Wow, homemade molé is the food of the gods

Cafe Society
1

I have been long intending to try a recipe out of my Rick Bayless cookbook, and finally did this last weekend. It was a “street food” dish, enchiladas folded around vegetables and coated with homemade molé. Man oh man, was this good stuff. The enchiladas themselves were to die for, but the molé was good enough to drink on its own. I had some of the sauce left over, and stewed some pork shoulder in it for dinner the next night, then added some hominy and ended up with posole.

Anyway, here’s the molé recipe, in case anyone wants to try it. If you do try it, double it and make a big batch. It’s delectable, but a bit time-consuming.

5 each dried pasilla chile pods and guajillo chile pods, de-stemmed and seeds shaken out
2 cloves unpeeled garlic
big pinch of oregano
small pinch of cumin seeds
1/2 of a clove
chicken broth
1 tsp bitter cocoa powder
1 tsp mild vinegar (rice or cider)
1 tsp tomato paste

Toast the chiles and unpeeled garlic on a dry skillet, flattening the chiles with a spatula. Toast the chiles a few seconds on each side. A wisp or two of smoke, showing that they are toasting, is ideal. Let the garlic continue to toast until softened and slightly blackened, then peel it.

Put the chiles into a bowl of warm water and let them soak for 30 minutes. Drain them and put them into a blender with the peeled garlic cloves and the other ingredients. Use about 3/4 cup of the chicken broth. Blend it until it is smooth, adding more chicken broth if necessary to make it soupy enough to blend. It should be the consistency of canned tomato sauce.

Strain the blended mixture through a steel mesh strainer into a bowl, stirring with a spatula, until it’s all strained through. Taste for salt and add if necessary. It should taste earthy and spicy and a bit bitter.

This stuff is gold. Use it for enchilada sauce or as a base for long-stewed meats like pork or chicken. Or here’s my favorite breakfast:

Egg Enchilada

Dip a tortilla into the molé until it’s well-coated, then fry the tortilla for 10-20 seconds per side in hot oil or until just softened. Put the tortilla on a plate and top it with a sunny-side up egg, and accompany this “enchilada” with slices of chilled mango.

Damn. I used up all the molé I made, and now I want another egg enchilada for breakfast.

2

Mole is one of my favorite things in the world. The first time I go to a Mexican restaurant I might patronize again, I always order the mole, as it’s my benchmark for whether I’d be interested in the rest of the menu. It’s rare to get really good mole; I’ve made it myself a few times using a variety of methods and ingredients but am continuing to look for the Holy Recipe. I’ll definitely give this a shot.

Nitpick: not “molé”

3

That’s odd. Here the tortilla for enchiladas is softened in oil first and then dredged in sauce.

4

My favorite is actually the quite simple mole amarillo (yellow mole), but this involved red mole (mole rojo) is great if you have the time to invest in it.

5

It is, isn’t it? But that’s what Rick Bayless said to do, and it wasn’t an error in the cookbook. I saw him do it on his show, as well. I now see the advantage of it. The mole (not molé?) absorbs better into the unoiled tortilla, and the act of frying tortilla and mole together sort of caramelizes the sauce into the tortilla. The resulting product is delectably tender, almost custardy. Just don’t fry it too long or it gets so soft you can’t even pick it up. Makes an unholy mess in the frying pan, too.

You’re right, Cervaise, a really good mole is hard to find in a Mexican restaurant. They’re either bland and “gringoized”, or they’re so intense and spicy that they’re almost too overwhelming to eat. The version I’ve listed here is a good balance of intensity and subtlety, without having 95 ingredients like some of them can.

6

Chocolate + Meat = Evil.

7

Mole != chocolate + meat. It can, but there’s many moles that do not contain chocolate. Chocolate and meat is not that weird, either, as evidenced by many chili recipes.

Anyhow, I found the yellow mole recipe I use. No chocolate in this one.

8

Not sure who Rick Bayless is but I’ll stick to our tradtional methods. I’m lucky to have excellent cooks on both mine and my wife’s side of the family. Our last mole dinner was cornish game hen in a dark mole with tamarindo. Fried plantains and rice.

But there is nothing that compares to the pipián of my tía Elvira.

9

I don’t know the answer to this, but is it not possible that the method outlined is traditional (or not unusual) in a different part of Mexico? I personally have never heard of that method, but I know that I’ve had Mexicans tell me certain food was “not traditional in Mexico” only to find out that it was, in another part of Mexico.

10

That game hen dish sounds superb.

I only had pipián for the very first time a couple of months ago. A terrific chef defected from the high-end restaurant where he created their menu and opened his own small restaurant right in my small hometown! I tried his chicken in pipián mole and was blown away. I think I like it more than any other mole I’ve tried.

Rick Bayless is the owner of restaurants in Chicago, and has written several cookbooks on Mexican cooking. He also has a cooking show on public television. His thing is to try to expose Americans to some traditional recipes that they may never have heard of. I’m not sure, but he may try to streamline some of the labor-intensive methods to modern kitchens, as well. Americans tend to see the same old dishes in Mexican restaurants, over and over, and to cook and sample the new and different things in his books is a revelation to a lot of us.

11

Yes that is true but it is something that I’ve never run across. Sometimes the tortillas are heated in the sauce but I’ve never seen them fried in oil afterwards.

Something to consider is that due to limited financial resources very little is wasted in Mexican homes. The oil used for frying a salsa drenched tortilla would unlikely be reusable whereas oil used just for browning or softening tortillas would be. A Mexican viewpoint for what it is worth.

12

I just consulted my wife and was promptly corrected. To her knowledge, certain enchilada dishes, ones that use very little or thin sauce are fried after being sauced. I now retire from la cocina (she usually runs me out anyway).

13

The only reason I asked is because Rick Bayless tends to be pretty respectful of local cooking traditions and generally notes in his recipes if he strays from the source. He does a very good job of exposing the rich variety of Mexican cuisine to America. He and Zarela Martinez are my favorite authors for exploring Mexico’s rich culinary traditions and presenting the recipes in a narrative manner intertwined with history and technique.

Luckily, I happen to live in an area of the US where many of the regional Mexican cuisines are well represented and ingredients are not too difficult to come by if you know where to look (unfortunately, though, naranja agria is still a bit difficult to source.)

14

The streets in my area of Guadalajara are lined with their trees. They usually just fall off the trees and get picked up and tossed into the garbage. My wife uses them when preparing cochinita pibil.

15

Heh. That’s exactly why I’ve been looking for them (well, for that and for mojo). The pibil still comes out good, but I wish I could find me some of those sour/Seville oranges.

16

There’s a local taco stand with pretty good mole. Tastes like cuy. :slight_smile: I tried making it once from a jar upon the recommendation of a friend and it came out tasting like ass. If I get psyched, I might have to give your recipe a try, although it looks like a lot of work.

17

The exact same thing happened to me. God, that stuff was vile. I think that was one of the triggers for me to try to start cooking this stuff on my own.

I also couldn’t make a decent salsa, and Bayless’s recipes soon set me straight on what to do. I can’t wait for it to be July so that I have a gardenful of ripe tomatoes to work with!

CBEscapee, if you could ever persuade your wife to part with any secret family recipes, I’m all ears.

18

I’ve had mole once, once. It was quite nasty. It was actually the first Mexican food that I tried that I did not like. Granted, I have yet to try menudo.

19

When did mole-the-sauce get a tilde?

20

For what it’s worth, you didn’t like a mole. Which is kind of like saying “I don’t like sauce”. There are hundreds if not thousands of ways to make a mole, many with nothing in common(well except chiles, I’ve never seen a mole without some form of chile).