The meals of Mexico is various, complicated, and beloved the world over. Don’t simply take it from us — in 2010, conventional Mexican delicacies was added to UNESCO’s checklist of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The dignity designates this meals as a cultural treasure that must be preserved for generations to come back. 

Mexican chef and cookbook creator Margarita Carrillo Arronte spent years advocating for this designation. All through her profession, which spans greater than 35 years, Margarita has been dedicated to exploring Mexican delicacies and showcasing it on the world stage. She has run a number of profitable eating places, spearheaded menus for main international occasions together with the 2012 G20 summit in Cancun, hosted common meals and cooking reveals in Latin America, and penned a number of seminal cookbooks, together with 2014’s “Mexico: The Cookbook.”

At 75 years previous, Margarita remains to be discovering layers to her house nation’s meals. Her newest launch, “The Mexican Vegetarian Cookbook,” dives into Mexico’s legacy of plant-based cooking. She says engaged on the ebook took her into new corners of Mexican culinary historical past, particularly as a result of she’s not vegetarian herself. 

“Once I began to analysis, I discovered rather a lot,” Margarita says. “And the additional again you go into the historical past of Mexico, the extra vegetarian the meals is.”

On this episode of Latino USA, Margarita talks with host Maria Hinojosa concerning the wealthy historical past of her house nation’s delicacies, debunking misconceptions about it, and spending a lifetime cooking, consuming, and loving Mexican meals. 

Featured picture courtesy of Adalberto Lanz.