Fowl most foul

My foray into Mexican food experimentation got off to a foul start.

Just before Easter I added (yet) another item to my food collection; a jar of mole sauce. Auckland is hardly a Mexicana Mecca, so, apart from Tex Mex incarnations, I've eaten very little Mexican food. Keen to broaden my horizons, I checked out one of this city's few Mexican eateries - a small, part-time cafe in Ellerslie:

http://www.mexicanspecialties.co.nz/

The spicy tortilla lunch I had was nice enough, as was my first ever sample of chillied chocolate. Emboldened, I bought a jar of Mole sauce.

Despite its cheerful labelling, the jar of sauce somehow seemed sinister and unappealing once I got it home. The contents had settled to the bottom and were covered by a thick, dark, oily slick.

To add to my general unease, I Googled 'mole sauce recipes' and noted that the real deal had far more ingredients than those listed on my mass produced speciman.

Months passed.

The jar of sauce sat on the bench, glistening expectantly at me.

On Sunday I decided to be brave and try it - but not on the family (see, I have a heart after all). According to the instructions, one part of sauce needed to be mixed with four parts of water then cooked with chicken.

Getting the sauce out of the jar was a challenge because the sludge layer was surprisingly hard. I chisled out several chunks, noting with a sinking heart that I really didn't like the way it smelled. A small taste test did nothing to give me hope. It was chilli hot and tasted of burnt chocolate with an unpleasant savoury note.

But I boxed on and mixed it with some chicken drumsticks, then put it in the oven to bake. The dish looked absolutely disgusting, as only rounded shapes in thick, dark brown sauce can.

With growing unease, I took another sample after it had baked a while and decided I simply wouldn't be able to eat it. So I took the chicken out of the sauce, scraped it down, and put it back along with a can of diced tomatoes and some smoked Spanish paprika. A faint mole-ish note lingered in the background, but not enough to make me retch.

Hardly an exotic lunch in the end, but at least it was edible. Here's what the end result looked like:

As you can see, food styling isn't my forte.

There - far more appealing. That's until I tell you that the backs of the lemon leaves were covered in scale insects.