Eva Longoria on why Mexican food is more than just tacos and tequila

My dad taught me the earth will give you everything you need. He has such a green thumb and didn’t let us eat any fast food. I was raised on a ranch in Texas and we lived off the land. When it was squash season, for example, we’d have that for four months — squash with soup, squash with chicken, squash with this, squash with that. I was like, ‘I hate squash!’ The same for watermelon season. I hated it then, but now it’s such a gift to eat seasonally. I remember grabbing a carrot out of the ground, dusting it off on my jeans and jumping on the school bus.

Growing up, everything was centred around food. It’s a huge part of my [Mexican American] culture. Sopa de fideo [noodles in tomato broth] was one of my favourite soups and I thought I’d won the lottery every time we made it. Bean tacos — refried beans inside a flour tortilla — has been my breakfast my entire life; I eat it every day and now my son does, too. Tex-Mex food is so nostalgic for me; when other kids came home and had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I had a tostada.

Mexican cuisine is so much more than tacos and tequila — it’s so diverse. Only two cuisines in the world are protected by UNESCO as Cultural Treasures: French and Mexican. Different communities and cultures survived the conquests and colonisation; you can trace the root of Mexico’s dishes because there’s so much history. I learned about indigenous ingredients [while filming the US TV series Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico]: tomato, chocolate, vanilla, chilli. People think tomatoes are from Italy, but they just made them famous. I think 80% of vanilla is produced in Madagascar, but it’s indigenous to Mexico. Even my husband, who’s from Mexico, said, “I never knew that!”

I can get off a 12-hour flight and then cook for 20 people. It’s very therapeutic for me. I cook almost every day, three times a day. It’s so creative: you have all these ingredients and then, voila — it becomes something else. My husband is like, “Why don’t you rest?”, and I tell him, “I am!” He loves my chicken tacos and my roasted chicken. I have this lemon pasta soup that everybody enjoys. Sopa de fideo never fails. There are so many staples in my pantry.

When everybody was making sourdough, I was making croissants. I have so much respect for French cuisine and cooking techniques. I make a French omelette like nobody’s business. And now I’m filming Searching for Spain, I’m discovering so many regions there, too. I’d never been to Galicia and was blown away by how many products come out of there and go to the rest of the world.

Nobody does lamb chops like the Spanish. They’re called chuletas, and I had them at The Grill at Marbella Club — they’re to die for. And I ate a pan con tomate at Casanis [in Marbella], which is just bread, tomato and garlic, but it was so good I almost passed out. In Madrid, I love DiverXO, where chef David Muñoz’s version of cocido madrileño [a chickpea-based stew eaten on Sundays] is a traditional staple but at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

I could order five plates of the sweetcorn ravioli at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica. They limit people on the number of plates because sometimes they’re like, ‘I want a hundred of these!’ Another of my favourite restaurants is Chez Bruno, in Saint-Tropez. It’s a little chateau on top of a mountain and everything, from entrees to dessert, is served with truffle.

Eva is the co-founder of the Casa Del Sol tequila brand and a strategic adviser for Siete Foods. Her new cookbook, My Mexican Kitchen, is out now.