Day 14: Milling, Sifting, and Mole
Hello friends and family of PUC! Today is Sunday here in Suchil, and this morning we headed to the worksite at the regular time to make progress on our secondary projects. It’s hard to believe we are leaving Suchil in three days! At the site this morning, a local electrician came to provide a quote for adapting the sifter for use with their current electrical system. They have been unable to use the electrical sifter because of this incompatibility, and they usually sift the flour by hand at three to four times with increasingly fine mesh until it becomes fine powder. We were able to test the sifter and Minerva, who is in charge of the sifting, and the rest of the mesquite project members seemed really happy with the results. Today we also tried milling some flour with the cowling on the mill to see if it would successfully contain the output of the mill. Usually, someone sits at the base of the mill with an open trash bag and tries to catch the mesquite dust in the air while getting covered in sticky residue in the process. The cowling succeeded in catching the dust and fine powder coming out of the mill, but we discovered that milled mesquite was spilling out the back of the tub through the cowling, and that adjustments needed to be made to fix this issue.
Lunch today was phenomenal. We ate at the home of a local community member, Lydia, who is involved in a recycling project in the community. Her mother prepared black mole with chicken, white rice, fresh tortillas, and hibiscus tea. Some of us were brave enough to try helping make the tortillas before the meal, and we quickly discovered that there is much more to it than we thought. First, you take the corn dough and flatten it between two pieces of metal with a simple lever press. Then, you carefully place it on the comal, which consists of a ceramic plate over a wood-burning fire. It was really difficult not to rip the delicate tortilla dough after flattening it, and it was even more difficult to correctly place it on the comal. Most of us kind of threw it down like we were flipping a pancake, but this left air bubbles underneath the tortilla and made it cook unevenly. It was amazing to watch the Oaxacan women expertly (gently) place the tortilla on the comal and to see the perfect resulting tortillas.
After failing at making tortillas, we sat down to one of the best meals of the trip. The mole sauce was rich with flavors from tomatoes, apples, raisins, sesame seeds, chilis, peanuts, chocolate and about a million other ingredients according to Richard’s estimation. The ingredients are ground up and cooked for several hours until the mole turns to paste, and then broth is added to create the sauce. The black sauce was served from a simmering cauldron, but despite looking like something cooked up by a bruja (witch), it was arguably the best meal we had while in Suchil.
After the meal, several PUC team members decided to test their spice limits by eating raw chilis picked from Lydia’s garden. This resulted in some tears, a decent amount of sweating, and an exponential increase in the intake of cheese. The excitement of today was followed by napping at the hotel before dinner. Overall, a successful day for work, food, and sleep.
