Salsas and Moles by Deborah Schneider

Author:Deborah Schneider [Schneider, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60774-686-7
Publisher: Potter/TenSpeed/Harmony
Published: 2015-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

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MOLE AND ENCHILADA SAUCES

Dried chiles are one of the foundations of Mexico’s ancient cuisine. When green chiles are allowed to ripen fully and dry, a whole complex of other flavors blooms into being. It is these ripe, dried chiles that are used to make the vast array of chile salsas and moles that are the pride of Mexican cuisine.

This chapter is designed to ease you into the art of mole by first making simpler salsas, such as enchilada sauce. This will acquaint you with the basics of chile handling and some of the specific steps and techniques used in both the salsas and the moles, such as frying the salsa. Through the chapter, the recipes become more and more complex until you are ready to tackle your first mole.

The difference between a dried chile salsa and a mole lies mostly in the number of ingredients and steps involved. A basic chile sauce can be made from start to finish in a half hour and has only a very few ingredients, whereas a classic mole may take you the better part of an afternoon to make. I should point out here that “simple” is not the same as “easy.” The simpler the recipe, the more important the technique. The fewer the ingredients, the more important it is to handle them correctly. You will learn a great deal from working with the chiles in the simpler salsas.

Mole recipes are lengthy, with many ingredients, but they are not difficult. A mole is built one step at a time. The various techniques bring out the specific flavors of a group of ingredients, then that step is set aside until the end, when all those little bowls of roasted, toasted, ground, and pureed ingredients are simmered together to create a flavor that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I have to admit I didn’t really “get” moles for a long time, or understand why such reverence is attached to them. Most restaurant moles I tasted, even in Mexico, were weak disappointments, and the stuff in jars is just awful. Then I taught myself to make mole slowly and painstakingly, from scratch. I learned how to handle dried chiles to get flavor instead of bitterness, and I learned that each careful step, each long session of soaking, grinding, pureeing, frying, and stirring, turns a hard-won mole into a triumph. What amazes me now is the skill, the culinary brilliance, of those cooks of ancient Mexico, who created this using the simplest of ingredients, a couple of rocks (moli means “ground paste”), and a clay pot.

Watch the changes in the ingredients as they are transformed by you. Don’t rush your mole. Toast the chiles slowly, and sauté them over medium heat. The point is this: take the time to pay attention with your senses to every ingredient and every step. This will make you a more observant cook, and a better one.

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