The Slapdash Cook

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I no longer remember why I thought it was a good idea to make mole, but J. was totally into it. In fact, it was more his project than mine! And J. is much more conscientious than I am about actually following recipes, so I was thinking of not blogging it at all. However, this sauce deserves to be memorialized purely because it’s a lot of work. And also because of the deliciousness.

For those who may not be familiar: mole, which ought to have an accent over the E, is a Mexican sauce made of (usually mild) chiles and chocolate. Actually, it’s made of a ton of things — the recipe we used calls for 17 ingredients, and that’s a simplified version of the allegedly 25-ingredient, 50-step original. Traditionally, you put it on chicken or turkey, which makes me think Mexican-Americans must have awesome Thanksgiving leftovers. Because we are a largely meat-free household, we’ve been putting it on tortillas and baked tofu. It does not disappoint in those applications. In fact, I deployed it shortly after it was made when a bunch of friends showed up on my doorstep and it was dinnertime. The pic above is enmoleadas — like enchiladas, but with mole instead of a chile/tomato sauce. More on that later.

The recipe J. used is a simplified version of a red mole recipe from a cookbook called Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen. It calls for:

Garlic roasted in its skin:

Eight dried ancho chiles, soaked in boiling water for a half hour:

Six cups of broth (we used veggie broth — don’t tell your abuela!):

Plus oregano, black pepper, cumin and cloves. That’s all for the ancho chile paste, which you make by blending all those goodies in the food processor:

…and then put through a fine mesh strainer to get out the nasty dried skin bits:

That’s the first half! Then you need to also prepare:

Roasted tomatoes:

Chopped Mexican or baking chocolate:

Plus toasted almonds, sauteed raisins, sauteed onions, cinnamon, salt, sugar and toasted bread or a bolillo. I slacked on the picture-taking around then, but I did get a shot of those things going into the food processor:

Then you have to saute the chile paste in oil for a while…

…add the chocolate paste, cook until thickened, add the broth and simmer for 45 minutes. Oy.

If that sounds like a lot of work, well, it is, but you get enough sauce for multiple meals unless you’ve got a big family.

As I said, I ended up using some of it right away in a sort of impromptu dinner party. There were ingredients around that I thought would go into mole but didn’t end up getting used. One of them was a plaintain! Plantains are bananas’ bigger cousins — at the store where I bought it, it was labeled “platano macho.” So when people were coming over, I thought I’d look for a recipe that uses plantains but isn’t deep-fried. Avoiding deep-frying turned out to be tough, but I did run across something on Epicurious.com that called for sauteeing them and stuffing them into dried chipotles. As luck would have it, I also happened to have those around as an abortive mole ingredient. The plantain was definitely going to make too much filling, but I figured that way I could throw the extra into tortillas for the enmoleadas. Showtime!

Chipotle peppers are nothing more exotic than dried jalapenos:

They must also be reconstituted in boiling water. So best to do that first and let it sit while doing the filling.

As with almost every recipe ever, this one started out by requiring me to saute onions until soft:

Then it asked me to add the plantain, chopped up, and saute until soft. It takes a while to get everything nice and soft. I also mushed it up until it resembled mashed potatoes, thinking it would be easier to stuff things that way.

This is pretty much where I went off the reservation; the original calls for a vinegar sauce on top. I am not a fan of large amounts of vinegar, plus we had all that mole! So, next I threw in some canned black beans we had around to bulk out the filling. Then I tasted it and it was just crying out for something acidic. So IN went a chopped tomato. When that didn’t do the trick, IN went some lime juice:

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t take pics of the stuffing phase, which is a bit complicated but actually easier with dried peppers than it seems to be with fresh ones. (However, you can see the finished and sauced chiles in the pic at the very top of this post.) The recipe called for using kitchen scissors to cut down the side of the chipotles and scrape out the seeds and ribs. That worked very well and the flesh did not tear, which is more than I can say for the slimmed-down chiles rellenos I made tonight (I’m on a chile kick). Then all you have to do is put little spoonfuls of filling in and pinch the sides back together, then sauce the little things and stick ‘em in the oven let’s say 350 degrees F, **covered**. Covered is very important or your sauce will dry out. Since there’s nothing there that really needs to be cooked, the goal is just to heat everything up nicely.

To make enmoleadas or enchiladas, BTW, here’s a trick my mom taught me. Most people say to fry the tortillas so they’re easier to work with. You can do that, but if you’re trying to avoid extra fat, splash a tiny amount of water on and stick them in the microwave instead. Kaboom! They are pliable. Then all you have to do is sauce, stuff, roll and sauce again. Bake like for the chipotles.