But I was curious why it was Mexican molé (MO-lay) behind the cheese counter at Di Bruno Bros., 18th and Chestnut, that was his coating of choice. Italian shop. French cheese. Mexican rub? They're calling the finished product, biligually, Vie de Loco.
You can find some stunning molé sauces in these parts, descendants of the rainbow of sauces that date back centuries in Mexico, mixtures variously of tomatoes or tomatillos and onion, garlic, and designated chiles, and often almonds or peanuts or raisins, and typically cinnamon, and Mexico's gift to us all - chocolate.
The ingredient list can run seriously on. At 28, the number of chiles, nuts, spices, and such in the Oaxacan black molé that Chicago chef Rick Bayless whipped up for the White House dinner honoring Mexico's President Felipe Calderon last year was about average.
But the molés tend to congregate in Mexican eateries, small, medium, and well-bankrolled, including Distrito, where the seared duck breast has come with a rich molé poblano, or at Adsum where it adorns pork, or El Rey, which has featured - for the Year of the Rabbit? - a sweet-tangy version with rabbit.
The chef at El Rey, by the way, is Dionicio Jimenez, a native of Puebla near Mexico City, where the molés can be on the sweeter, milder side, a profile attributed to the influence of Spanish nuns. (Speaking of cross-cultural flavor currents . . .).
Rozin preferred to call those sorts of influences emblematic less of the infamous melting pot, in which flavors blur to unrecognizable versions of the originals, than of a "mega-crossroads" where cultures intersect and new flavorings (chile peppers, for instance, or peanuts) enhance or extend existing regional cooking traditions.
