Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States

In her first cookbook, Zepeda, an award-winning celebrity chef, culinary anthropologist, and entrepreneur, combines storytelling with 100 delicious and accessible recipes. She approached this work from her experience growing up in both San Diego and Tijuana, Baja California. The introduction focuses on her family’s history and recipes, including the Zepeda family’s birria and Tía Lore’s pozole. One section covers dishes found everywhere in Mexico, while regional sections cover California’s border, Sonora, Chihuahua, and the three states in the northeast of Mexico that border Texas: Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. Zepeda shares information on each region’s Indigenous peoples, immigrant communities, and history. Recipes include a variety of foods and drinks, including agua fresca, salsas, churros, tamales, chile colorado, tesgüino (fermented corn beer), menudo norteño, and cured nopal and wild purslane salad. The book has a cohesive Southwest-inspired color palette: rose, green, brown, and yellow. Vibrant photos depict delicious food, fun moments, and regional snapshots.