Mole!

Times are getting harder, money is tight, unemployment at 10.5% and I just can't waste money on luxury foods, not when I can afford rice and beans and flavor them with a modest degree of skill.

I recently found a heck of a deal on pork loin, 10 pounds of it for $17 at my local supermarket. It was boneless and lean enough to be quality meat. I bought it, sliced it into chops and then froze those in pairs. I've been eating them for two weeks now. Pretty amazing, when you stop to think about it. I've fiddled with seasonings. My wife is under orders to cut her salt intake for high blood pressure and I know that salt makes me sweaty, so that excludes the typical boring cream of mushroom soup my Mom always seemed married to for pork chops.

I took things in a different direction. Ever heard of Mole sauce? Its chocolate, chili powder, and ground peanuts with probably a bit of masa so it thickens given a chance. Partially cook the pork, add the mole concentrate, about a tablespoon worth, and then stir it in. Masa doesn't clump, which is why I prefer it to wheat flour as a thickener. The downside to this particular brand of mole is the chocolate used is very weakly flavored. It has little of the theobromines I like in chocolate, that bitter flavor. So I fix it by adding semi-sweet chocolate chips. The slight sugar intensifies the spice of the chili powder and the bitterness brings out the chocolate. This sauce is good on the meat (pork, chicken) as well as plain white rice. Fantastic on rice. I want to experiment with beans tomorrow and see if I can get some awesome flavor into them too. Maybe roast one of the chops in the beans with some of the mole and soak in the flavor a bit, as well as prevent some of that secondary fermentation that last batch did. I think I might have gotten a little food poisoning from it.

Cast iron stomach or not, food poisoning toxins often resemble a strong allergic psychosis reaction, which isn't fun. Ever had a temper tantrum for no reason, sweats, and then want sex for no reason, all at the same time? That's one of those allergies, probably food allergy or food poisoning. They see this in Emergency rooms sometimes, give Benedryl injections to fix it. I was once in the emergency room sick when a guy who'd broken his leg motorcycling offroad was brought in. They gave him a painkiller and some kind of antibiotic. He had a reaction to it, a strong one, and begged his girlfriend to suck him off on the other side of a thin cloth curtain from me. I was a bit stunned and slightly turned on by how kinky that was (I was very inexperienced at the time) and shortly after she finished slurping him up and wiped her mouth, the emergency room doctor noted his allergy, said so, and gave him the injection. Within 5 minutes he stopped asking to walk out of the hospital on a broken leg. Allergies really do make people act crazy. I wonder if that's part of the problem with my nutty neighbors?

Anyway, mole sauce is good for lots of things, including pairing chocolate with chili powder and teaching you that its good for more than just candy. Its wonderful on slow cooked foods, like crock pot stuff. Just don't add it too soon, since its a thickener. Its gotta go in late, just like noodles to soup or stew.