Mole Garden - Part 1

Some people grow salsa gardens--tomatoes, peppers, onion, garlic, cilantro.

I am growing a mole garden.

In reality, mine is a salsa garden with the addition of various other chiles. I can't really grow cinnamon and star anise in Nebraska. Nut trees would take years. Tomatoes are readily available. So, it's mostly chiles with an extraneous compliment of tomatillos.

There are three reasons for this project:

1) Diplomacy:  Liz loathes cilantro and I love pico de gallo but I love other things too.

2) Interest:  I love moles 

3) Practicality:  Moles are scarce in these parts

Seeing the word "mole" requires context for English-speakers. 

/mol/, /moʊl/ vs. /ˈmole/

How to disambiguate? Don't put the acute accent over the final "e." While this will leave no doubt about the pure (correct) "e" vowel it also incorrectly shifts the syllabic accent from the first to the second syllable.  

Even hearing the word guarantees little, depending where one is in the world. I recently asked a co-worker about mole. She had not heard of it. What a shame! But how can I blame her? 

Mexican food in the Midwest is hit and miss. Often, menus only faintly resemble their cousins at lower latitudes. What we call "Mexican" we had better call "Ex-Mex"--foods largely developed in the Southwest US areas that were once politically Mexican and are still more or less culturally related to our neighbors al otro lado. This would include "Tex-Mex," and New Mexican food but probably not "West Mex" (of Taco John's trademarked fame). In your typical Midwestern restaurant bearing the descriptor "Mexican" one will find bountiful burritos, chimichangas, and quesadillas. Permutations of enchiladas form the heart of the menu. Endlessly varied, one may pair their choice protein with a slathering of 1 of 3 color-coded sauces. They are then wrapped in large, commercial flour tortillas and finally drenched in a thick layer of melty cheese. Fish is limited to shrimp. One will often find a selection of fajitas. There will be steak dishes served with rice, beans, and tortillas.

Why are the menus this way?

February discussion re: the Texas Rangers got fierce

It would be too simplistic to say it's a question of spiciness. Spice and latitude don't correlate. There are plenty mild dishes from southern Mexico and plenty from the north that can make you weep from heat. However, spice and culture do correlate to some degree. White people stereotypically make milder dishes than brown people. For that matter, we stereotypically make blander food than just about anyone. And yet, there are spicy dishes at Midwestern Mexican restaurants.

Neither does it depend on a particular quota of immigrants in kitchens. Indeed, not only do Latinos staff most Midwestern Mexican restaurants but also do the lion's share of cooking and cleaning at many other sorts of eating establishments. Customers may use their presence as shorthand to sniff out quality but this approach has its pitfalls (more on this later).

Availability of ingredients also can't explain the situation. Strictly speaking, we've got everything. Go into any supermercado and one can find the ingredients one needs for any classic Mexican dish available in quantities suitable for home or small scale preparation. Even the restaurant supply depots have everything one could imagine.

Non-scientific graph that tries to explain a lot with minimal definition

It boils down to consumer preference. Consumer preference is the omnipresent, tyrannical mistress that bullies quality into hiding. It's well known that humans, as groups, have dubious aesthetic preferences ;) The larger the group, the more cringeworthy the taste. The smaller the group...well, there are better odds for cohesion and, therefore, some substantively unified vision of...well...anything. Barring the largest US metropolitan areas with large Latino populations, it follows that one can find the best Mexican food in smaller towns that are largely populated by Latinos. This is hardly a paradox. Although actual customer numbers are lower, a higher percentage of that customer base has unadulterated taste and won't tolerate shortcuts for long.

I offer two examples of "corner-cutting" that occur near the bottom of the bell-curve:

1) tortillas

2) rice and beans

Homemade, fresh tortillas are rare in mid-sized upper-Midwestern locales whereas in Mexico anything but these will not be tolerated. Like tortillas, rice and beans are a staple. Perhaps because they're ubiquitous and seen as relatively innocuous they get short shrift. Often one finds either brittle rice or rice boiled to a pulp. The beans may remain hard or crunchy, cohere in a thick, lukewarm paste, and/or lack any flavor whatsoever. Neither thing compliments its counterpart. I'm not knocking canned beans but the lack of care. Even with canned beans and no pork fat on hand there are shortcuts to get the right, mouthwatering pot-of-beans taste. But, it remains the disappointing fact that most consumers wouldn't notice the difference and the traditional ways get sidelined. Too much time and effort . 

The best places still may cut corners to adapt to the market, but I find that they're not necessarily concerned with image-crafting in the way we enterprising gringos are. As a millenial, this refreshes me. What I mean is that millenials have this "hole-in-the-wall" complex whereby we sniff out boutiques and small businesses like tenacious truffle pigs. It's not necessarily anti-capitalist (although it could be) and it's also more than Romanticizing a bygone, pre-Walmart era (even if there's some of that). Certain kinds of quality simply aren't scalable--hence, visibly human sourcing becomes a hot commodity. In a word, we crave authenticity.   

We have gems in northeastern Nebraska that fall along the top left of the bell-curve: tucked away behind a laundromat (aka "washateria") in Norfolk, occupying an old burger joint in Schuyler, set within a small strip mall in South Sioux City. "You know it's good because the Mexicans are eating there" says my wife. And so do the white people. It's great. It's not that the humble presentation magically causes better quality. For the economic reasons stated above, it's a correlate/codependent variable thing. "Hole in the wall" is a reliable index for quality because things like homemade signs and homemade food both derive from the same source--a person.

Although the inverse wouldn't necessarily hold true, it does, strangely enough. Indeed, face-lifts and upgrades are the kiss of death. Beware pretentious qualifiers: "Fine Mexican Food." It's not that there isn't such a thing but that if you had it, you wouldn't need to say so. Beware, as it were, fancy, professionally produced signs because they cost money--and if you've made a lot of that chances are you've made lots of compromises in product quality to get there. Or so the logic goes. It's a Faustian deal. 

I digress.

Mole is the Midwest's great missed opportunity. Nebraskans (and all Midwesterners) love:

1) Sauces. Mole is the queen of all sauces. Not too runny, not too thick (gravy), it adds infinitely complex yet subtle richness. I suppose a familiar, somewhat similar comparison would be the many sauces in Indian food. Judging by the fact that chicken tikka masala is the most popular dish in England--a land never renowned for its bold use of spices--I think mole could be a hit with Midwestern American palettes.

2) Starchy food. Tearing a homemade corn tortilla into pieces and dragging it through pools of mole in a sampler flight rivals the most satisfying appetizer experiences 

3) Meat. A fat turkey leg is the classic Pre-Columbian compliment but chicken lathered in mole negro is food for the gods.

4) Not-too-spicy. Just because most moles are made with several sorts of chiles doesn't mean they will burn your face off. Most capsicum anuum cultivars in Mexico--including those at the heart of mole recipes--rate relatively low on the Scoville scale. You're most likely to make a bee-line for the water tank after chomping into a ghost-pepper glazed hotwing at any American chain sports bar than you are with any Mexican restaurant's mole.

"You don't know what you don't know."

We simply don't know what we're missing. I have found mole occasionally on menus. Usually it's the requisite Pollo con mole (negro). It's reconstituted from a jar. It's okay. 

But it could be so much better.