As soon as Eva Longoria arrived in Mexico to film her series Searching for Mexico, she knew she was going to write a cookbook further documenting her journey.
“I just kept writing down everything that I was learning and experiencing,” the actress and director tells PEOPLE of the cooking and travel show, which premiered in March 2023 on CNN.
With every lesson she learned from chefs and natives across Mexico, Longoria, 49, began to realize: “Oh, there’s a beautiful cookbook here that could celebrate everybody I’ve met, all of their recipes, all of their creations, and to really applaud the cuisine of this country.”
The result was My Mexican Kitchen: 100 Recipes Rich with Tradition, Flavor, and Spice, PEOPLE and People en Espańol can exclusively reveal. The cookbook — her second after 2011’s Eva’s Kitchen — will be released on Oct. 29.
My Mexican Kitchen by Eva Longoria.
Penguin Random House
In the years since Eva’s Kitchen (which came out at the height of her Desperate Housewives fame), Longoria had the opportunity to deepen her connection with her Mexican heritage, through both personal and professional milestones.
She married a Mexican man, José “Pepe” Bastón in May 2016 and they welcomed their son Santiago Enrique in 2018. The family splits their time between homes in Mexico and Los Angeles.
In addition to hosting Searching for Mexico, Longoria launched her tequila brand, Casa Del Sol, in 2021 — and Hungry for History with Eva Longoria and Maite Gomez-Rejón, a podcast about Mexican cuisine with culinary historian Maite Gomez-Rejón in 2022.
“I’m definitely immersed in the culture in a way that I wasn’t before,” she says. “And I actually felt like I couldn’t have written this cookbook 10 years ago. I didn’t know enough.”
While Eva’s Kitchen contained Mexican and Tex-Mex recipes inspired by Longoria’s childhood growing up in a Mexican-American family in Texas, My Mexican Kitchen shines a spotlight on the cuisine, culture, ingredients and people of Mexico.
“It’s for the people who go, ‘Taco Tuesday,’ and don’t really understand that Mexico’s more than tacos and tequila,” she says.
“This book captures the breadth of what Mexican cuisine has to offer from seafood and mariscos to breads and pan dulces and French-inspired pastries,” she adds, noting that colonization in Mexico is responsible for the diversity of the cuisine among the different regions in the country.
But whether making the shrimp aguachile, the Cheesy Tacos de Fideo with Chorizo or Pollo Asado, a classic Yucatán dish, Longoria assures her readers that there’s no need to be intimidated when using her book.
Eva Longoria in Searching for Mexico.
CNN
She made sure it was “user-friendly” by listing out the ingredients needed for each dish, as well as providing step-by-step instructions for making staple elements seen in many Mexican dishes, like guacamole or tortillas.
“I think sometimes certain cuisines can be intimidating, and I think Mexican is one of them,” she admits. “This book really, really opens the door for anybody who wants to dive into the deliciousness that Mexico is.”
In her book, the Proud Family: Louder and Prouder alum will explore the history of important ingredients in Mexico that are loved worldwide like tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla and chiles.
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She also shares personal family recipes with her readers, like her late Aunt Elsa’s pork and red chile tamales and conchas. Longoria says that the tamale recipe was particularly difficult to share with readers, because she and her family had to recall the ingredients and steps without Elsa’s help confirming that the recipe was correct.
Eva Longoria in Searching for Mexico.
CNN
“She would make the tamales in the group and we would just be the assembly line,” Longoria recalls.
“Once she passed away, nobody knew the recipe. And so putting that one back together and experimenting was probably the hardest one in the book, because it was just missing her touch and her essence,” Longoria adds.
Her family came together to help her figure it out — and so much more.
My Mexican Kitchen is available for pre-order now before it is released on Oct. 29 by Clarkson Potter.
