As Mexico celebrates Turkey Day, make it a border-inspired Thanksgiving feast

Every year at Thanksgiving, I can count on my mother to tell the story of her first year living in Tijuana, when my father, who was born in Mexico City, told her: “Mami, I want you to create a traditional American Thanksgiving so we can show our friends how your people celebrate.

Growing up in Southern California, my mom was six months pregnant with me and had to babysit my sister, then just 1, when my dad asked for a Turkey Day feast. So she sent him to San Diego for the bird while she stayed at home in Tijuana to prepare the rest of the meal.

“They didn’t have elephants in Mexico,” she said each time she repeated the story.

For years, I believed her.

In the not-so-distant past, Mexico did not so readily accept American gratitude. For my father, it was just plain foreign. And as his youngest daughter, my half-sister Iridia, once explained, “In Mexico we do not consider the success of Europeans a cause for celebration.”

Fast forward many years from the first telling of the story, and I am standing in the kitchen of my father’s house in Tijuana, where he lived with his fourth wife, Grace, and two children, Mimo and Iridia. And there was food. Tons of food! Leftovers on trays and baking pans and cazuelas covered every inch of counters and stovetops. Grace saw me eat all the deliciousness and I imagine I looked hungry. They had a big family feast the night before, she said, as she showed me around the feast: tamales filled with pork, roasted peppers and pineapple; large bowls of stews and vegetables; And the remains of a giant bird, worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting.

“Is that turkey?” I asked, incredulous, even though it was clearly a turkey.

For Thanksgiving, a sesame-inspired turkey is sprinkled with spices — pasilla chile, cinnamon, cloves and all-spice — and roasted in butter with fennel, orange and herbs.

(Myung Jae Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Today, many Mexican families on both sides of the border celebrate an “American” Thanksgiving. And many restaurants near the border offer traditional Thanksgiving meals to their Mexican, American, and Mexican American customers. At Fauna in Valle de Guadalupe, named the best restaurant in Mexico in 2023 by World’s 50 Best Restaurants, Chef David Castro Hosing offers his regular menu on Thanksgiving, as well as a special holiday menu complete with turkey, potatoes and, of course, pie.

“We’re on the border,” says the Ensenada native and descendant of the family that owns the popular Husung Cantina. “Thanksgiving is a big deal here. In my family it’s a bigger deal than Christmas.”

Apparently what my mother meant in 1965 when she said they didn’t have elephants in Mexico was that they didn’t. button In Mexico because turkeys are from Mexico.

Mexican turkey

The wild birds of southern Mexico were domesticated by the Aztecs and Maya over 2,000 years ago. Unless you go for an heirloom bird (some types of birds that are naturally bred, with long lifespans and slow growth rates, have been raised outdoors), the turkey you’re likely to eat is a broad-breasted white turkey, a Mexican-American hybrid bred for rapid growth and a large enough white turkey to naturally mate with white turkeys.

The Spanish brought the birds to Europe in the 1500s and named them “paws,” because their colorless feathers resembled peacocks or peacocks.

These mother-like birds or guajlots (their Nahuatl name) are among many traditional Mexican dishes from southern Mexico that date back to before the Spanish conquest.

Border Thanksgiving Food – Always.

(Myung Jae Chun/Los Angeles Times)

In Puebla, the chicken is cooked and served with sesame. In the south, in Yucatán, it is roasted and turned into several traditional preparations, including pav pibel, in which a whole turkey is cooked in acuminate paste and sour oranges; pavo en escabeche, where sliced ​​turkey is marinated with orange juice and sprinkled with pickled onions and peppers; Pau en San Simon, shredded turkey in a tomato-based sauce, served with roasted herbs and slices of French bread. And then there’s the pau navidino, or Christmas turkey, which is perfectly stuffed and cooked, basically what Grace showed me in the kitchen, even though it wasn’t Christmas.

Now that Thanksgiving has moved away from the Pilgrims and Indian stories and toward a day that focuses on gratitude, the holiday has infiltrated Mexico. I have lived part-time in Mexico City for several years and every year when Thanksgiving rolls around everyone wishes me a “Feliz Dia de Exion de Gracias” or Happy Thanksgiving.

For the filling, make this holiday picadillo recipe with ground pork, spices, cubed potatoes, tomatoes, almonds, raisins, and oranges.

(Myung Jae Chun/Los Angeles Times)

But what never changes is Turkey at the center of what we call “Turkey Day”. I chose to feast on Grace’s Turkey Center for Thanksgiving this day. It is made up of influences and ingredients from different cultures – like mine, and like all of us “Americans”. I am grateful for the combination of cultures and experiences that make me who I am. I am grateful that Grace introduced me to this fair!

For this version, I season the turkey with sesame-inspired spices, including chili, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves, and season it with orange, fennel, onion, garlic, and fresh herbs. Grace cooks it with picadillo inside, and I sometimes do it at home, although for widely accepted food safety considerations, I recommend cooking the picadillo separately.

Holiday picadillo

My picadillo is seasoned with sweet spices and topped with golden raisins, toasted almonds, candied candied oranges and fresh thyme. (It gets better with time, so if you want to go ahead of the festival, it’s a good way to do it two days before).

The turkey is served with mole poblano, which Grace taught me how to make by making a jar of Dona Maria mole; I thin the cacao-chile sauce with turkey drippings for extra flavor.

Chocolate pecan pie is made with Mexican chocolate (which contains cinnamon) and lots of vanilla. Speaking of gratitude, this meal makes me grateful for all the foods that Mexico has shared with the world that made this meal possible: pecans, chocolate, chiles, tomatoes, vanilla…

Whatever you eat, wherever you are, as Hsung reminds us, “Thanksgiving is all about spending time with family. Being together.”

This year, on both sides of the border, those of us sitting comfortably and freely in the safety of our homes, enjoying festive dinners with family and friends and Mexican-American turkey, have much to be thankful for.

This recipe for pecan pie—baked in a black shell—has just enough Mexican chocolate to add flavor, and isn’t too sweet.

(Myung Jae Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Get recipes