-Oh, give me a home where the vaqueros roam, where a ranch life still lives on today... where fresh corn is milled and pastries are filled... and I'll eat tamales and empanadas all day.

Mmm, it feels like I'm eating [speaks in Spanish].

Today, I'm getting a traditional taste of northern Mexican cuisine at a historic Sonora hacienda.

This keeps getting better and better, Maite.

Then, I bring those flavors back to my kitchen so that you too can get a taste of that norte hacienda life.

And so does a very hungry vaquero of my own.

This combination is a super winner.

Sweet and spicy, fresh corn chile verde and cheese tamales.

Grilled chili-rubbed pork chops topped with a pickled juicy grape salad.

A frosted, frozen grape margarita.

-♪ Dame, dame ♪ ♪ Dame tu chocolate ♪ ♪ Dame, dame ♪ ♪ Dame café caliente ♪ ♪ Dame, dame ♪ ♪ Dame tu corazón ♪ ♪ -"Pati's Mexican Table" is made possible by... ♪ -La Costeña.

♪ -♪ Avocados from Mexico ♪ -Fud brand meats -- a traditional Mexican flavor.

-Stand Together -- helping every person rise.

More information at StandTogether.org.

-BanCoppel -- your recipe for sending money to Mexico.

-Mahatma rice lets you unite ingredients and flavors.

Mahatma rice unites.

-Divine Flavor.

♪ -Norson.

♪ -La hacienda.

El rancho.

For the Mexican cowboy, or as we say in Spanish, vaquero, it's where they call home... shoe a horse, hang a hat or get a hot meal.

the hacienda is the hub of life for those who make a living under the great open Sonora sky.

Sonora borders the American southwest and they share the same rugged, arid landscape.

In Central Sonora, the past meets present at [speaks in Spanish], where even today you'll find cattle, comfort and plenty to eat.

And nothing calls a vaquero or a vaquera home as quickly as that amazing food.

The owner, Maite, has managed to preserve much of the ranch iconography this region is known for -- collecting odds and ends she finds in the property and seamlessly incorporating them into the décor.

The hacienda isn't just a monument to the past, it's also a fully functioning ranch with an interesting back story.

-My grand-grandfather... -No.

-Si.

-Coins started falling out of the hole in the wall?

-Just hide it.

-Yeah.

-Wow.

-Aww, Ah, that was beautiful.

Maite shares this treasure with me, the most valuable of which are her passed down family recipes.

What's the name of these tamales?

-Tamales de elote.

-To make this recipe you have to go out to your field and get your fresh corn, okay?

-Oh, my gosh.

-This masa is nothing but the ground fresh corn.

That's it.

And now you're going to cream your lard.

[ Chuckles ] We're going in with the corn.

This keeps getting better and better, Maite.

I've seen the -- the cobs placed in the bottom.

-No?

-And it makes so much sense.

[ Gasps ] Mmm, so creamy.

We have very few ingredients.

Like the corn, the chili, the cheese.

-The thing is to use the -- the things that we have here.

-So, you don't have a lot of ingredients, but they're ingredients that you love and you make the best of them.

-Yeah.

-While the tamales are cooking, you show me how you make your pumpkin empanadas?

-[ Speaking in Spanish ] -Okay.

Once it's cooked down... Mmm!

Deliciously super sweet.

Like, you want more.

It's like pumpkin jam.

Are you going to show me how to make...?

-How to make the, the dough for the empanadas.

-So, first we're going to cream these?

-Mm-hmm.

-So, quarter of a kilo of vegetable lard to active yeast.

-Yes.

-Okay.

-In the flour we put a pinch of salt.

-Okay.

-Okay.

Some suet.

-You just want it to mix with the flour, but it's still dry.

♪ This is like the prettiest rolling pin ever.

-It's really, really, really old.

♪ ♪ ♪ -[ Speaking in Spanish ] I can see chunks of corn.

-Yeah.

♪ -Mmm!

You mixed the spice in... -Yeah.

-...with the cheese.

-Sweet, but with chili and cheese.

♪ -Mm-hmm!

-[ Speaking in Spanish ] -Super hot, but super delicious.

Mmm!

It feels like I'm eating [speaks in Spanish].

You know, like it feels like a flavor that you will only get out in the country.

♪ What do you love the most when you wake up and you look at this?

-I like that you don't have finish.

Sight is endless.

-The horizon is never-ending.

-It's endless.

...because you see the big space.

Sonora is a big state and then you see a big space and the mountains.

-I love that.

This is a true taste of Sonora.

♪ Food in the deep north of Mexico is its own thing.

It's food that is simple, unpretentious, filling and so delicious, and it has its surprises too.

So, the first thing I'm gonna show you how to make is the northern style corn tamales.

We're gonna start with the chile verde and cebolla filling.

I have about a tablespoon of vegetable oil that I'm heating here over medium to medium high heat and I'm gonna cut my onion in [speaks in Spanish] or slivers.

About a cup to a cup and a half.

The onions here.

I have a pound of chile verde.

So, you know the chile verde that they use in Sonora are the Anaheim chilies.

What you need to do is roast them and then you put them in a bag and sweat them and peel, remove the seeds and the stems and then you get to have something like this.

Some slicing the Anaheims or chile verdes that we already roasted.

They're citrusy.

They have a slight acidic taste that's refreshing, that's very different from other chilies.

I'm adding a half a teaspoon of salt.

So this is going to come together and is going to continue softening for a minute or two.

You can find corn tamales all over Mexico and there's the variations.

But in Sonora they make corn tamales with a sweet, savory and spicy combination all in one.

And the combination is pretty phenomenal.

This is looking really good because it's brown all around the edges and the mixture just wilted together, which is a good thing.

So, I just turned it off and it's going to cool a little so that it's ready for me to use it as a filling.

Now, we're going to make the masa.

So, I'm adding four cups of white corn into my food processor.

It's gonna wanna jump everywhere.

But I'm gonna add a half of cup of evaporated milk and I want to mix it, but I want to leave it chunky.

♪ So...let me see.

I want it chunky, but not that chunky.

♪ It looks good.

So, we broke the kernels, but you can still see the big chunks.

Now we're going to make the rest of the masa.

These corn tamales are made with butter, so I'm using a half a cup of soft unsalted butter, one tablespoon of sugar and I'm going to start beating it until it's very soft and creamy.

We'll add half a teaspoon of salt.

One teaspoon of baking soda.

Then I'm going to add a cup of masa harina in four installments and I'm going to alternate between the corn mixture and the masa harina.

A little bit of the corn.

♪ And one more.

♪ We're looking for a masa that if I take it up with a spoon, it holds its shape but it's still soft and a little loose.

Now we're going to assemble the tamales.

We have our corn husks soaking in water for about an hour.

So, this is about two to three very generous tablespoons of the corn masa, and you want to put it in the middle.

Make a little bit of room and then we're adding some of the Anaheim onion mixture and then we're adding some of this melted cheese.

I'm using [speaks in Spanish] combined with oaxaca cheese.

But you can use any melted cheese that you want as long as it has a nice bite to it because you want it to contrast with the sweetness of the corn masa and with the spiciness of the Anaheim and onion mixture.

So, look how I'm folding the two sides of the corn husks and I'm pushing the masa to wrap the filling as I do.

See?

Did you see?

And then, once I have the filling trapped between the masa I'm closing it on the top, I'm moving this to one side, I'm folding it from the bottom and then I'm spreading it evenly to the top.

♪ So, let's continue.

So, I'm adding the two to three tablespoons of masa.

These are going to be so good.

The chili with the onion.

♪ And then the part of the husks that doesn't have any of the filling, you decide to which side you want to fold it and then you grab the bottom and you spread the masa like this.

Now you know how to build a tamales.

Now we have [speaks in Spanish].

Now you can get a formal [speaks in Spanish], which is a pot that's built with a steaming basket, but you can just use a steaming basket like this which will adapt to any pot, and I have water already and I'm gonna add a coin.

I have a quarter here.

Because the quarter is going to act as an alarm clock and whenever the pot runs out of water, it will start jumping around, letting me know if I ever need more water.

I'm using some of the husks that I soaked as the floor for the steamer, and then I want to place my tamales as vertical as I can.

And if you didn't make enough tamales to fill your pot then you just add a little bit more corn husks so that they won't move around.

And we're turning these on.

I'm going to reduce the heat to medium low and I'm going to let the tamales cook for about an hour and 15 minutes.

So, we're going to make some pork chops and you think about the food from Sonora like hacienda food, but then you find these surprising things.

For example, they grow an immense amount of many different kinds of grapes.

So, to sit right on top of those pork chops, I'm making a pickled grape salad.

So, I have a teaspoon of cumin seeds and I have a small pan here that I've been heating over a medium low heat and I'm going to toast my cumin seeds.

And this is just something that will make the smell, the taste, everything from the cumin seeds come out.

So, you see how the seeds are toasting.

Come, I'll show you.

Now they're starting to gain a little bit of the brown.

So, because we are going to bite into this, I'm trying to break them.

This is another one of those ingredients that I'm getting to know.

I didn't used to cook with a lot of cumin until I moved to the US and it turns out that many regions of Mexico which I hadn't explored do use a lot of cumin.

Not very common in Mexico City where I grew up, but, oh my gosh, in the north of Mexico it is prevalent.

I'm going to zest a lime and zest an orange and then we're going to add the juice of the lime and the orange.

And then we have the juice of the lime and the orange.

Two tablespoons of olive, one teaspoon of salt, then I'm whisking these.

♪ And then I'm going to add two cups of grapes.

I have cotton candy grapes.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Cotton candy grapes really do have a cotton candy taste, but it's like fresh and juicy.

Mmm, mmm.

I keep trying to get two cups, but I'm eating half of them as I'm taking them off the stems.

So, I'm going to cut them in half so that they will soak more of the pickling vinaigrette.

and some of the juices from the grape will start mixing with that pickling vinaigrette too.

Oh, these look really pretty.

This looks really pretty.

I'm thinly slicing a serrano.

I halved it and I'm leaving all of the seeds, because yum.

In they go.

And then I'm going to do half of an onion.

♪ So I'm slicing these celery thinly.

I'm going to add about a quarter cup cilantro and a quarter cup of mint.

Mmm, I can smell it too.

We're going to let this sit and macerate for a little bit.

So, the tamales have been cooking for about an hour and 15 minutes and it's always a great idea to leave the tamales in the pot with the lid on for at least another 15 minutes so that the husk will come off cleanly.

♪ I'm going to move my indoor grill.

I'm going to put the heat at medium.

When people think about Sonora, they think about beef, but Sonora also produces really high quality pork.

So, these are pork chops, bone in, with some of the fat on between one and half and two inches thick.

And I'm making a very simple but tasty rub.

I've one tablespoon of ancho chile powder, and I have one teaspoon of dried oregano, and about half a teaspoon of pepper and one teaspoon of salt.

I'm gonna mix all that in.

So, now I'm adding this rub.

Pork is really tender, it's accessible and you can season it in so many ways.

I mean, from like a chile rub like this to fruit sauces.

Like, you can go so many places.

What I love about eating pork is that it makes you feel full but you don't feel like overstuffed because the meat is just more light.

Okay, so, look how pretty that rub looks.

Juju, come, help me cook.

Remember when I was trying to make these pork chops with a grape sauce and it was one disaster after another?

Then we came up with this recipe.

-Yeah, so good.

-Did you love it?

-Yeah, I loved it.

-Aw, come over here, little monkey.

So, we're going to make it again 'cause you liked it so much.

-Yeah.

-I'm adding oil.

It's going to get smoky, Juju.

Do you want to put it on?

-Sure.

-Go for it.

-[ Indistinct ] -Slow.

Yeah.

But confidently.

[ Sizzling ] Okay.

And then we're going to grill the chops for about six to seven minutes per side and the temperature is 145 to 150.

That means it's cooked and it's not overcooked.

-Okay.

♪ -These look beautiful.

-Beautiful.

-So, we're going to let them rest so that all the juices in there like distribute and so it's nice when you slice them.

But also, we can let them rest really happily and confidently 'cause I want you to eat some tamales.

Juju, do you want to bring the tamales to the front?

-You want me to open it?

-Si.

♪ Aw, you want to toast with me.

-Oh.

-Oh!

That's because you really wanted to eat it.

-Mmm, really good.

Slightly sweet and spicy.

-These are super typical in Sonora.

-The flavors bounce off each other.

That's not like too spicy, but it's a little bit spicy.

-Mm-hmm.

We're going to make a watermelon and grape margarita.

-Okay.

-But for you, it's a virgin margarita.

Two cups of grapes and I froze them.

-Okay.

-So that it's going to be like a slushy.

You know what these are called?

-Gummy bears.

-Hmm!

Don't they taste like the strawberry flavor gummy bears?

Have you tasted grapes and watermelon together?

We have two cups of watermelon that I already diced and pre-froze so that it would be really like a slushy-slushy.

And then we have simple syrup.

Do you know what simple syrup is?

-Sugar and water?

-Exactly.

It's equal parts of sugar and water.

So, this is like three quarters of a cup of simple syrup.

It's fresh squeezed.

-Chili?

So that you have the sweet, the sour... -And the spicy.

-...sour, tart and the spicy.

And we can just add a couple of slices.

See?

[ Speaks in Spanish ] Four slice, five slice?

-Six.

-Six slice.

Give it a little heat.

-Hey!

-[Speaks in Spanish] Whoa!

Okay.

So, we're going to do this for you.

[ Speaks in Spanish ] Do you want to cut some of the grapes?

Mine that I'm gonna share with Papi, too... [ Speaks in Spanish ] Like a half a cup of tequila.

And I'm going to use silver tequila.

Mmm.

So, this is with tequila.

Toast.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

Mmm.

-Gives you like a brain freeze.

-Brain freeze!

And it's sweet and it's tart and it has a little bit -- a lot of that kick.

Mmm.

Mm-mmm.

Okay.

-Ready?

-Do you want to eat the meat with the grapes at the same time or first the -- -With the grapes.

How is it?

-Mmm.

-Cheers.

-Mmm.

I did the meat first.

Yum.

-Meat.

-Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-That's really good.

-Super tender.

And I like that it's so thick because we get the crust on top and the spices, but then in between, it's so subtle.

Then I'm going to try the grapes on their own.

Salad.

Mmm.

-It's really good with the grapes.

-Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

-Mm-hmm.

-This combination is a super winner.

-Mm-hmm.

-The grape salad is just so yum on its own.

Then together it's just yum.

So, this meal was really inspired by my trip to Sonora and it's something that I just didn't expect to find there, you know?

-I like when you test recipes on us 'cause, like, the first time you made this one it wasn't as good as right now.

-It got better.

-Yeah, it got a lot better.

-See?

So, you guys get to try the better versions.

Juju and his brothers get to try, like, all my attempts at getting it good.

But I think we got it good this time.

-So good.

-[ Chuckles ] ♪ -It's so good.

♪ -For recipes and information from this episode and more, visit PatiJinich.com.

And connect!

Find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest @PatiJinich.

-"Pati's Mexican Table" is made possible by... ♪ -La Costeña.

♪ -♪ Avocados from Mexico ♪ -Fud brand cheese -- traditional Mexican flavor.

-Stand Together -- helping every person rise.

More information at StandTogether.org.

-BanCoppel -- your recipe for sending money to Mexico.

-Mahatma rice lets you unite ingredients and flavors.

Mahatma rice unites.

-Divine Flavor.

♪ -Norson.

-Proud to support "Pati's Mexican Table" on public television.

♪