So, in my previous post by the same title, I opined that Mole, that supposedly luscious sauce used in Mexican cuisine, wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
I decided that I really shouldn't judge the book by its cover (in this case, tomatoes and chocolate in the same dish) until I tried personally to make it and eat it. I'm trying to expand my horizons by cooking more gourmet. You have to understand that my baking and cooking skills have tended to draw heavily from crockpots, church basement suppers and hospital auxiliary cookbooks. Recipes that include a lot of Jello and catsup.
I've been embarked on an attempt to cook more things the Food Network might feature, or at least not turn its collective nose up at. So far, my successes have included pate and onion marmalade. The pate was so-so...the marmalade divine!
So how did the mole turn out? In a word, blechhhh! Okay, so now I've tried it and I have to say, I was right the first time. Tomatoes and chocolate don't belong together. I can't say I can really taste the chocolate, but I'm of the opinion that, if you can't taste it, why add it in the first place? Same applies to the whole almonds and whole cinnamon sticks...peppers tend to overpower EVERYTHING so if you're not a big fan of hot and spicy, what's the point?
(Plus, I also secretly believe that people who like spicy food have so burned out their taste buds that they can't appreciate the subtleties of almonds or chocolate or cinnamon or lemon.)
This dish took about 4 hours to make and dirtied every pot and pan and bowl I own (and I own quite a few). I had to run the dishwasher a couple of times and still had a half a dishwasher full left over of knives and whisks and spoons and saucepans.
But that's not the real judgement. If this dish had turned out like I've heard other people wax eloquent over, the four hours would be well worth my time. It didn't. It wasn't.
My mole tastes almost exactly like the sauce you get when you buy those El Paso frozen Mexican dinners...you know the sauce that's supposed to be over the chicken enchiladas but somehow ends up over the beans and rice?
I could've just bought a can of that El Paso enchilada sauce (I know, 'cause I buy it for my chicken enchilada casserole)! And if it didn't taste chocolate enough, I could always add some Hershey's syrup to the sauce!
I wasted some perfectly good chicken by pouring this sauce over it and braising it in the oven. Now the chicken is enfused/confused with that sauce and I can't say I like it.
For starters, I had to buy several different types of peppers, only one of which was readily available so I went to like three different stores and ended up substituting. Then I had to buy tomatoes because my vines have kinda petered out this late in the season and my late season stuff hasn't begun to produce. THEN I had to buy about a hundred different spices whch aren't in my very well-stocked spice cabinet. This whole sauce must've cost about $60, not counting the chicken. And NOW I have all these weird spices I'll have to figure out some use for.
I have whole fennel seed. I have whole cumin. I have whole anise. I have several ounces of dried peppers. This recipe called for whole everything on account of it wants you to toast all the seeds prior to grinding them. In fact, you toast or burn practically everything in the recipe.
I did at least reserve about a quart of the damn sauce so I could give it away. I've decided that my new culinary adventures will be confined to stuff I personally like. I hear a lot of TV chefs talk about blending of savory and sweet. Okay, I'll buy that in an onion marmalade but no more mole for me!
