Is this Catalan Dish related to Mole and Curry?
A couple of days ago, following a suggestion of Adam Balic, I made a dish from Catalonia that uses techniques and ingredients that are very similar to those used in making Mexican mole. It also followed up on a conversation with a young woman in Catalonia earlier this year. She launched into a fascinating description of the use of chocolate in country hare and rabbit dishes. I t seems highly likely that these dishes, like mole, are a throwback to the cuisine of medieval Islam with the addition of an additional spice from the Americas, chocolate.
This might seem odd because Catalonia was essentially never part of al-Andalus as Islamic Spain was called. But like the rest of Europe, it felt its influence. And perhaps at its proud height in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it did not feel the need to repudiate Islamic Cuisine as forcefully as the rest of Spain. Whatever the reasons, Catalan cuisine is distinctly different from that of other parts of Spain.
I took the recipe from Catalan Cuisine by Colman Andrews, a fascinating cookbook. He calls Mar y Munanya I (Sea and Mountain) and subtitles it Chicken and Prawn Ragout. I didn’t have prawns on hand, so I left them out. I didn’t have Pernod, so I substituted a hefty pinch of anise seeds.
And for the chocolate, I chose a Mexican hand ground chocolate from the local market with a little taste of cinnamon. I rejected my Spanish hand ground chocolate that I had bought earlier in the year. It was made by the Adoratrices Perpetuas in Barcelona. It was smoother than stone-ground Mexican chocolate (perhaps because it also contained lecthin according to the label) and was flavored with vanilla flavoring (not, I think, real vanilla) instead of cinnamon.
The results were stunningly delicious: tender chicken in a smooth brown sauce of complex flavors. They were also very like the simpler Mexican moles.
Here’s what I did for two people. (I live at 7000 feet so all simmering times are much longer than they would be at sea level).
I chopped half a huge white onion finely and fried it gently in olive oil until it was soft and turning brown when I added about a third of a cup of chopped tomato.
In another pan, I fried half a dozen chicken thighs and drumsticks until golden. Then I added the onion-tomato mixture, a good slug of wine, a good pinch of anise, salt, ground pepper, and water to cover. This was simmered for the better part of an hour until it was nearly tender.
Meanwhile I fried a good-sized slice of home made bread. I tore this in pieces and put it in my molcajete with a tablespoon of chopped parsley, a tablespoon of chopped blanched toasted almonds, a thumb-sized piece of chocolate, and a couple of big roughly-chopped cloves of garlic. Molcajetes have a rough surface and are excellent for grinding small quantities unlike the smooth pestles and mortars of Europe and the US. I ground the mixture to a smooth paste. Then I added it to the chicken and simmered for another twenty minutes to cook and blend the flavors.
- Talking with Jean Feraca of Here on Earth (Wisconsin Public Radio)
- Maria’s mole recipe and cooking school
Nice post Rachel. Some great information on catalán cuisine. I just love it. Very informative weblog, keep up the good work.
I was interested to see your post regarding the possible relation of the use of chocolate in Catalan mar i muntanya preparations and Mexico’s mole. In 1992, I presented a paper on this very question in the Canary Islands, at a symposium called (in the rather inelegant official translation) “The Canaries in the Route of Food” (dealing with the islands’ important role in the transfer of food products, in both directions, between mainland Spain and the New World). Specifically, I addressed the question of whether or not mole had any relation to the picada, the paste commonly including chocolate, one or more kinds of nuts (almonds, hazelnuts, pine kernels), olive oil, garlic, parsely, and fried bread, all ground in a mortar, that is common to mar i muntanya dishes and many other traditional Catalan sauced dishes. For some reason, I’ve been unable to find a copy of that paper or of my research file for it, so I can’t provide specifics at this point, but at the time, I recall, I did turn up information suggesting that, while the origins of mole are clearly pre-Columbian, there is a possibility that some of the nuns at the convent in Pueblo at which mole poblano, the type we most often think of as mole, was invented, were Catalan or at least had access to early Catalan cookery texts (like the Libre del Coch). The technique of making and method of using both mole and picada is very similar, as you note, and though pre-Columbian Catalans wouldn’t have had chocolate, both Catalans and indigenous Americans had mortars (the molcajete in the latter case), and some mutual influence between the two preparations seems not at all unlikely.
Though Catalonia wasn’t considered part of al-Andalus, incidentally, there is a strong connection with Moorish cooking and culture in general through the Balearic Islands, which fell to the Moors in 798, and were later worried by North African pirates–until Jaume (or Jaime) I, “the Conquerer”, chased them out entirely in 1229. This is significant to Catalonia because a large portion of Jaume’s troops came from the Emporda (Ampurdan) region, and they effected a long and complex cultural exchange between the two areas. This is seen linguistically in, among other things, the use in both the Balearics and the Emporda of “es” and “sa” as articles in place of the conventional “el” and “la” of Catalan. The Emporda is also the region in which arguably Moorish-influenced multi-ingredient dishes like the mar i muntanyas (a class of dishes rather than a single one) are most prevalent and definitive.
Glad you liked the recipe, by the way.
I guess another interesting question is why would chocolate have been assimilated into the Spanish kitchen? It is a bitter substance (until the Spanish added sugar) and in cooking it results in a dark brown colour. I know that there was an obvious mesoamerican association of chocolate with blood (hightened by the addition of annato), but I wonder if this could also be true of Spain? At the present day there is a lot of blood consumption in Spain, at various markets it is sold in solid blocks. As yet I haven’t come across any historical Spanish recipes for Civet type dishes to illustrate the point though.
p.s. I left an earlier comment, but it is attached to the third image (when clicked on) rather then the main text.
The most likely scenario is that you have mutual influences. As pointed out some of the nuns at the convent could have been Catalan, in addition you can’t forget that after the Colonization… the Spanish took many Indigenous artisans, artists & nobles to Europe often presenting them as “gifts” to the various Crowns & Nobility. The Spanish specifically designated the Aztec nobel lineages with their own Spanish title… Duke of Moctezuma… position still occuppied to this day by his descendants.
From the Spaniards own description of Aztec cuisine, arts & architecture it seems they were quite impressed… further there is evidence of the Spanish crown in different eras being particularly concerned with the treatment of certain indigenous groups.
Its not at all unlikely that Spain in general was quite impressed and open to some Indigenous influence particularly in the arts.
In Mexico you can see the evidence of an artistic exchange. For example the famous & revered image of the Virgin of Guadalupe was painted by an Aztec scribe whose name was Marcos Cipac. The painting which is considered to be a masterpiece equivalent to the European masters of the time (painted circa 1529)… indicates Cipac must have received some training in Europe & may have even seen the original Virgin of Guadalupe in its church prior to painting the Mestizo version.
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What a fascinating connection! I am looking forward to more discoveries of culinary links between the Old and New Worlds.
Thanks Gabriella. There are lots and lots of links to come.
Rachel