Mole
Mexico's great sauces of dried chillies, spices, nuts, seeds and sometimes chocolate.
Also: mole poblano, mole negro, moli, Mexican spice sauce
Mole, from the Nahuatl molli, means sauce. The best known, mole poblano from Puebla, and mole negro from Oaxaca, combine several dried chillies, such as ancho, pasilla and mulato, with sesame, nuts, raisins, tortilla or bread, cinnamon, clove, black pepper, anise, cumin and a little chocolate. Ingredients are toasted, fried and ground in separate batches, and a mole can take days to make. It is served at weddings, baptisms and the Day of the Dead. Oaxaca is said to have seven moles. Recipes are handed down within families and town markets sell mole pastes in great mounds, ready for dilution with stock.