What are some of your other favourite Mexican dishes with eggs?
I'm obsessed with eggs! I think they're such a miraculous ingredient. Not only are they beautiful, but affordable, approachable, and versatile, they're also packed with nutrients and protein. They're an ingredient that is ready to take centre stage, like in the button eggs or , but they also can be a sidekick or be part of a dish, if you think of eggs as being an essential part of souffles or pancakes or crepes or many, many ways that we use eggs. My favourite way of eating eggs is sauced, whether in sauce like the or drowned or poached in sauce. I just love eggs with all different kinds of sauces. On my website, there is or eggs poached in a poblano and tomato salsa, which are super delicious. I love them also scrambled.
You also explore Mayan culture and meet some of the people trying to preserve that today, including through food, such as the Mayan dishes Zoila and Irma shared with you at Aldea Xbatún: sikil pák, the , and chaya soup, which they serve with fresh tortillas torn into the bowl and the heuvos encamadisos, fresh corn tortillas stuffed with eggs. The soup in particular seemed like comfort food - the warm bowl, the dunking of the fresh tortillas?
That was a really, really delicious soup. And very, very simple. It uses fresh chaya leaves, which are like the Yucatan version of spinach. In fact, chaya has a lot more iron than spinach, and they love chaya in Yucatan. I brought some seeds, and I'm growing my own chaya tree in Washington, DC. I've been taking such good care of it for the past year and a half, and it's growing beautifully. I have to bring it in in the winter and then take it out in the summer. And that soup is just so nutritious, so wholesome, so filling. You have the combination of the slightly herby, pungent taste of the chaya, but you can use spinach or watercress if you don't find it, and then it has the ground pumpkin seeds that are nutty and delicious. And then you add a salsa on top, and some corn tortillas. It is comforting and good for you.
Chaya soup. Credit: Paul H. Christian / Pati's Mexican Table
