Cooking: Oaxaca

Sundays are made for brunch, and this one was no different. I chopped cherry tomatoes, red bell pepper, red onion, and English cucumber. Grated half of the cucumber and chopped fresh dill to fold into Greek yogurt. Crumbled and crushed dried oregano leaves from the garden in my hands. And popped a Greek chicken skewer into the oven to heat. Back to also using up ingredients in my fridge. No more Kalamata olives, but I did have Spanish olives and roasted yellow bell peppers which I also threw into my Greek salad. As well as hummus and dolmas. And had bought a hunk of my favorite French Feta, to adorn my salad.

And dagnabit, a cap popped off the bottle of Chardonnay in my fridge and spilled. And so I poured the rest of the bottle into my wine glass for lunch. Tasty lunch however.

Remember when I had surveyed my ingredients for a mole negro, but was too time constrained to actually make it? The very first time I ate a mole was at a co-worker's apartment in the Tenderloin near Hastings Law School. Andrew had spent a few months, improving his Spanish and learning to cook the local dishes in Puebla, Mexico. Me and the starter husband arrived at his kitchen, watching him laboriously making the complex sauce of dried chilis, fruit, nuts and chocolate. He also had a diabetic attack and was making no sense and babbling. He realized that he needed to drink some orange juice STAT. I had never witnessed that before and learned something about the disease. Andrew was also my introduction to a different type of Mexican cuisine. After his blood sugar was restored, we sat down to his mole. I don't even remember what he poured the sauce over, but I remember recoiling a bit from all the chocolate in a savory dish. And that's probably why I never sought to eat the dish again.

But I've since eaten mole negro enchiladas which has piqued my curiosity outside my usual rotation. I didn't soak and process ancho chilies, onions, avocado leaves, garlic, and oregano into an adobo, but instead had bought a packet of the complex paste from World Market and read its instructions carefully. You merely fry a cup of pureed tomatoes in oil and then add the mole paste, breaking it up and finally adding broth (I used the liquid in which I poached chicken thighs) to make it a sauce. I spent most of the hour cooking the black beans and wanting to infuse some complexity into that side dish. I had already stewed the beans with onion, garlic and a bay leaf. I then refried it in chicken schmaltz and then added a few shakes of chipotle pepper sauce. I plan on developing my own recipe of Oaxacan refried black beans with aromatics and tomatoes and guajillo and ancho chilies and oregano AND anise seed to simulate the flavor of the avocado leaves to then refry them in pork lard in a nonstick pan with more garlic, cumin, coriander, chili powder, oregano. I happened to watch an episode of Milk Street that morning about everyday Oaxacan cooking.

 

I went to the trouble of toasting sesame seeds to sprinkle on the mole. And then plated it by spooning the sauce over the chicken and adding leftover yellow rice which I zhushed with chopped scallions and cilantro. I was fearful that the hubs wouldn't like it, but he actually complimented me on it. Wow. Didn't expect that. Anyway the packet makes for six servings, and that's four more individual mole meals. Enchiladas for one meal and roasted pork for another. I have to remember to freeze the sauce into two separate jars. And I'm looking forward to maybe making molletes with the black beans--basically a bean and cheese sandwich on a soft roll called a bolilo with lots of pico de gallo. Or simple tacos with lots of cilantro and a sprinkling of cotija cheese.