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PHOTO BY ELLEN SILVERMAN

Viva (Jewish)
Mexico!

LARA RABINOVITCH NEUMAN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

PBS cooking
host Pati Jinich’s
Mexican-Jewish
Passover.

C

Pati Jinich

68

March 29 • 2018

jn

elebrity chef Pati Jinich grew up in Mexico City,
where she spent Shabbat dinners at her bubbie’s
house.
“When we walked into her house,” Jinich fondly recalls of
her grandmother, “the first thing she had was a big, gigan-
tic bowl of guacamole, but it was a Yiddish version because
it was a combination of chopped egg salad and guacamole.
Next to that, she would have a big bowl of gribenes” — crisp
chicken or goose skin — “with fried onions. And then she
already had sliced challah. So you would grab a slice of
challah, put the chopped egg guacamole mixture on top,

and then you top it with gribenes.”
This Mexican-Jewish fusion runs deep in Jinich’s family,
as it does for many other Mexican Jews.
“It’s become fashionable to do a Latin theme on Jewish
foods, but a lot of people don’t realize that Mexican-Jewish
cuisine is really deeply rooted,” says Jinich, who stars in
the hit national PBS cooking show Pati’s Mexican Table.
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, I’m gonna throw a chili in here or some
spices.’ There’s a full Mexican-Jewish vocabulary that has
existed for centuries.”
Jinich’s bubbie also made p’tcha (pickled calf foot), but