recipe for chicken mole and life

Mysterious bags of dark powders now line my azure kitchen counter.  They are next to my interminable row of specialty salts, giving the space its own market feeling.

I could put them in glass jars.

Tupperware.

Away.

But I choose not to.

I’ve left them on the counter, not only because their quasi-drug look reminds me with pride how they all passed unnoticed through rigorously-trained olfactory senses of airport beagles, but also because they represent the constant, intoxicating chaos of the Mexican market I recently left behind and still long for.

It’s all good here, of course.

Suburbia is nice.

The grass is mowed.

The kids are clean.

The DIRECTV guy came when he said he would.  Even fifteen minutes early.

But chaos?

What is it about chaos I long?  Miss?  Crave.

Is it the rowdy pedestrian streets of Sabana Grande in Caracas where I grew up?  The ones my best friend and I use to own when we were sixteen? We’d plop our rebellious bodies smack down in the center of the walkway and engage in a made-up Krishna chant that would draw curious crowds around us? Man I loved that.

Or the cramped Tel-Aviv roads, the ones I learned how to parallel park my 1964 Volkswagen Beetle when I was a college student?  If you didn’t know how to squeeze into the miniscule space in the first five seconds you’d have a group of nosy passerbyers tapping on your window telling you to turn more to the left, and then another group ordering you to turn to the right.  Then a heated discussion would follow.  Man I loved that.

Perhaps it’s the classic feel of New York City, where I was fortunate enough to finish my studies and explore early adulthood?  I was one with the patchwork of cultures, customs, and cuisines there.  I was the Dominican Republic doorman eating his snack of tostones. I was the Turk dining a dizzying array of appetizers at a miniscule yet rowdy restaurant, wrapping it up with an aromatic Keskur (coconut pudding).  And I was most definitely the gregarious Frenchman rollerblading through Central Park with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth and a cold beer nearby.  I was all of them and I was me.  It was glorious.  Invigorating.  Challenging.   Man I loved that.

So those dusty plastic bags of earth-colored mole I bought in the Mexican market are worth more than gold to me, it appears.  I almost thought I’d never use them.  But then I did.   I had some leftover chicken, a casualty from my chicken soup. It sat in a Tupperware awaiting its next destination, which was unknown.  Until I realized one day while I watched the city workers in orange shirts, the only folks wandering about the neighborhood (save for the occasional dog walker) diligently watering the magnolia tree they had planted on my swale (city property:  city watering), I realized then and there that tonight I must open the bag.  Use the chicken.  Make mole.  Make magic.

And so I did. It was easy, quick, and ravenously delicious.  The chicken shred itself willingly and danced happily in the blessing of chocolate, chili powder, and other mysterious elements.  It was quick.  A dash of broth, a squeeze of lime, a hot tortilla, and I was back.  One bite and I was back.  To crowds. To cities.  To people. To life.  Man I love that.