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A month ago, a cookbook landed at my door by the Mexican chef Patti Unich, called Treasures of the Mexican Table.

It's heavy. There are 150 recipes in it. On the cover, there's a blonde woman holding a bowl of vegetables and herbs.

Avocados, radishes, jalapenos. I know the woman on the cover from her TV show, Patti's Mexican Table.

Today, oh, you saw how tender it is. I didn't even have to make an effort.

It's a combination cooking show and travelogue, and Unich goes all over Mexico to eat, meet people, learn their history, and then teach us their recipes.

I'm taking you to the town known as the Criro del Chilorio Encinalo.

Anyway, the cookbook. I've been cooking from it a lot. I started with a pork loin in peanut sauce, and then moved on to an egg dish from Oaxaca.

I made a red Chipotle soup from Mexico City. It was very spicy, and then a dish with guajillo peppers and pork butt, called Chilorio, from Cinaloa.

I'm putting all these chilis in water here that's already boiling. A couple of bay leaves.

I don't know what it is about Mexico and this cookbook and the chef Patti Unich that compels me.

It's warming and familiar, and something about the physical act of making a complex sauce over two hours, getting elbow deep into this food of a totally new culture, it's kind of been connecting me deeper with my own.

Treasures of the Mexican Table has recipes from all 32 states of Mexico. Unich collected them while making her TV show, which is a three-time James Beard Award-winning series, and it airs on PBS.

Each recipe tastes different, and it tells a different story of the diversity of Mexican cuisine.

The Spanish came, but also the Africans, there were almost 300,000 African slaves that were brought, and there's this third root in Afro-Mexico that hasn't been given the attention it deserves.

And it's given so much to Mexico's culture, and it's Asian-Mexico, and the Chinese, and the TVP-nos, and the Japanese, and the Lebanese, and the Serians, and the Jews.

What I find most interesting about Unich is that she's a new kind of diplomat. She started her career as a political analyst, but shifted her diplomacy work into food, to do it better and to reach more people.

This weekend, we look at culture through different lenses.

First, Petty Unich introduces us to her culture and our own through food.

Then, Jillian Tet, FT columnist and anthropologist, brings us through the biggest issues in the news, from crypto to elections through the lens of anthropology.

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