After I got home from skiing I set to work on a mole, which is not a small thing to undertake. I was reading some Diana Kennedy the other day, the grande dame of regional Mexican cuisines. She is mostly impenetrable owing to her poor writing. Which is a shame because her project has been one of the most adventurous and noteworthy anthropological endeavors of all time in my opinion. If she had bothered to also be something of a wordsmith, such that her recipes were in fact small ethnographies… well, we’d all be reading Diana Kennedy with flashlights under our bed covers like we do Endurance and Annapurna with our nails chewed off. Which isn’t to say her recipes aren’t in fact small ethnographies. Probably you could make the case they are. Probably there are some people out there who are good enough with food that they can read these recipes like musicians apprehend sheet music, hearing all those little black dots and lines as though it were being played by a tiny brain band. “A strange people! What aromas! How the epazote travels on the tongue! What music! etc.”

Diana Kennedy at the cazuela

What I’m getting to is that Mrs. Kennedy suggests in her recipe for Christmas Mole, which she calls Mole Guajolote, which means Turkey Mole, which sounds gross I realize, that mole is a “cupboard cleaner”. “Yes!” I blurted out. Now you and I are seeing eye to eye, Diana! I’d been advertising to Robin about my dream of a Mexican Christmas. Not like Christmas in Mexico. That’s a different dream. Like Christmas tamales and Christmas mole, and Mexican chocolate, etc. “Oh it’s beautiful papa!,” Max would proclaim upon seeing the Christmas tree for the first time on Christmas morning!, like it’s done in Mexico. Alas, it was Robin’s feeling that mole is an expensive endeavor. Robin’s parents, and their parents before them, were dirt farmers from North Dakota and their thriftiness knows no bounds. It’s charming if you want to know the truth, but they have a rotten time trying to live “the rich life” like I do. That’s when I told her, but I think mole is sort of a “cupboard cleaner”. I didn’t use that phrase but I explained how mole is mostly a bunch of bullshit from the cupboard that you concoct together. Indeed it is. The ingredient list for mole is basically an accounting of the debris that has matriculated to the bottom of your lazy susan. Nut and seed remainders, random spices, stale tortillas, forgotten bags of dried chiles, wrinkled tomatillos, etc. etc.

Anyways, this is what all that matriculated bullshit came to. You’ll notice I didn’t braise the chicken in the mole. I had a real conflict within myself about it and I decided to fry and bake the chicken as one would normally do and use the mole as a kind of hot lava. A geological condiment. The drink is fizzy water with brown sugar, lime juice, and a maraschino cherry.

The salad is more or less the same as the drink. Kissing cousins. Cucumber, serrano chile, lime, brown sugar, radish. The radish is the maraschino cherry. The lime is the lime. The cucumber is the fizzy water. You’re probably thinking to yourself, why didn’t he serve cold cans of beer? I was thinking the same thing. We started eating the chicken mole like proper people with a knife and fork. And then it turned into a taco party. Chicken mole tacos with cucumber salsa and avocados and pinapple and chiles.

Let’s go back in time and explore how to make a mole!

Step 1: Clean your kitchen properly. If the chief reasons for things are born deep in the psyche, than I’m sure the reason I set out to make this mole is that these kinds of complicated cooking projects require a total mucking out of the kitchen work area. Nothing makes the psyche more thrilled than mucking things out and starting fresh as it were. Practically speaking, you need an empty sink and all your utensils clean and near at hand.

Step 2: Assemble your ingredients. Most of the time you should not do this. Whenever I’m at a dinner party and I notice the host has measured out all the evening’s ingredients into little ramekins, my blood goes cold. It reminds me of when Spongebob planned out his house party down to the last minute. It was only when the party steered off script that the fun began! Just the same, a mole is a ‘holiday’ dish and so you can feel fine about following script and making sure all your little things are set out in advance. Here’s all the aforementioned seeds, ground-cherries, etc.

Step 3: Start toasting and reserving near everything in batches. I like to use the same pan for everything including the fried chicken later on. I like to use an old lead-painted cowbell as a chile-toasting weight. I char my garlics and onions with my tomatillos.

Step 4: Soak your chiles. I like to use an old brick from out back as a soaking weight to give the mole an old adobe flavor. “What in hell are you doing back there?” Robin shouted. “Looking for a brick,” I replied. “What in hell for?” “For my chiles.” “For your chiles?” “Yep.” (Robin tired of the exchange about here).

Step 5: Alas! Grind everything up and put it on the stove! That array of nice gins back there is not mine. It’s for a grand holiday present.

A note on your beliefs and attitudes about mole: First off, the chocolate that goes in mole doesn’t actually go in mole. I mean, some people put chocolate in their moles and actually it’s not a bad idea but make sure your mole holds water before you start decorating it with chocolate. Also, cinnamon is wonderful to sniff and bitter to taste. Be careful with cinnamon in your mole. Granted, it needs to be there, especially in a Christmas mole, along with clove and coriander and cumin and black pepper and some chipotle pepper. I used to run pretty free and easy with spices but in my maturing years I am exceedingly suspicious of spices besides salt and molasses. Actually a little molasses wouldn’t be bad to add to your mole! Merry Christmas. Merry Mexican Christmas with any luck.