'Pati Jinich Explores PanAmericana' takes a culinary journey through Alaska and Canada

ON TV

The three-part series, “Pati Jinich Explores PanAmericana” will air its first episode at 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, on New Mexico PBS, channel 5.1. The second and third installments will air at 8 p.m. May 6 and 13. The series will also be available to stream on the PBS app.

EPISODE BY EPISODE

Episode 1: “Alaska – Wild Harvest”

Pati Jinich travels from the northernmost city in the United States to the remote island community of Halibut Cove in southern Alaska — discovering that subsistence living transcends all differences. At the top of the Americas, in Utqiagvik, Jinich meets Geoff and Marie Carroll who have fought for the Inupiat people to maintain their traditional ways of hunting, goes for a ride with sled dogs, visits scientists monitoring climate change, and discovers the town’s obsession with a familiar sport – basketball. Then in Anchorage, she forages for berries with an Indigenous community leader Anna Sattler, gets the lay of the city’s food scene with food writer Julia O’Malley, crashes the recording session of local band Sazón, and gets a taste of Americana at the Alaska State Fair. As she continues south, she stops in the Russian village of Nikolaevsk, before landing in one of the most stunning and unique places in the U.S., Halibut Cove, with Martha Cotten and her family. She learns that living in this frontier region instills Alaskans of all backgrounds with a deep connection to the ebbs and flows of their natural environment.

Episode 2: “Juneau & Whitehorse – Sister Cities”

Jinich explores the sister cities of Alaska’s capital, Juneau, and the capital of Canada’s Yukon Territory, Whitehorse. Jinich greets Juneau over the air waves, where she’s invited to take over a radio show and interview members of the city’s thriving Filipino community who are documenting their history. Afterward, they take her to try traditional foods at a Filipino community center. Then Jinich visits artist Crystal Worl, who is bringing Indigenous art to the modern world, and meets her brother, athlete Kyle Worl, who found his Identity through Arctic Sports and dreams of getting them in the Olympics. She shares a meal and an emotional conversation about Native adoptions with activist Jennifer Quinto. Before heading west to Yukon, Jinich visits the historic Taku Lodge, once owned by outdoorswoman Mary Joyce, who completed a legendary dogsledding feat nearly 100 years ago. In Whitehorse, Jinich gets her bearings at the local market with food writer Miche Genest before foraging in the Mount Logan foothills. Then she connects with artist and fellow Mexico City native, Anick Fernandez, who finds inspiration in family roots and connection to nature. Jinich meets a former police officer who found an alternative way to promote safety in Indigenous communities, and she ends up in the hottest place in Whitehorse – thestudio of glassblower Luann Baker-Johnson, who uses her art to give back. In these remote cities, she finds a pioneering culture of artistry and entrepreneurship and small, tight-knit communities produce big characters forging unique lives adjacent to the unforgiving wilderness.

Episode 3: “Alberta – Canada’s Changing Heartland”

Jinich finishes the first leg of her Pan-American journey in Alberta, traveling through Canada’s heartland to Edmonton and Calgary and south to the Montana border. As the peaks of the Canadian Rockies give way to wide-open prairies, cowboy and immigrant communities work together in the constant creation of a new Canadian identity. Jinich dives into cowboy culture at John Scott’s ranch, the backdrop for many westerns, and learns about Canada’s connection to Hollywood. Then she visits the town of Wildwood, founded by Canada’s first Black settlers who migrated north from the US. In Edmonton, she eats butter chicken with food writer Ramneek Singh and, in Calgary, meets Nigerian chef Kunbi Olalere who is introducing locals to her culture’s cuisine through a Nigerian-Canadian fusion menu ather restaurant Ahinke’s Kitchen. Many Albertans have Ukrainian heritage and are welcoming refugees from the war in Ukraine. Jinich shares a meal with a family who recently emigrated from Ukraine and the people who helped them resettle, and visits Don’ya, a kitchen that provides jobs and community to newly arrived Ukrainian women. Continuing southward towards Montana, Jinich learns why Alberta is known as the “Texas of Canada” at the Bonjean family flower winery, then visits a family who recently started a new life outside the city on a farm. Jinich wraps her journey on a medicine walk with ancestors of the first people to ever call this land home., the Indigenous mother-daughter duo Matricia and Mackenzie Brown, known as the “Warrior Women.”

Source: PBS