Rachel Laudan

As someone once said to me, in the eighteenth century well-to-do Mexican families were as determined that one of their daughters become a nun in a major convent as twentieth-century families are to have their daughters graduate from Mexico’s most prestigious private university, the Tec de Monterrey.
These convents were powerhouses in the colonial period. [...]

One objection that comes up time and again when people discuss my theory about the Islamic origins of mole poblano is this: how come, if mole was introduced by the Spaniards, it is now the celebration dish in small villages all over Mexico?
Perfectly good question. And I think there is an answer to this [...]

I write this in large part in response to Colman Andrew’s interesting comment on my post on a recipe using Catalan picada. In it he concedes that mole has pre-hispanic origins but suggests some kind of interaction between Catalonia and the convents of Puebla where by legend the nuns invented the archetypal mole, mole poblano.
I [...]