Twenty-one ingredients

Congratulations to Gayle and Expat on this culinary accomplishment: Last week the Los Angeles Times printed a recipe for Mexican molé, that rich, rich, spicy-chocolatey sauce that goes so very well with turkey, chicken and pork. The recipe is fiendishly complicated and requires 21 ingredients including the special chocolate and three different chiles: anchos, negros and guajillos. My wife (and Alexandra's mother) decided to make a project of it. We knew right away that the local Albertson's wasn't going to cut it for the shopping involved, so we ventured into Spanish-speaking San Diego and ended up at an ethnic grocery called La Salsa, on Euclid Ave. No problemo señora, there were all the chiles known to man, plus the chocolate and other exotics. As is always the way with recipes requiring tons of ingredients, there's no way to make a reasonable amount of it, so Alexandra and a couple of other friends got gifts of molé when it was all done. Was it delicious? You may as well ask, "Is the Tijuana police force corrupt?"