CorkPopper

I grew up in Southern California, so Mexican food has been a constant in my life, a comfort.  I realized, however, when trying to figure out what I wanted to cook for the second Project Food Blog challenge that, aside from burritos, tacos, enchiladas and tamales, I’ve never really explored traditional Mexican cuisine.  And though I’ve eaten mole – that most famous of traditional Mexican dishes – I’ve certainly never made it on my own.  Thus was born my response to the Project Food Blog challenge to tackle a traditional dish with which I was unfamiliar.

Now, keep in mind that I am not a full-time cook or blogger.  On the contrary, I am a lawyer by day, which means that most of my mid-week cooking consists of dishes that can be easily whipped up in less than an hour (including prep time).  Mole, it goes without saying, is not such a dish, and when prepared using traditional methods (i.e., a mortar and pestle rather than a blender), can easily turn into a day-long undertaking (if not more).  So, although I wanted to heed the Project Food Blog call to be as true to tradition as possible, I freely admit that the smooth texture of my mole came not from old fashioned elbow grease but from the push of a button on my 9-speed blender.  Even with the help of modern technology, of course, making this dish was still a nearly 5-hour undertaking which I started on Thursday after work and finished on

Reading Rick Bayless' Mexico: One Plate at a Time

Friday when I served my Mexican masterpiece to Pop and SM (my dad and stepmom).  I am happy to report that the dish – traditional Turkey with Red Mole – was a resounding success (as was evidenced by the licking of plates).

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, jumping to the finish line without actually describing the race.  First of all, CorkPopper is not just a food blog.  It’s a food and wine blog where, ideally, the food I create is inspired by the wine.  That’s not easy to do here, where the starting point is the food.  Accordingly, I broke from the CorkPopper pairing method for this challenge and set about thinking about the perfect wine for my dish.  I knew I wanted something without a lot of tannins, as tannins interact poorly with spicy food.  But I also knew I needed something more complex than most white wines.  Thus, I settled on Babcock’s Identity Crisis Syrah, a dry rose from one of my favorite Santa Barbara wineries.  Like mole, this wine has layer after layer of complex flavors and has just enough heft to stand up to such a rich dish.

Second, mole looks simple when it gets to the plate, but the truth is that it is nothing short of complicated to prepare.  I didn’t want to just wing it by looking up random mole recipes on the Internet, so I turned to one of my favorite Mexican food chefs – Rick Bayless – and his James Beard award-winning cookbook, “Mexico: One Plate at a Time.”*

Ingredients for Mole

J had a business dinner on Thursday night, so I was on my own here.  As such, I started by prepping all of my ingredients:

• 5 ounces (3 medium) tomatillos, husked and rinsed
• 1/2 cup (about 1 1/2 ounces sesame seeds
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil, plus a little more if necessary
• 6 medium (about 3 ounces) dried mulato chiles, stemmed and seeded (Note:  I couldn’t find these, so I increased the amount of the other two chiles)
• 3 medium (about 1 1/2 ounces) dried ancho chiles, stemmed and seeded
• 5 medium ( about 1 1/2 ounces) dried pasilla chiles, stemmed and seeded
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled
• A scant 1/2 cup (about 2 ounces) unskinned almonds
• 1/2 cup (about 2 ounces) raisins
• 1 whole (about 4 pounds) boneless turkey breast with skin on, the two halves cut apart
• Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, preferably freshly ground Mexican canela (Note: I couldn’t find this either)
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon anise, preferably freshly ground
• A scant 1/8 teaspoon cloves, preferably freshly ground
• 1 slice firm white bread, darkly toasted and broken into several pieces (I used a small loaf of country bread)
• 1 ounce Mexican chocolate, roughly chopped
• 4 to 5 tablespoons sugar
• Cilantro for garnish

2009 Babcock Identity Crisis Syrah

I followed Mr. Bayless’ instructions to the letter, layering each flavor in turn and reveling in the fantastic smells emanating from my kitchen – the tang of roasted tomatillos, the smokiness of fried chiles, the round sweetness of raisins, the sweet spiciness of Mexican chocolate.  Four hours later, I had made it through all but the last step, which I was saving for the following night.  I sealed everything up and placed it in the refrigerator and trudged off to bed, where visions of mole rather than sugar plums danced in my head.

The following day, I worked through lunch and left the office early in order to get down the 405 to Pop’s and SM’s place in San Pedro, my giant grocery bag stuffed to the gills with the makin’s for dinner.  Once SM got home from work, I finished off the final step in the recipe, and we sat down to eat, each of us admiring our plates before digging in, the knives on our plates the only sound aside from the occasional, “Mmmmmmmm.”  And then, for the briefest of moments, we were not in San Pedro, California but somewhere in central Mexico.

Turkey with Red Mole.... Mexico on a plate.

Salut!

* Because I used a published recipe, I have elected to reprint only the ingredient list here so as not to infringe on Mr. Bayless’ copyright.  Some will argue that the instructions in a recipe are not protected by copyright, but Mr. Bayless actually uses quite a bit of narrative in his instructions, so the lawyer in me is playing it safe.