Mexican Mole

[zoramargolis]

I had the chicken mole. The mole was one of the better ones I have had outside of Mexico.

If you want to taste really good mole poblano* without going to Mexico, check out La Serenata de Garibaldi in Los Angeles--either the original in East L.A. or La Serenata Gourmet, their West L.A. branch on Pico near Westwood Bl. I went there (WLA branch) and ordered it three or four times during the two weeks I was in L.A. earlier this month cause I couldn't stop thinking about it. Real deal, not the shortcut version you get in many places, or made with mole paste, like in most of the others.

*by the way, there are seven different types of mole, and only one of them has chocolate in it--called mole poblano in Puebla and mole negro in Oaxaca. Gallina en Mole Poblano is probably the dish that you liked so much, but the chicken could have been very tasty in mole verde, mole rojo, or mole amarillo, all of which could have an equal claim on being called "chicken mole." I have made mole negro from scratch a couple of times, and it is a very long and complex process, not one I am willing to undertake very often.

[Ilaine]

Looking at the title, Whack a Mole, reminded me that my father's second wife, an American who spent many years in Mexico in some mountains north of Mexico City, made a wonderful chicken with mole sauce containing unsweetened chocolate which she called "chicken molly." Her family lived on a ranch in a place they called the El Naranjo Valley, but I don't know enough about Mexico to tell you where that was. I was young when we visited.

As we drove up and down the mountain, the streams and waterfalls were the most amazing blue and there were many brightly colored parrots.

It did not seem to me that the dish was hard to make but she was a very efficient woman, who made everything she did look easy.

At any rate, as you know, mole sauce is pronounced more like molly than the animal mole.