Page 22 - The Valley Table - January/February 2021

“It’s the mole people make in my town, Ciénega de Zimatlán, Oaxaca,” she said. “I learned from my mother.” The simple statement belied something very complex. Jiménez left for Poughkeepsie in the 1980s and rarely goes back. I asked what led her so far north, and if she knew how the first Oaxacans found Poughkeepsie. “I already had family here,” she replied with a shrug. “I guess they had family, too.”
As we toasted dried pasillas, anchos, and guajillos on the comal and set them aside to be soaked and blended, she recalled days spent preparing the dish alongside her mother: “We didn’t use a blender. We spent days grinding everything on a metate [a large flat stone]. We made the chocolate, too, grinding the cocoa beans and cinnamon. It tasted different...better. Hardly anyone does it like that anymore, not even there. But, this is still the mole from my town.”
I scribbled down notes, trying to estimate how much of each ingredient we put in, but things got lost in translation, not from Spanish to English, but from her deeper way of knowing to the rigid recipe on the page. Vivid memories — of the bittersweet aroma of cocoa bursting on the stone; the crackle of wood fire under an enormous copper caldera; the forearm soreness and back sweat from hours of stirring and grinding in the heat; the expression on her mother’s face when she tasted a sample off of her open hand — bind taste to emotion creating intuition, an indecipherable code.
After a few hours of simmering, Jiménez casually ladled some of the scorching liquid onto her bare palm, slurped
it off, paused, then shot around the kitchen like a pinball, deftly gathering spices and throwing them into the pot before I could record the ingredients on paper. She tasted
it again and gave a single nod. Then, she griddled a couple of tortillas, dipped them into the dark sauce, folded them over on a saucer, and sprinkled them with thin slices of raw onion and fresh homemade cheese. She passed one to me with a fork...delicious.
Things got lost in translation, not from Spanish to English, but from her deeper way of knowing to the rigid recipe on the page.
Rosalía Jiménez
20 the valley table jan – feb 2021 photo (bottom left) by mike diago