Chipotle Spaghetti

My dad was the absolute traditional “I get the bacon, my wife takes care of the kids” Roman Catholic. He never went into the kitchen other than to grab a saltine…which became a problem when my mom got sick and had to spend most of her time in bed. He soon realized we kids needed food when we got home from school and that we couldn’t go out for tacos every night. 

So he convinced a man named Pedro to come cook and care for us. As half-Americans growing up in Tijuana—I always had one foot in both countries—we loved hamburgers and spaghetti. Pedro was like, “OK, fine, I’ll make that stuff so long as I can Mexicanize it with bold flavors.” He’d add guac and pickled jalapeños to burgers and toss spaghetti in this chipotle-laced tomato sauce. Everything was next-level. He was my biggest inspiration in becoming a chef.

This pasta became the favorite food of all my friends. You didn’t sit down to eat a plate of it—you ate a platter. It’s comforting in the way pasta tends to be: creamy and rich, plus a hint of smoke from chipotle in adobo. It’s what I make when people come over for dinner (always a hit) and, of course, for my kids too. They request it just like I did of Pedro, usually every couple of weeks.