Oaxaca: Mole 5 & 6 – The Red Mole Mix-Up

It was bound to happen – the more we got into these moles, the more things would get complicated, and things have gotten a lil complicated

One of the moles here is mole coloradito – you might translate this as ‘tinted red’ mole. This is distinct from mole rojo (also…’red’ mole???), although the difference between the two is unclear. Also unclear is whether ‘coloradito’ as you see it advertised on the street is mole or not. Puerco en chile colorado is essentially braised pork in red chile sauce, but it’s definitely not mole. So when there’s ‘pollo coloradito’ here, is it mole or is it just chicken cooked in a red chile sauce??? Impossible to tell??

I decided I would do what I do best – put this off. Walking around 20 de Nov. market, I saw a single place that advertised mole rojo, and happily sat down and ordered it. Most places have coloradito but nowhere said ‘mole coloradito’. I tried not to think about it.

The mole was good, spices, fork-tender perfectly cooked chicken, blahblahblah you’ve read enough descriptions of mole that we don’t need to go over that. I WILL point out that these tortillas were just incredible. Tearing them felt like pulling apart a soft tissue and they were slightly sweet and just a little toasted while still somehow pillow-soft. Honestly with just a little butter I could eat a stack of these on their own.

But after I was done, I decided I needed a plan for mole 6, so I leaned over the counter and asked the lady there if I could ask her a question.

I started with something basic – what’s the difference between mole colorado and mole rojo?

Well, she told me, in fact the mole I just served you is actually mole coloradito.

And that was the first time in my stay here that I had been so egregiously backstabbed in Oaxaca

I’ve never seen the Hills and I assume you have not either

She told me that in this market, since a lot of tourists come through, people don’t really make mole rojo because it’s so spicy it doesn’t sell well. She told me that mole rojo is actually more like just chicken cooked in the kind of salsa we put on tacos. She said mole rojo is a sauce made of tomato, garlic, chile, salt and pepper, picking up the salsa they have on the counter and tasting it, wincing a bit as it was spicy even for her.

That salsa was really tasty (and yes, really spicy), but it wasn’t what I would call mole.

So in the end I had mole coloradito, and possibly this was the same thing that was available everywhere else. And mole rojo, possible, is a mole that doesn’t have the nuts, spices, chocolate, and thickeners of other moles. Or maybe the lady was wrong?

One of the difficult but beautiful things about cultures is that they are shared orally and passed down generation to generation in imperfect ways. In this place that is less touched by the internet, traditions are capable of changing quickly and drastically. As sad as that is, it also leaves a lot of room for growth and the accumulation of intergenerational wisdom! Whether or not this is ‘traditional’ mole, there’s beauty in a dynamic, living culture that comes from small changes over time ❤

Oaxaca: Abastos

The doctor who helped set me up in Oaxaca assured me the city was largely safe, that I was fine at night as long as I wasn’t being stupid, but that robberies were common in the Central de Abastos. Abastos, as we’ll call it, is a giant market somewhere between an enormous swap meet and farmer’s market that spans for blocks and is about a 5 minute walk from where I am staying. It’s an incredible maze of literal hundreds of vendors selling sandals, pan dulce, produce, eggs, baskets, spices, candy, toiletries – if you can find it in Oaxaca you can find it in Abastos.

There is one particularly large paved aisle where the majority of produce is sold. It reaches from one side of the market to the other and is largely covered by black green and yellow tarps, anchored on top of metal storage units and held up by tall poles and an intricate network of ropes. I was walking down this big passage and had just bought mangoes (they’re in season and so cheap and so delicious) when the storm started.

From the first Oaxaca post, you know that this isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but this one was particularly intense. In between the tarps I caught glimpses of the trees whipping in the wind; the rain was opaque and the drops were so big and fast that they vaporized on impact so there was as much mist flying as there was rain. Between the rain, the mist, the flapping tarps, it was eerily similar to movies scenes of a particularly bad sea storm. I and several other people were taking refuge among the produce vendors who were frantically maintaining covering their wares and making sure the whole structure stayed up. Some of the poles were slipping loose and I couldn’t help but think – if all the ropes, tarps, and poles collapsed, what would happen?

Actual footage of the storm, also my arms

The rainwater collected in large puddles in the dips of the tarps overhead that would eventually spill over the side in a small torrent. Sometimes people had to push on the drooping tarps to push the water to the side. Immediately to my left one of the tarps anchored on the top of a storage unit was collecting a large mass of water that wasn’t going to spill to the side. A guy tried to push the sinking tarp up, but water is astoundingly heavy and he could not get it to spill over.

When the storm started, if felt like it was passing by obtusely, unwittingly leaving destruction in its wake. But then it changed, as if the storm had suddenly taken note of Oaxaca and was lashing out at it. At this point, people were taking photos and videos. I desperately wanted to do the same, but my advisor had told me not to bring my cell phone the Abastos lest I be robbed. So all you have is my words.

Remember our friend who was trying to push away the water? He had other things to attend to, and with a sound like a t-shirt ripping, the tarp split, sending waterfall of rainwater pouring out behind their stall and flowing to our feet as we moved to new, dryer spots. I was unable to do anything useful in this situation, stuck watching in awe with my little bag of mangoes.

The rain (again, as if written by an amateur-hour screenwriter) went as suddenly as it came. I still had to navigate the Maze of Abastos back. It was even harder now that certain pathways were blocked by newly formed ankle-deep rivers and ponds. Vendors were sweeping away the water in front of their stalls and where it was deeper they were effectively paddling away water with brooms.

Eventually I made it out. And the mangoes? Absolutely worth the ordeal.

Oaxaca: Mole 4 – Estofado and Mercado 20 de Noviembre

If I’m being completely honest I still don’t really know what mole estofado is.

I know what’s in it, and it’s some weird ingredients: capers, raisins, and olives are unique to estofado, and it doesn’t have as much chile as others. In addition it has absolutely no chocolate, so the flavor that’s left is sweet, mild, and even a little fruity without the bitterness or smokiness that other moles have. At the end of the day it’s chicken cooked with a sauce that is sweet, mild, spiced, and just a tiny a touch smoky. You know what we call that in the USA? We call that BBQ chicken.

This is just Mexican BARBECUE CHICKEN.

But where does it come from? what does its name mean?

Well, this mole has more influence from Spain than any other mole here, borrowing the base ingredients of Spain with the spices indigenous to Mexico. It is truly a mix of the two cultures, the bright side of a dark history of colonialization and erasure of thousands of years of history and culture. Even the name, ‘estofado’ seems to be a reference to the kind of stewed cooking that Spaniards were familiar with when they first traveled to Central America. It’s pretty difficult to trace back the history of this kind of mole (assuming you, like me, only have wikipedia and basic internet searches to augment asking questions of Oaxacans.)

So. Where did I get this one? In the south part of Centro de Oaxaca is a market called Mercado 20 de Noviembre. May that’s an unwieldy name for a market but it is named so  because it’s on the street 20 de Noviembre. Maybe that’s an unwieldy name for a street but you know what I’ve had enough of your criticisms.

This market mostly has 2 things: eateries and bakeries. There’s people selling tamales or other small things in the pathways between the booths, there’s a Mayordomo selling chocolate, but largely you go here if you need a meal or bread.

All the eateries are pretty similar, so they have to get people’s attention some way. At the height of activity, Waitresses will yell out to you passing by, waving a menu very close to you, shouting either “de comer, joven” or just listing the food that they have available. I don’t know if anyone has ever been swayed by this tactic, but I know plenty of people who do not enjoy being here because they get agitated having people yell out at them the entire time they are walking through the market.

Nonetheless, if you find a good one or if you need some of that daily bread, this is a nice, safe, and accessible place to come and eat (and I guess take pictures without people making a fuss Dx)

Oaxaca: Revolution

Do not fuck with radical Mexican feminists.

And my personal favorite

Oaxaca: Mole 3 – Verde and Comida Corrida

I only have two more weeks here! FUCK.

With that in mind, let’s get straight to the point. What’s so special about mole verde? It is, unsurprisingly, green. As you know, mole’s main ingredients are nuts and chile. Thus, the distinct feature of mole verde is that it is made primarily with pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds) and green chiles. Beyond that, it is flavored with whatever other green shit someone’s mom had on hand: tomatillos, green onions, epazote, spinach, celery, cilantro, parsley, chard…mole verde doesn’t so much have a recipe as it has a singular goal: be fuckin green.

The taste is less spicy and more herbacious compared to other moles, as close to ‘light and refreshing’ as a mole sauce can be. This can be the dish you serve to your friends who want Mexican food but don’t eat spicy food because they hate joy and fire-pain-love-taste.

The mole verde I had was part of a restaurant’s comida corrida. Around 3pm, many restaurants offer a deal on a set menu that changes every day. These are usually pretty decent food at a really good rate, so if you know anything about me you know I’m all over these. As you know from the previous posts, these meals have multiple parts! They always start with a kind of soup – in this case, it started with a thematically-appropriate cream of spinach soup

What was I supposed to do with the salsa? SALSA DOESN’T GO IN SOUP

The cream of spinach was good, the crouton was *spectacular*.

Comida corrida almost always comes with a choice of a side of rice or spaghetti. Yes, spaghetti. A shockingly ubiquitous side in Oaxaca, people actually seem to prefer the spaghetti based on what I’ve seen. I don’t know what kind of weird historical cultural exchange happened where spaghetti became a cultural staple, but here we are. For the record, I always order the rice.

Finally, it comes with the main dish, handmade tortillas, and agua fresca in more flavors than I thought was possible: horchata, pineapple, lime, mango, tamarindo, and guava are the ones I have personally tried (I told you I was all about the comida corrida)

Although this isn’t always the case, sometimes comida corrida comes with a little dessert. This dessert is the thing that tickles my particular little heart because it’s always the same thing: a little jell-o. One of the fun facts about David is that he is weirdly delighted by gelatin, and Oaxaca was a perfect place to come for that. There are little carts on the streets selling cups of gelatin with interesting flavors like vanilla-and-sherry. Women in open markets sell nicuatole, a gelatinous corn dessert that kind of tastes like solid horchata. Heck, even the cake shops here have elegant jell-o rings studded with fruit ❤

Oh man I am super craving jello now, I’m gonna get some nicuatole tomorrow.

 

Oaxaca: D&D

Now there’s a title I didn’t think I’d be writing.

Ever since the summer of 2016, Dungeons & Dragons has been a surprisingly consistent part of my life, something that I prioritize when I can and always feel contributes positively to my well-being. So much so, in fact, that I even played with my group while in Mexico! What’s so special about it? Well I guess that’s what this is about.

One particularly attractive part of D&D is its creation of an immersive fantasy world. Nothing else we have comes even close. In case you’re new, D&D is basically a grown up version of make-believe. Imagine two children:
“I blast you with a fireball from my magic staff to burn you up!”
“I dodge out of the way and throw knives at you so you’re DEAD!”
D&D essentially this, played by adults, for hours, with 3 main additions: rules, dice and a referee.

The rules give a structure for the make-believe, bringing a sense of balance to a game that would otherwise become unhinged. The dice add the randomness that pervades our lives – sometimes you succeed and sometimes you fail and it’s just up to chance. The referee, also known as the DM, is the interpreter of both of these into a story: if the rules say you can summon lightning from the sky, and you roll high enough, then that’s what happens and your DM tells you how your enemies die a gruesome death.

You might think that only meganerds would take something as whimsical as make-believe and ruin it with RULES, but they do create an amazing effect: with a fine-tuned balance between power and limitations, D&D campaigns are immersive and incredibly effective at creating stories with a strong sense of magical realism. D&D is the closest thing we have to virtual reality, so if that sounds appealing you might wanna give it a try.

So how did D&D from Mexico go? I was DM (remember: the referee, head storyteller) for a spooky session that needed to be as immersive as possible. The more these players thought they were in a haunted house, the more they felt they could use their abilities to get through it. I had them dim the lights, I played creepy house sounds, and I tried my best to paint a picture of the place they were in. It’s very possible I overdid it with a creepy children’s motif, but it was nonetheless effective and I think it was a really fun session.

I had thought that when I came to Oaxaca, I would (again) be forced to take a break from dungeons and dragons. And when I considered playing remotely, it seemed like there was no way for it to be as good as it was in person. Putting in some extra time and using some new tools helped, but what really made the session great was the engagement and excitement of my players. As a DM, you can create the most intricate sandbox to play in, but it’s all for naught without creative players who genuinely delight in exploring. Sure, sometimes they like to pretend they’re cats and take an actual piss in your sandbox, but all in all your players are your teammates in D&D. It’s a lighthearted touch of home we’re accessing and I’m grateful for the fun and familiarity of our sessions.

 

Oaxaca: Milestone

Life gets pretty real the first time you handwash the blood stains out of your white coat.

Oaxaca: Mole 2 – Negro and Chocolate

The story goes that in the state of Puebla (Oaxaqueños will tell you it was in Oaxaca and will literally fight you on this), an archbishop was coming to visit a convent unexpectedly, and the nuns had no food to serve him. In a hasty attempt to welcome him, they killed and cooked an old turkey and made a sauce out of the only things they had on hand: spices, chili peppers, nuts, bits of bread, and chocolate. The archbishop loved it, and a national dish was born: mole.

As I’ve mentioned, I grew up with only one type of mole and it was this one: mole negro. As far as I know, there isn’t another savory dish as well known as mole negro that so effectively incorporates chocolate as a main player. In the US they’ve discovered that chocolate’s bitterness complements red meat nicely; chocolate and espresso rubs on steaks are becoming more common in higher end dining establishments. But it’s still a distant second to mole, both in flavor in accessibility.

Oaxaca is particularly known for its chocolate – a friend of mine claims that Oaxacan chocolate is so distinct that he can recognize it on the street by smell alone. Even without the ingredients added to mole sauce, the chocolate here is spicy and aromatic. Mayordomo, the big chocolatiers in Oaxaca, has chocolate houses all over the city which offer raw cacao, jars of mole sauce, and chocolate paste for making chocolate drinks. The cafes they run are whimisical eateries that serve fluffy and moist pan dulce next to warm, frothy mugs of hot chocolate that they mix and pour in front of you. You can order smooth, silky mole over chicken with rice, or in fluffy tamales (yes, there are tamales of chicken mole here!). It’s a charming place to have a quaint breakfast or lunch.

Stolen from Google, hope they die mad about it

Theobroma cacao, the scientific name for chocolate, translates to “food of the Gods”; accordingly, these folks serve it up in their own little patch of heaven ❤

Anyway, that mole I had was pretty good. It wasn’t at Mayordomo, but I was still v into it.

Oaxaca: Coincidence

Psych 101 – Type B personalities, compared to type A, are more ‘passive’. They tend to have an external locus of control, which means when anything happens to or around them, they’re more likely to consider outside factors (other people, circumstances, and greater powers) more significant than the factors they control (their own actions, motivations, and thoughts). As such, they’re more likely to believe in things like destiny or fate.

You may think (for good reason) there’s no way a type B personality would willingly choose to study medicine, but I’ve always had this instinctive response; when something happens (often good), I think of how the universe must have come together to create such fortunate circumstances. From things as small as a $5 bill found in my pocket when I’m craving ice cream, to my placement in the world at key times in my life, it often seems like the world is looking out for my best interests. So of course that’s where my mind went when my time in Oaxaca was undeniably changed by the release of (and I’m sorry for how ridiculous this is going to sound) by Wizards United, the new Harry Potter mobile game.

Before we get into what exactly changed, let’s take a look at what the game looked like for me when it first came out:

Note: Oaxaca is green but it’s not THIS green.

It was a barren wasteland.

However, in no more than 3 days, Mexico was caught up and the map was full of inns, greenhouses, fortresses, and all the other things that populate this semi-immersive augmented-reality world of magic.

So what’s the big deal? Well, Centro is a part of Oaxaca with incredible sights, but the only way I’ve found to really experience it is to walk through it. But although wandering around here can be exciting the first few times, after a while of living here I’ve found that it’s just not as rewarding to walk up and down every street, many of which look the same, for the sake of seeing the city. But a game that actively encourages (read: outright requires) you to walk gives you an automatic reason to wander those streets: even seeing nothing is still being productive, at least in-game. The placement of the game’s important sites is like a personally designed map of areas of interest in the city, so even the newbiest of visitors (i.e. me) have an idea of where to go.

All this to say that today, with the goal of playing this silly game, I went to some nice places no tourist map would ever tell me to go, talked to some lovely people, and took some good pictures. With that, I would like to introduce you to my new love, the Centro histórico de la ciudada Oaxaca de Juárez:

 

Nicknamed “the Green Antequera” (not for its plant life but for the green volcanic stone from which many of its buildings are made), Oaxaca city is surrounded by villages called by their original indigenous (Nahuatl) names as well as a Spanish Catholic saint: Santo Tomas Xochimilco, for example. Behind that mountain you see on the right is the site of Monte Albán, the ancient capital of the Zapotec people (more on that later when I visit). All in all, Oaxaca’s history is full of culture and political strife: evident as recently as 2005, when the governor ordered the assassination of 36 leaders and activists and banned protests in the town square.

If you have seen the Paris-era posts, you know how much I’m a sucker for street art

Is this not the SADDEST thing you’ve ever seen?

All made possible by this walk through the city of Oaxaca/world of Harry Potter.

All things considered, doesn’t it seem like a crazy coincidence that during my short stay in Oaxaca, a major app gets released pushing me to just go outside and take in the city sights? Maybe that’s just the type-B in me, but nonetheless I am full of gratitude for the encouragement I’m getting to go live my best life in Mexico.

Oaxaca: Mole 1 – Amarillo & My Favorite Restaurant

For the uninitiated, “mole” has two syllables.

I grew up with one type of mole, the kind most people know about in the US – a sauce made of chocolate and chili (and tbh like 25 other ingredients) usually served over chicken. It’s delicious and I thought it was all I needed, but I was proven wrong when I came to Oaxaca and learned there are not 1, not 2, not 5, but 7 (SEVEN) different types of mole for which this state is known for.

S I E T E.

As if my life was designed by an amateur television writer, I am in Oaxaca for exactly seven weeks. One type of mole a week? I think I can handle that.

Not Pictured: The refreshingly delicious cucumber water this meal included

Astute readers have figured out that the first type of mole I tried is mole amarillo. They also have a question: are all Mexicans colorblind or are they well aware that this mole is not amarillo? Indeed, mole amarillo (oftentimes just called ‘amarillo’) has the same red-orange tint of many sauces in Mexican food, but interestingly, it is not named for its color. While it contains many of the same ingredients common to the different types of mole here (which I am realizing more and more is just the Mexican version of the concept of a curry), amarillo is unique in its inclusion of saffron, which gives a distinctive yellow tint to foods that are less pigmented.

Now, did I taste this and think ‘oh wow, what a robust saffron flavor’? Obviously not, I have the tongue of a boxed-wine-drinking plebeian. Was it flavorful and delicious nonetheless? It absolutely was. This meal was in what is now my favorite restaurant in Oaxaca, just two blocks away from where I live, and cost a total of 40 pesos.

40 pesos is just under $2.25. For a little more than two bucks, I had a bowl of nourishing vegetable soup, some spanish rice, chicken mole amarillo, warm handmade tortillas, and a small pitcher of lightly sweetened cucumber water. Unlike many of the small hole-in-the-wall eateries here, the atmosphere was a little less “plastic dishes and homey” and a little more “place mats and square plates”. With the exception of the smooth jazz covers of American music (hearing “Let It Go” on a melancholy saxophone is a confusing experience in any context), the atmosphere was warm but somewhat sophisticated, kind of like a hipster coffee shop but without the irritating pretentiousness. I ate the comida corrida (more on this later) peacefully, reading on my kindle and generally feeling comfortable and content.

In a place that is far from home, where there are definite hints of foreign-ness, finding such comfort and joy is a treasure.