"Pale Fire" wrote in message
ups.com...

snip

But the national dish of Mexico is Mole Poblano. It can be made with
roasted turkey or chicken covered with a poblano chile sauce that
contains chocolate! Imagine hot spicy chocolate sauce. You'd think it
would be too sweet, but it isn't.

There is no one national dish in Mexico. Like many other large countries with
isolated indigenous populations regional cooking becomes predominant. Mole
Poblano is simply a regional dish invented by nuns and probably Spanish.


http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/nancy1102.asp

Legend holds that mole poblano was invented in the 1680's by Sister Andreas, a
nun of the Convent of Santa Rosa in the city of Puebla. It was created in honor
of Don Manuel Fernandez de Santa Cruz and his guest, Don Antonio de la Cerda y
Aragon, Viceroy of New Spain. It seems that the archbishop was coming to visit,
and the nuns were worried because they had no food elegant enough to serve
someone of his eminence. So they prayed for guidance and Sister Andreas had a
vision. She directed that everyone in the convent begin chopping and grinding
everything edible they could find in the kitchen. Into a pot went chiles,
tomatoes, nuts, sugar, tortillas, bananas, raisins, garlic, and dozens of herbs
and spices such as cinnamon and cloves. The final ingredient was the magic one:
chocolate. Then the nuns slaughtered their only turkey and served it with the
mole sauce to the archbishop, who declared it the finest dish he had ever
tasted.

Dimitri