OAXACA
ESSENTIALS
“When you get married, there’s mole. When you die, there’s mole. For every celebration, we have a mole,” Thalia tells me. Regional variations in recipes abound, as
does the specific mole for each occasion. In the Central Valleys region, where Oaxaca city is located, mole chichilo is most often made for funerals. “We all have that lump in our throat when a family member passes away, and the intensity of mole chichilo eases our tension and grief,” Thalia adds. Yet, in Teotitlán del Valle, a Central Valleys
village just 20 miles outside the city, it’s mole amarillo that’s made in homage to the deceased. It’s also here that Carina Santiago’s family recipes and two restaurants have made her a well-known maestra of moles. Driving from Oaxaca, I take a dusty turn off the highway and onto the two-lane road that brings me into town. Brick compounds that double as family homes and weaving studios line the road, their foot-loomed geometric rugs hanging against the building, rustling in the arid wind. Seated in her kitchen, Carina tells me her
family’s mole story, which goes back several generations. How her great-grandmother taught her to “always treat the ingredients with the respect they deserve”, she says. How the gruelling physicality of making mole — cleaning the chillies, toasting the ingredients, grinding them all together, by hand, with the metate (a sloped, knee-high, four-legged basalt grindstone) is tantamount
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to a sacred act. “Even kneeling to use the metate is a form of respect,” Carina tells me. Not all mole is made with the metate,
however. When it comes to large celebrations for which hand-milling would be unduly onerous, the ingredients are brought to the town molino, or grinder. Even then, Carina says, mole should be ground with a stone mill, so as to most closely replicate the effects of the metate — although many Mexican home cooks just use a blender. At Carina’s restaurant, Tierra Antigua, I
order the Cerdito de Fiesta (fried pork ribs in a chileajo mole). A burnt-orange sauce arrives with a sprig of coriander alongside a small mound of rice cooked in chicken stock and a basket of blue-corn tortillas. Taking one of the soft, pliable tortillas, I bring it to my nose and breathe in. Even after having lived in Oaxaca for over four years, doing so is still a delight. The chileajo, meanwhile, is light in texture and has a decent amount of heat — the kind that fools you at first, building slowly from the throat. Its name translates as ‘chilli-garlic’, and the sauce’s sweet allium bite is a punch to my taste buds. It’s savoury, tangy, bright and spicy, each spoonful revealing something new. Heading back to Oaxaca, I pass a sea of blue-
green agave fields, the clouds clinging to the Sierra Norte Mountains in the distance. I’ve tasted many moles, each with its own distinct, layered flavour — but I’m nowhere near having tried them all. As Jorge says, “Oaxaca doesn’t have just seven moles, it has infinite moles.”
Above: Elvia León Hernández grinds ingredients for mole coloradito on her metate at Alfonsina
GETTING THERE Aeroméxico, American Airlines and British Airways fly from Heathrow to Oaxaca with one stop. Airlines including Air France and Lufthansa offer indirect services from other UK airports to Mexico City, from which Oaxaca is a 75-minute flight.
aeromexico.com
aa.com
ba.com
WHERE TO STAY Grana B&B is a 14-room property in a renovated 18-century mansion in Oaxaca’s historic centre. From 2,600 MXN (£119) a night.
granabnb.com
HOW TO DO IT Abercrombie & Kent offers a four-day Oaxaca for the Masterchef tour from £1,105. Includes accommodation, cookery classes and some meals, but excludes flights. abercrombiekent.
co.uk
MORE INFO
visitmexico.com
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