Rachel Laudan

Tomorrow I will do a radio interview on the Islamic roots of the Mexican kitchen.  I always like to give this a bit of a new twist, so this time it’s noodles. Here’s a Sunday dinner we had with our friend Jordi and his family just outside Barcelona a year or so ago. First course:  [...]

A very knowledgeable Indian correspondent, V. Gautam, sent me this comment. “When an Indian looks at a mole, we see, deconstructed, the following parts to the gravy: 1) a garam masala, the sweet spice paste 2) the chile/chile seed paste + any chocolate 3) nut/bread/plantain paste thickener, raisin 4) fried onion base, thickener [optional] 5) [...]

Mole’s on my mind again (find previous posts by clicking on the tag “mole”). Last night I was lucky to attend a reception with Patricia Quintana prior to the mole festival here in Guanajuato. Not surprisingly in her eloquent history of mole, she affirmed that the basic techniques were  indigenous with some Islamic ingredients added [...]