“I love collecting market stuff in Mexico. I have an etagere built onto the wall of my living room, which has cubicles that are lit and filled with super inexpensive pottery. You see them in a new way; they become museum pieces.”
“One of my favorites is chilaquiles. It’s corn tortilla chips in a simple, brothy tomato sauce with a little chile for heat. It’s wonderfully homey. It has irresistible crispy bits and I love to eat it. And you can play around with it – add chicken, sliced red onions, or all these different things that can easily dress it up.”
“A lot of people don’t like to eat on camera, but I eat on camera all the time. I’m standing in for the viewer.”
“My earliest memory is making peach cobbler with my grandmother. A wonderful memory. I grew up in a restaurant family – B.B.Q. restaurant.”
“I did a show a long, long time ago called ‘Cooking Mexican’. It was a studio show as opposed to on-location like the one I do now. Before my first show, I was a cooking instructor, and I did a whole lot of classes for home cooks about Mexican food.”
“Chicago is a city of neighborhoods, and I love that. It’s cool to have different foods from all over the world within a stone’s throw of my house.”
“I’m meticulous about tasting everything at the restaurant, so I taste all the preparations before lunch and dinner. That means tasting around 50 dishes twice. There are times when I think I can’t taste another thing.”
“I cook all the time, and I cook all different kinds of things, but never Mexican at home. That’s my work.”
“I usually get up around 6 A.M. It takes me a while to get going. In our household, I am the first one up. I usually make coffee for myself, draw a bath and have a big soak. I read in the bath.”
“I love that we are bringing the flavors of Frontera to Los Angeles. I think we can only add to the booming food community in Los Angeles. Our food is gutsy and soulful.”
“I know Los Angeles has it better than Chicago when it comes to produce year round!”
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