Mol-ay

It's actually spelled "mole", but I didn't want you to think I was cooking a small backyard varmit. No, this is the Mexican "mole" (pronounced "mole-ay"), a delicious chili-chocolate sauce served over chicken and rice.


Making mole had been on my want-to-do list for over a year by the time all the conditions were right to do it. I had been afraid of mole from the time (many, many moons ago) my older sister had ordered it at a restaurant and hated it. But my tolerance for many foods has changed as an adult--I like hardboiled eggs and brussels sprouts now, for instance--so a year ago, I braved the old mole memory and ordered it for my birthday dinner.

And I liked it.

And I wanted to make it.

I thought about it for a while. A few months later I looked up recipes. And balked. With a list of about 20 ingredients, I was seriously dissuaded. I tried a search for "simple mole". But the list of five ingredients (consisting of chili powder and cocoa powder) was even less appealing. I put it off. I fell back on my old excuses that I just never got down to that store that had the things I needed. My desire waned.

But one day, I was at that store. And I had just looked up a recipe again to see what kind of chili's I needed. And I bought two packages of chili's. When I got home, I stashed them in an upper cupboard. I still didn't have chicken or Mexican chocolate, or a slice of stale bread. Desire waned.

I bought baker's chocolate.

Desire waned.

I looked at recipes again. I chose one and copied it into my notes.

Desire waned.

Then one auspicious day, my sister-in-law planned a potluck. I offered to host. Another sister-in-law called to ask about what I was planning to make. I hesitated. I wavered. And then I plunged. "I think I'll make mole" I casually replied.

Now I was locked in. I even had a sign of confirmation that this was meant to be--a loaf of bread came my way and never got re-claimed by its rightful owners. There was my slice. I went to the local grocer and picked up chicken pieces.

Unfortunately--the day of--I only had about an hour to make the sauce. "Unfortunate" because the method calls for toasting most of the ingredients separately before dumping everything together to simmer and bubble into the delicious sauce. I wished I had two more hands, but I flew around the kitchen with determination. Never mind that I was missing two ingredients. I would simply have to do without.

An hour later, I left my husband with instructions to check the chicken after an hour and turn the heat off under the sauce, give it a stir, and cover it when the timer went off.

And that was that. I had made mole.

And it was good.

And now I want to make it again. But better.

The End.