Anyone have a good recipe/method? Good mole is the food of the gods and not that easy to find. But if I could learn to make it myself…
I don’t want to do it all the way from scratch (pumpkin seeds, chilies, chocolate), but I’m not sure how best to use the mole paste from the grocery store. There’s a recipe in one of my America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks, but, geez, those people are from Vermont. :rolleyes:
According to the place around the corner, you take your enchilada sauce and thrown in a handful of Hershey’s Kisses.
I shall not have the mole there again. Or, perhaps, anything.
Yeah, ATK is good, but their Mexican food is iffy. Rick Bayless is the way to go if you want advice on Mexican. I have made his mole sauce itself a few times and it’s amazing, but you don’t have to go that far. Check out his recipe for Lacquered Chicken. I haven’t tried this recipe in particular before but I have made dozens of other recipes from his website and they are uniformly great.
That made me laugh because is too damn true.
I have successfully made mole from scratch several times, and had it turn out well (I’m from Texas, which I hope gives me some credibility in that department). I’m happy to help!
First question-- which kind of mole are you trying to make? “Mole” is just a generic name for several different types of sauce, and a mole negro, say, is going to be waaaay different from mole verde. If you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, what you’re thinking of is probably mole poblano.
It sounds like you’re not willing to put all the effort in to make it from scratch, which is probably wise. Mole poblano requires a lot of time and effort to make. You have to toast the bread, tortillas, seeds, nuts, and spices, fry the dried peppers and let them soak, and then spend an inordinate amount of time over the stove cooking the thing. The end product is so thick that when the bubbles burst, the little droplets stick to your arm like burning tar. The times I’ve made it, it’s taken two people about two hours to make.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to use mole paste (if I’m going to make mole, I’m going to do it from scratch.) You might try making a different kind of mole-- I think mole verde is pretty much the low end of the time investment/difficulty curve. As long as you can get tomatillos and serrano peppers, none of the ingredients are that exotic, and it only takes me half an hour to an hour to make.
If you’re going for authentic, anything from Diana Kennedy is pure gold-- she’s like the Julia Child of Mexican cuisine. The Cuisines of Mexico is the classic, but Oaxaca al Gusto covers a wide range of different types of mole.
I’ve also had great success with the cookbook Fonda San Miguel: Thirty Years of Food and Art. It’s widely regarded as the best Mexican (not Tex-Mex) restaurant in Austin, and Diana Kennedy helped with the menu and recipe planning.
I’m from Texas, too, and I DO know what you’re talking about. 
You get a check mark in the credibility column.
I really am not in the mood to make it from scratch. I looked at Rick Bayless’ recipe and it looks good but long. I have all of Diane Kennedy’s cookbooks and they are The Bomb. I’ll look for that other cookbook you mentioned, too. I am one of those people who loves TexMex food and never say things like, “Oh, it’s not TexMex, it’s from the *interior *of Mexico.” Whatever. I like it all.
As for the type of mole… did you ever watch a cooking show called something like “Seasons of My Heart”? The host was an Anglo woman who lives in Oaxaca and she did a lot on the multiple (is it seven?) types of mole you can find there. The funny thing about her was even though she lives in Mexico and has for many years, when she says anything in Spanish, she makes no attempt to pronounce the words in anything resembling an authentic way. Maybe to Mexicans it sounds charming like Jacques Pepin’s lingering accent, but to me it sounded dumb. But I digress. I just want the reddish brown mole that you used to be able to get at Lisa’s on West Commerce in San Antonio many years ago.
I’m thinking there probably is prepared mole paste that is decent, since I’m sure there are people who want mole and don’t want to grow the pumpkins and the cacao plants first. Since I live in south Texas, I have access to lots of Mexican grocery products.
Interestingly, today’s (Oct 12) Rick Bayless show is all about Oaxaca, Susana Trilling (of the bad Spanish accent) and her cooking school there, called “Seasons of My Heart.” BTW, her cookbook of the same name is excellent.
I have been happy with Dona Maria mole paste.
http://www.herdeztraditions.com/dona-maria-products/dona-maria-mole-original/
A simple recipe:
Thank you!
Ok, now I totally want chicken mole.