I recently received a good-sized bag of some all-but-unavailable dried chiles - the elusive chilhuacle (I seem to have mix of the negro and rojo varieties) - and am planning to make what’s been called by most Mexican cuisine authorities the ultimate in moles. I have several recipes for the mole negro, including one from Frontera Grill/Topolobampo’s owner/chef Rick Bayless. Mole Negro, of course, is probably the most difficult and complex of the seven traditional Oaxacan moles, but I’ve made quite a number of others in the past months, so that’s not my concern.
My concern is the meat on which I want to first try the mole negro. I have enough of the chilhuacles to make several good-sized batches (~ 1 pound of them which should be sufficient to make several quarts of mole) , so I’m thinking the initial trial should be served over a “simple” meat - perhaps chicken, before trying other, more-complex meats like a lamb chop or a duck breasts.
Has anybody else made a mole negro? And what meat did you serve it over? And maybe a big pile of mixed wild mushrooms in a nice fresh corn tortilla - that might be good, too? Or some other simple grilled vegetables.
And I need to add a huge thank you to and SDMB member who must go unnamed here since the chiles “might” have been “smuggled” back from Mexico.
My wife and I make mole a lot, but we buy the paste in the market and just mix in chicken broth. I’ll ask a couple of Elena’s aunts for recipes but it might take a couple of days.
We always use it with chicken or turkey. I’ll try to get back when I have more info.
I think turkey, especially dark meat. Avoid ones that have been injected with “basting solution” as it adds an off taste in my opinion. Get some Dulce de Leche icevcream from Hagen Dazs for desert or make flan. When’s dinner?
Chicken. And, before you even get started, go buy Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen. p.281-284. Not only will you be making something that the Master gives step by step directions, you’ll have a book that will bring you joy many times more.
[Hijack] i am intrigued by the chilhuacle pepper. I have a little pepper garden every summer and have grown everything from Caribbean Golden habanero to Thai sun to Hungarian hot wax to Bolivian rainbow peppers. My point being, that no matter where the pepper originated (assuming the name is indicative of where they came from), they grow quite well in my part of the US. For the most point, the hardest thing about growing peppers appears to be remembering to water them and figuring out when to pick them before the freeze hits.
Is there a reason they are not readily available in the US? I think I will check some of my regular pepper seed stores to see if I can find some to grow this season.
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I would go with a chicken breast, maybe a thigh for testing a new mole. Bland, no flavored meat to test how the mole truely tastes.
Great. So I can borrow your kitchen and stink up the place? And as noted by porcupine earlier, I plan on using the Bayless recipe. I’ve two Bayless cookbooks: Mexican Kitchen & Authentic Mexican.
Weather permitting Saturday, we’re (porcupine and me) headed to Bayless’ Frontera Grill. Ya gotta love a place that makes not only its own chorizo, but also its own fresh cheese.
I think part of the problem may be that either there is a typo (or outright mistake) in the Bayless book, or there is a regional vocab difference in what the chilis are called. When I was hunting around (in Chapala, Mexico, near Guadalajara) for said elusive pepper, I had written down the name from the Bayless book, and people were looking at me like I was crazy when I asked where I could find them. When I explained that I wanted the pepper for proper Oaxacan mole negro, they said, “aaaaah, you want chilacate negro, the dark, wrinkly ones.”
(Of course, even then we had to try 3 or 4 different chile places to find them. But then this may have been because we were not, in fact, in Oaxaca.)
I believe the problem lies in the loose nomenclature associated with chiles. Various regions of Mexico and even California have different names for the same chile. Or the names they use are also used elsewhere for a completely different chile.
Rick Bayless has this to say about even the widely-used and grown ancho:
Hey, I just spent a weekend in Oaxaca! Not long enough to try all the moles, but I did try the Mole Negro, and it was awesome. I had it with chicken, I believe. (There was another, different, mole served with pork and a third served with flank steak.)
The one tip I have is to use Mexican drinking chocolate squares, not cocoa powder, if you want an “authentic” texture to your mole. Oaxaca doesn’t do smooth, rich chocolate - the chocolate, whether in mole or in drinking chocolate (leche or water) or even in chocolate bars is grainy and crunchy. It’s a totally different notion of what chocolate “should” be like.
You might decide that you do indeed prefer smooth chocolate or cocoa powder, but it won’t be *Oaxacan *Black Mole without teeny hard bits of ground cocoa beans.
For Oaxacan food, try Xni-Pec in Cicero. It’s amazing. There’s a place on Cicero just south of Fullerton IIRC called Sol de Mexico that does some unbelievable moles and is my go to place over Frontera Grill.
Yep. I have a box of the traditional Mexican chocolate with the nibs and ground almonds. There’s an excellent Mexican grocery store right up the street from porcupine’s house. We’re frequently the only non-spanish speaking persons in the place.
Never seen the huitlacoche there, but they always have fresh epazote, hoja santa, chayote and many other things unavailable elsewhere.
