Mayordomo Mole Negro

Mayordomo Mole Negro
Originally uploaded by suebobdavis.

Photo from the Gourmetsleuth website

Enchilada Enfrijolada Enmolada

My latest obsession, thanks to the fine people at Whole Foods Market, who stock Mayordomo Brand Black Mole is enmoladas.

These were inspired by a visit to Oaxaca, in southern Mexico last summer. I took a cooking class with the wonderful teacher Susanna Trilling. We met her at the Wednesday Farmer's Market in Etla, where we got to tour the market and sample local foods. Then we had a snack at a cafe in the market.

The cafe's specialty is enchiladas, enfrijoladas, and enmoladas. A bit of linguistic sleuthing will tell you that the words are related and describe foods that are prepared the same way, but with different ingredients. Enchilada is something that is in a chile sauce, enfrijolada is in a bean (frijol) sauce, and enmolada is in a mole sauce. In this case it was tortillas, but there is also an "enchilado" cheese that has been rubbed with a spice paste and is red on the outside.

These enchiladas are not the meat and cheese bombs we get in the U.S. They were simply corn tortillas (I never saw a flour tortilla in Oaxaca) lightly fried, dipped in sauce, folded in neat quarters and presented with a tiny bit of sliced onion and a few cheese crumbles.

I found the Mayordomo Mole Negro the other day. I have seen Dona Maria Mole on the grocery store shelf here but have never heard anything good about it.

Mayordomo is a chain and has several stores in Oaxaca City. You can smell the chocolate being ground from a quarter mile away. The shops are full of big bags of unprocessed cocoa beans.

They have a big mill with a hopper where the cocoa beans, almonds and other ingredients for drinking chocolate or mole are poured in, and a thick wonderful chocolate paste comes out the other end.

Black mole is only one of the 7 traditional moles of Oaxaca but may be the most well-known outside the area. It is a mixture of chocolate, chiles, nuts, and other ingredients. Depending on who you ask, ingredients may include burned chile seeds, blackened tortillas, bananas, tomatoes, sesame seeds...

There are also other, smaller chocolate mills all over town. It is quite a cottage industry.

Anyway, I have been using my newfound mole this way: I heat some water in a frying pan, add some vegetable stock base (chicken is more traditional), get it all hot, put in a few tablespoons of mole paste, mix and let it cook down to a thick paste. I warm corn tortillas in foil in the toaster oven meanwhile. I dip the tortillas in the sauce until they are soft, fold them into quarters, top with a little Mexican queso and eat.

The mole is the tiniest bit gritty from all the dried and ground ingredients. But it is rich and tasty and good.

Locating locally-owned coffee shops

I found this site Delocator that helps you find independently-owned coffee shops. Here is what they have to say:

"Delocate is a web-verb created for this project as a defense mechanism for independent business establishments. The term is defined as an action that creates complex competition analysis. This is achieved by locating both the targeted corporation store(s), Starbucks in this case, and the independently owned alternative(s) based on their physical proximity using comparative online retail store locator technology. On the delocator.net web site, users are enlisted into a temporary coalition to post information about cafés in their neighborhood (for instance, location, hours, open mic. nights, local artist exhibits, book readings, wireless internet service availability, organic and/or vegetarian food options, etc.).

Those who supply the database also have the opportunity to leave their email addresses, as a method of endorsing the café and leaving a trace of authenticity to the location postings on the site. On the results page for each search, listings of both independently owned cafés and Starbucks retail stores are presented. By comparison of numeric quantity and site-specific detail, the viewer/searcher will see evidence of the unchecked aggression and power that corporate businesses have in our communities."

Hm. Unchecked aggression? Power? I know the personal is political but is it a freaking cup of coffee or not a freaking cup of coffee? Being a proudly raving liberal myself, I often have to take a deep breath and check my conspiracy-theorist tendencies. I think we often take on a victim mentality and lash out in frustration at successful organizations.

Maybe Starbucks is evil. Maybe not. All I know is that I really don't like their coffee very much and appreciate a way to find alternatives.

I added my 3 favorite locally-owned places to the list. I admit, though, I have a deep and abiding addiction to Peet's, ever since they moved into town about 6 months ago. Are they on the dark side too, being a chain? I sure hope not.

Out of the Kitchen

Doghike
Originally uploaded by suebobdavis.

Every once in a while you have to get out of the kitchen. Here is a shot of my beloved Goldie, who had just rolled in some sort of stinky poop, enjoying a springtime hike.

Cast Iron Pan Seasoning failure #1

I flung myself headlong into seasoning my nice old Griswold cast-iron frying pan (see previous post). After settling on palm oil as a likely seasoning agent, I smeared a heavy layer on, looked up the oil's smoke point on the internet, and cranked the oven up to 450 degrees.

After a few moments, the magic carpet of smell swept me back to a time 20 years earlier...suddenly I was at the Mann Esplanade 3 Movie Theaters in my blue polyester uniform, standing in front of a huge popcorn machine, adding about 2 pounds of kernels to the popper. (I used to sometimes pop 50 pounds of kernels a night. I wonder how many cubic feet of popped popcorn that is.)

If there had been a doubt in my mind that we used palm oil to pop in at the Mann Theaters, it is gone now. I am willing to testify in a court of law that I popped huge amounts of popcorn in heart-clogging palm oil. The smell was unmistakable.

Smoke began wafting from the oven and I shut it off. More wafting. Fan on. Fan on high. Even though the oven was off, the pan kept smoking for a good half hour. I left it in the oven overnight.

The next day I got a comment on my blog saying "Don't use palm oil! It will leave a sticky surface. Try Crisco instead."

It turns out the smoke point of white palm oil is 450 degrees. Who knows what it is for the red palm oil I used.

Ok. Now I have a disgusting, sticky pan. I guess I will have to scrub it down to remove the gunk, then start all over again. I will keep you posted.

The upside is that Greg says the red palm oil helps his dry elbows. Always look for the silver lining.