Mi Ranchito en St. Louis

For dinner, I had mole ranchero from Mi Ranchito, with some chips and salsa.

No me gusta. This was our second visit to the little ranch, and I recalled not liking it last time, but I couldn't remember why. Instead of ordering something else, I ordered the same thing I'd gotten last time. Oops. To be fair, I really can't resist mole, and the rest of their menu looked boring. Except for their taco plates, which DID look delicious, but I refuse to order on principle- almost $11 for three little tacos and no sides is not cool.

On the good side, their salsa is pretty nice- it has a bit of a garlic-onion glow that wakes me up without off-flavors or sourness. Also on the good side is that their website is somewhat in Spanish. I have a mostly worthless degree in Latin American Studies, so things like that make me happy...

But the mole? So sad. It's not the worst I've ever had (that would be grainy, oily mole sauce from the grocery store), and I think it's homemade, but it's too sweet, really thin, and not very complex. Oddly, it also has that cornstarch shine I associate with Chinese sauces, though does not taste of cornstarch (thank god).

Even worse, they have a bad habit of never asking about tortillas. I strongly prefer corn, and they always bring flour ones. I just forget to request corn, but it's a little annoying they never ask. As flour tortillas go, they weren't bad.

The big cooking project I've put off for far too long is making a mole from scratch. I have Rick Bayless' recipes for it, but the thirty or so different spices and chiles each kind call for have scared me a little. It looks about as involved as Indian from scratch (which I have done, and which is rightfully delicious). I'll hopefully have a lot of spare time in the next few weeks, so maybe I'll try making a mole and post about it. Maybe it will give me a new respect for homemade moles, crappy or not.

Muy Sabroso: Restaurante La Mexicana

For dinner, I had chicken enchiladas in mole sauce with refried beans and limeade. And then some ice cream.

Dinner was at La Mexicana in Montrose.

The mole sauce was nice, probably homemade. Moles vary a lot from one restaurant or recipe to the next, so it's always interesting to try them. In general, it's a thick brown sauce made of several kinds of chili peppers, ground nuts or seeds, and unsweetened chocolate. Theirs was a little chunkier than most, with deep savory flavors- I want to say "musty", but I mean that in a good, forest-y sort of way- and a nutty undertone that may have come from peanut oil or ground walnuts. The sauce overshadowed the shredded chicken inside the tortillas, but mole is usually about the sauce rather than the carrier protein anyway. Their beans were creamy and probably full of lard- delicious.

After dinner, we headed to Amy's Ice Cream for dessert. I had some incredibly good lavender-honey ice cream earlier this week somewhere else, so was interested in their more unusual flavors. I sampled their avocado ice cream, but it was utterly strange. It had an off-putting bitter aftertaste. I'd try it again, but it might be better mixed with another flavor. I ended up getting half rose, half Shiner ice cream. The rose was as flowery and over-the-top as you'd expect, but it was very creamy, almost custardy, and worked really well. Amy's uses real beer to make the Shiner ice cream, so the interaction between frozen alcohol crystals and frozen milkfat gave the whole thing a grainy, sandy, sorbet-like texture. The Shiner flavor didn't come through very well, so it ended up tasting like slightly caramel-flavored frozen milk. I enjoy interesting textures in my food, and the flavor wasn't bad, so I liked it anyway.