El Mundo: Molemolemolemolemole

This might make you start reminiscing about the guy with the mole in Austin Powers, but mole (pronounced mol-ay) is also the name of a sauce that originated in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca. Or family of sauces really - mole covers anything that is made using ingredients ground together.

I'm sure once upon a time these were made in backbreaking sessions with the mortar and pestle but these days, its all about the blender. Every Mexican home has one, and they are constantly whirring, making salsas, moles, soups, refried beans and desserts.

Besides the mole, Oaxaca has its own family of cheeses - a fresh, stringy kind and one that looks and tastes like haloumi - edible flowers and leaves and countless varieties of chilis. Its big specialty is chapulines - fried grasshoppers - although they are caked in so much salty seasoning its difficult to tell that you are eating an insect. So what better place than to learn from an expert how to master these delicious recipes?

The pork man

We enlisted in a cooking course at a restaurant in downtown Oaxaca, which involved a morning visit to the markets to learn about regional foods, buy the ingredients and turn it all into a delicious multi-course comida, or lunch. We were greeted by a dizzying variety of fruits and vegetables, many of which I'd never seen before like squash flowers, guanabanas - a sweet, black fruit that looks like a cactus on the outside and mameys - look like papaya with silky soft orange flesh.

The variety of foods on offer was amazing, with each vendor specialising in a particular food group. Besides fruits and vegies there was the pork shop with rows of dangling chorizos sausages, the beef shop with thin strips of flank steak and the chicken shop with piles of wings, breasts and drumsticks. There was also the dry goods sellers with dried chilis, beans, flour and rice. Interestingly the bags of dried dog biscuits were located in among the other foods, and the same scoop was used for all!

Chicken lady

On the way back to the restaurant we dropped by a shop with a whole row of what looked like massive coffee grinders on their side. In fact, that's exactly what they are but you can get anything you like ground down - in case it won't fit into your blender at home. There were vats of sloppy re-fried beans, tomato salsa and corn tortilla dough.

Our group of seven - us, an English couple and three Americans, selected chicken with a green mole based on pumpkin seeds, green tomatoes, squash leaves and lettuce. We also settled on chilis rellenas - jalapeno chilis stuffed with a mix of chicken, tomato sauce, almonds, olives and raisins. To start we opted for quesadillas, fresh salsas and avocado soup. Dessert was Oaxacan chocolate ice-cream.

We got to work making tortillas, which apparently is always done first. We rolled the corn dough into little balls and placed it on the tortilla press. You have to carefully lift it out of the press with one hand and place it on a flat pan, for 10 seconds on one side, one minute on the other and 20 seconds back on the first side. On the third flip it puffs up like a balloon before settling back down.

All hands in dough

We made this interesting variation of with small red flowers from a bean plant, fresh cheese and a herb called epazote, which smells faintly of fennel. These were pressed into smaller, thicker tortillas before being cooked.
The tortillas were lined with stringy cheese to make quesadillas. As a bit of a twist, we added squash flowers and chapulines (grasshoppers, remember!) which have a really strong (but great) taste.

The blender got a massive workout in preparing this menu. First it was enlisted to grind up the ingredients for red and green salsa. Red salsa was really simple, just cooked tomatoes, garlic and serrano chilis. Green salsa calls for a special variety of green tomatoes, plus coriander, garlic and chili. We made variations of the red salsa, using toasted avocado leaves - apparently edible - and smoky-tasting dried chilis. Peanuts were shallow-fried in oil and chili and blended, which was an interesting variation. Also there was one variety where we blended worms into the salsa mix!

Molemolemolemolemole

We then blended the green mole ingredients together with chicken stock and cooked them in a pan. Next, the blender turned bright red pulversing baked tomatoes and chilis for the stuffed chili sauce. It went back to green when we started on the avocado soup, which is really simple as it just involved avocado, cream (sort of sour like creme fraiche), chicken stock and a few other spices.

The stuffed chiles were also quite easy to make. There was an attempt to de-spice the jalapeno chiles by scraping out all of their seeds and boiling them for a few minutes although when we sat down to ate them I don't think it was all that successful as they were too spicy for most! We used boiled chicken with the red salsa and chopped almonds, chilis and raisins for the stuffing - which was delicious all on its own and tasted almost like a tagine.

Finally, it was time to make the ice-cream. We used large discs of Oaxacan chocolate, which was super-dark, gritty and spicy because it had already been blended with cinammon and chili. We added evaporated milk and cream, blended it up and then let the ice-cream machine do the rest.

The eating part was, of course, the most satisfying. It was really interesting to see how all of the flavours came together in all of the little steps we had taken to produce the meal. The salsas were amazing - especially the red one with the dried chili and the peanut one. The jalapeno chilis had me guzzling down my juice that we made from dried hibiscus flowers (which interestingly they call jamaica), but the fire was quickly put out with the creamy avocado soup which followed.

The mole was exquisite and surprisingly not too heavy like some of the ones made from chocolate can be. And of course the ice cream, well how can you go wrong there? Overall it was such a diverse mix of flavours, as I said when we went to the traditional restaurant last week its surprising to get such balanced and delicate flavours from Mexican food.

Here are some more pics from the cooking day: