Salma Hayek Pinault on Growing up With Lebanese, Mexican and Spanish Cooking

Salma Hayek Pinault recalls when her mother used to make labneh .

“You would see the cloth hanging in my kitchen,” she tells TODAY.com, explaining the process of making the thick and creamy Middle Eastern strained yogurt. “In my house, sometimes you would put labneh into the beans; it was like a mixture.”

The Kahlua spokesperson says her childhood was defined by the cuisines of both of her father , Sami Hayek Dominguez, and her mother, Diana Jiménez Medina.

Salma Hayek attends the 2025 LACMA Art + Film Gala on November 01, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Monica Schipper / FilmMagic

“Maybe that’s why I can be very eclectic when I’m cooking and have a lot of imagination, because my mom, her family is from Spain, but we lived in Mexico, and my father is from Lebanon,” she says. “