MEXICO: A Matter of Taste

• Share

As the pressagent told the story, roly-poly Don Vicente Miranda, onetime waiter who now owns Mexico's swankest nightclub, El Patio, lay abed one morning last week and pondered on the world's sad state. Everybody, he decided, was tense and nervous. Then he bounded out of bed with a plan. He would soothe the world with mole, the marvelous Mexican sauce based on chocolate and chile.

Within the hour, Don Vicente had his toothpick-thin cook, La Maga (The Wizard), at work. By nightfall, he had sent a ten-liter container by air to Gilberto Bosques, Mexican ambassador in Lisbon, with instructions on how to give a mole banquet for leading Portuguese statesmen. Free samples also went to restaurants and hotels in the big cities of the world. Said Don Vicente: "No one who eats mole can think of war and death."

Mexicans, who have a high tolerance for red-hot foods, have eaten mole for over 200 years, ever since a nun in Puebla's Santa Monica Convent, surprised when the archbishop dropped in for lunch, threw together everything in the kitchen to make a sauce for leftover turkey.

Today no two recipes for mole quite agree, but all have the same basic ingredients. This is Miranda's banquet-size recipe : take 1 Ib. of chile anch0,1 Ib. of chile mulato, 10 oz. of chile pasilla, ½ Ib. of baked tomatoes, ½ Ib. of baked sesame seed, 2 oz. of shelled peanuts browned in fat, 2 slices of French bread browned in fat, 2 oz. of toasted pumpkin seeds, 3½ oz. of shelled toasted almonds, ½Ib. of chocolate,1 teaspoon of black pepper, 4 or 5 cloves, ½ oz. of raisins, one clove of roasted garlic, one roasted onion.

Remove the seeds from the chiles. Brown the chiles, soak them in warm water for 15 minutes, then grind into a paste. Roast the removed chile seeds, grind them together with the chocolate and all the other ingredients (except the sesame seeds). This makes two separate pastes. Put them together and fry in plenty of shortening, stirring constantly until thick. Then dilute with chicken or turkey broth to the consistency of cream soup. Pour all this over slices of boiled turkey, bring the entire dish to a boil for five minutes, serve sprinkled with sesame seed. Sop the sauce with tortillas. Be sure to serve plenty of napkins.