Food to Gag You, Part Deux

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!

You say toe-May-toe, I say toe-Mah-toe

What was I thinking?

Back in April, when I planted 24 (that's 24 with a twenty and a four) tomato plants, I was craving tomatoes. Those purchased in the store have a cardboard taste to me, even those which claim to be "hot house" or "vine ripened." (You know they're lying when the "vine ripened" ones aren't yet ripe and they are clearly off vine.) I also don't know where those store-boughts have been. Who knows what kinds of pesticides and such they've been sprayed with?

I understand wanting a bumper crop of tomatoes back then, when I had cravings, before it was 110 in the shade. But really, Char, TWENTY-FOUR????

Last year, I got on a fresh salsa kick. Practically every tomato to come off the vine (for real vine-ripened) got partnered with some peppers, a little cilantro, a little lime juice. Heaven. I completely lost my taste for El Paso Salsa. Or Frito-Lay. Or even one of those designer labels which makes salsa out of unnatural vegetables and fruits. Peach salsa? Truly unnatural. (Tho' I must confess my son makes a mean pineapple salsa.) Canning the salsa results in the tomatoes being cooked to death which doesn't taste at all like the fresh stuff.

The other Big Mistake I made was to plant mostly Roma tomatoes. For the uninformed, Romas are paste tomatoes. I envisioned making and canning lots of spaghetti sauce and tomato sauce to hold me over this winter. Too late, my elderly neighbor who I consult about all things gardening told me she never, ever planted Romas, on account of they taste like store-bought tomatoes. Mea culpa.

She's right, by the way. Don't ever plant Romas if you want a real tomato. Their only advantage is, they make a pretty dense sauce. But it tastes like you took store-boughts and made a sauce.

I did plant 4 Cherokee Purples which, I'm told, are on the same taste scale as Brandywines. Not only do they taste really good, they turn all shades of pink, red, purple and white. Truly heaven.

I also had some of last year's Brandywines volunteer, so I left them to grow. Or maybe they're German Johnsons. I even had something I call O. Henry tomatoes last year. So called because they were grown from a wonderful tomato I had at that restaurant in Greensboro called O. Henry's. I swiped the seeds off my plate onto a napkin and shoplifted them home, they were that good. They are later bearing than the Romas, so I'm still waiting for that wonderful, acidic taste that belongs to the lowly O. Henry's.

All of the above mentioned tomato varieties are called "heirloom"...that is, they breed true, unlike all those hybridized monstrosities which have bragging, bold names like "Better Boy" and "Big Girl" and "Beefsteak". Nope, these tomatoes keep their marriage vows and don't have red-headed children when their husband is not.

Did you know that, botanically speaking, tomatoes are fruits and not vegetables...that is, they are the product of a flower and a bumblebee? Did you know that the Europeans used to call tomatoes "poison apples"? They truly thought that tomatoes were poisonous, on account of they hadn't discovered them first. Stupid Europeans.

I also don't know so much about those folks who claim that our Universe was created by an Intelligent Designer. I mean, I could design a better world with one hand tied behind my back...particularly a world in which vegetables and fruits would ripen in the winter. That way, canning wouldn't be such a killer. Nothing I like better than to keep all four burners cranking on my stovetop when it's a record-breaking, heat-stroke-inducing day. Not.

I realize now that I should have stuck with last year's number of plants (12) and not bought any more cages. Because next year, I'll no doubt look at all the cages and think I have to plant that many tomatoes.

I further realize that I'm rhapsodizing at length about my tomatoes so I won't have time to go out there, collect all those Romas and make sauce when it's 110 in the shade.