Chocolate Cravings: Oaxaca to Naga!

Vosges, the company that makes the Black Pearl Bar, makes many other chocolate bars with interesting flavor combinations. This week, as part of my "chocolate journey'" I tried the Oaxaca Bar and the Naga Bar.


Unlike the Black Pearl Bar, the Oaxaca Bar acquired its zip from fruity quajillo and subtle pasilla chilies. And with 75% cacao from Tanzanian bittersweet chocolate, it packed a punch indeed! But not the knock you in the chest and land you on your back kind of punch. This is the friendly fist to your upper arm kind of tease.

And how appropriate to name it for the land of the "moles," sauces that entice the palate by blending chocolate with chilies. 


The Naga Bar is more like a gentle kiss. Its 41% milk chocolate is much more subtle than the 75% bittersweet chocolate of the Oaxaca Bar. The sweet curry and nutty coconut flavors create a fitting homage to this far eastern area of India that fits snuggly between Assam and Myanmar.


Nagaland's mountainous terrain and people with a distinctively East Asian appearance pull me to find out more about the area. It is famous for wonderful beads and according to Katrina at Vosges, a beaded necklace from Nagaland inspired the Naga Bar.

Mole: Signature Dish of Mexico

One advantage of living in Texas is that there are many wonderful Mexican restaurants! Polvos is one of my favorites. They advertise their food as interior Mexican cuisine, and they have a fabulous salsa bar. The regular salsas that they offer are:

Tomatillo              Chipotle
Poblana                Mole,
Roja,                    Ranchera,
Carne Guisada     Chile con Queso, and
Ahumada.

The picture shows mole in the front, tomatillo directly behind the mole, and roja on the right. Next to the mole is escabeche or pickled vegetables.

Pollo also offers "exotic salsa" which I have never tasted. They are called Huasteca, Margarita, Cartuja, Veracrusqna, Pipian, and Caliente.
  

I ordered a combination plate, and as you can see, the enchilada is smothered with chocolate-y mole sauce. The soft taco on the right is filled with chicken fajita meat.

Mole is quintessentially Mexican. Its origin is debated.  Some have suggested that it came from the Aztecs in pre-Columbian times, but since chocolate is part of Aztec religious traditions others have doubted this explanation.

Others suggest that it originated with Nuns who were trying to impress someone. Whatever the origin, mole is a work of culinary art! Each family has added their own touches to their mole sauce, so there are many different versions. Some moles have up to 30 ingredients. Many people add multiple types of chiles to mole    to get the exact blend they want.

Traditionally, making mole was time consuming and tedious. Women would gather together to share the work as well as stories to make the work pass by more quickly. I was a wonderful social occasion. Now, you can buy mole in jars and just add some special touches to it, and many modern Mexican women cannot spend an entire day making a sauce. However the tradition of mole persists. The states of Oaxaca and Puebla are especially famous for wonderful moles.

There is a wonderful YouTube video of women making mole that you should watch. It shows Oaxacan women making mole in the traditional way. You can also find out about the history of chocolate. 

Diana Kennedy is a famous writer about Mexican cooking. Her mole recipe contains over 20 different ingredients.

Tres Leches Cake

I have been fascinated with Tres Leches Cake since moving to Austin. It has a wonderful flavor, and unfortunately tons of calories.

My mother's birthday is November 2, so we discussed the kind of birthday cake she wanted. I mentioned Tres Leches and she had never heard of it...so I thought it would be a good occasion to introduce her to it. We are celebrating this weekend, so I purchased the cake (you can see it on the left) from Whole Foods.

I associated this cake recipe with Mexico, but now I have discovered that it is common in many parts of Latin America, not just Mexico. In Austin, it commonly has the meringue frosting that you see in the pictures, but in Latin America it is topped with fruit and many other flavorings.

I found a wonderful article about the history of Tres Leches Cake at http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:196888. These cakes are quite popular in Austin these days, and once you taste one you will understand the reason!!

Dia de los Muertos Austin

I spent most of the day at the Dia de los Muertos Celebration in Austin. Skeletons were hanging around, music was energizing the scene, and a parade moved through the streets. Below are some pictures of the celebration.

Dia de los Muertos

People in Austin are getting ready for the Day of the Dead. Tomorrow we will have a grand procession downtown. People will be dressed as skeletons or other dead figures...some people dress as zombies and others just have a lot of fake blood all over their face and clothes. This celebration is a mixture of Aztec and Spanish Catholic traditions. Other indigenous people of Mexico have also added touches to the celebration that is thought to have been celebrated 3000 years before the Spanish conquest. The Spanish did not really want the indigenous Mexicans to continue celebrating the dead, so they tried to squelch the tradition. This did not work, so they moved the celebration to November first and second to correspond with All Saints Day.

The Aztecs viewed death as a continuation of the life of the soul. Octavio Paz says "The Mexican is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, and celebrates it. It is one of his favorite playthings and his most steadfast love." The viewpoint is that death is just part of the circle of life. So on the Day of the Dead, the spirits of loved ones come around and altars must be set up for them, with pictures, strongly smelling spices, food, candles, and flowers. I made this altar for my grandmother.

It is not totally traditional, but it has some traditional parts. There is a lot of symbolism in these altars. Colors have the following meanings:

• purple means pain, suffering, grief, and mourning,
• pink means celebration,
• white means purity and hope,
• orange means the sun,
• red means the blood of life, and
• yellow cempazuchitl are marigolds that symbolize death. Petals make a trail to lead the dead to their altar.

Skulls symbolize death and rebirth.
Pan de Muerto (bread) symbolizes the soul of the dead.
Incense symbolizes the physical changing to the spiritual.
Salt and water symbolize ongoing life.

Here is a closer view of some of the components of my altar. When I was a little girl my grandmother always seemed so glamorous, so I selected the lady on the left in the back to represent glamour. The skeleton in the red box has a tree behind him that might represent the tree of life. The ducks beside the skeleton also must be symbols, but I'm not sure what they mean.

The skull with the rollers in her hair represent my grandmother making herself beautiful. It is a sugar skull. Part of the preparation for the Day of the Dead is making sugar skulls for the altars because it is believed that the dead love sugar. The flower is a chrysanthemum and is the closest I could get to a marigold. The blue plate contains cinnamon sticks, a mint sprig, cilantro sprigs, and epazote (a Mexican herb with a strong aroma).

Behind the blue dish is a disk of chocolate. Mexican chocolate is quite different to what we are used to in the United States. It has a rougher texture and has hints of other tastes such as nutmeg or cinnamon. The chocolate and the items in the blue dish are thought to attract the spirit  to her altar.

This view shows the picture of my grandmother. In front of her are three small sugar skulls. The lady on the left is also made out of sugar. The creature with the gold hat is a dog skeleton with a starfish in his mouth.

On the far right you can see a mother in a coffin with a baby and the words "soy tuyo" which in Spanish means "I am yours."

Tomorrow I will attend the procession and will let you know all about it. I will also make pan de muerto and write a post about it.

Amaranth Greens: Mesoamerican Spinach

I was lucky to find amaranth greens at the local farmers market. They are similar to spinach, but have a lighter taste.Amaranth greens, are a great source of vitamins A, B6, C, riboflavin, folate, calcium, iron and magnesium. 1 cup of cooked amaranth leaves contain just 28 calories and 0.2 grams of fat. About 3 cups cook down into about 1 cup. 


For the recipe I used and a picture of the results go to
http://blog.kitchentherapy.us/2009/07/asian-amaranth-greens/

Ancient Grains:Amaranth

Amaranth, relative to the familiar garden flower cockscomb, cultivated in Mexico for about 4000 years, was considered sacred to the Aztecs. They mixed it with honey or sacrificial blood to form a paste that was molded into statues of Gods. The statues were used in ceremonies then divided and eaten by the people. 


Amaranth is technically not a grain like wheat, corn, and barley which are in the grass family.  It is a broad-leafed plant, and the seeds are used like grains.

Because the Aztecs revered amaranth and the Spanish conquerors considered these rituals barbaric, amaranth was forbidden and slowly disappeared into obscurity. Before the Spanish had arrived, amaranth had spread to the Inca Empire. People in remote mountain villages in Mexico and the Andes continued to grow amaranth.

Also, amaranth is quite hardy and grows wild in Mexico. It was rediscovered by the health food movement and became popular in health food stores in the 1970s. 

Amaranth is stuffed full of nutrition! It is gluten free and low in fat and high in fiber, protein, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, vitamin E, vitamin B6, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, folate, potassium, zinc, copper, selenium and phosphorus.  It has a low glycemic load, which means that it does not raise blood sugar significantly, making it a good food for people living with diabetes. The cholesterol lowering characteristics of amaranth also make it healthy. 

The picture on the left is amaranth. It can be cooked as a cereal, ground into flour, sprouted, popped like popcorn, or toasted. The seeds can be cooked with other whole grains, added to stir-fry, soups and stews as a nutrient rich thickening agent. The leaves of amaranth have a taste similar to that of spinach and can be boiled or stir-fried. 


Because amaranth plants withstand harsh conditions and sprout easily, they have spread around the world. In both Mexico and Peru the amaranth leaves are still gathered to use as a vegetable. 


In India amaranth is known as the King's grain, rajeera, and is popped then used in confections called laddoos. These are similar to a Mexican confection called alegria. In Nepal, amaranth seeds are eaten in a gruel called sattoo or ground into flour to make chappatis. In Ecuador, the flowers are boiled then the colored boiling water is added to rum to create a drink that purifies the blood.