Veronica and Rocio Cabuto, my past baby sitters, came over one day and made Mole (pronounced mole-ay) for me and my cousin! It was a ton of fun and I learned a really great recipe, what more can you ask for? The tip that Veronica gave me while making this sauce was that "everything is fried in oil and blended". It sounds super simple but when you see how many ingredients go into this dish, you'll realize how much work is involved in making a mole. But all that work is worth is because you get such a complex and delicious sauce, I've never tasted anything like it.
I am making one tweak to this recipe (sorry Cabuto family!!!) but the mole was a little sweet for my taste so I added just a little less chocolate to this recipe. The original recipe calls for 1 and 1/2 disks of the mexican chocolate but in the future I plan to use only 1 disk. This way it will still be sweet but a little more balanced to my palette.
Tips to make this recipe-
1. don't be afraid to lower the heat so things don't burn. If anything burns, you have to throw it out and start again because the burned taste will ruin the entire sauce.
2. make sure to wipe out the pan between ingredients to make sure nothing remains behind in pan that can burn.
3. Change the amount of chicken stock depending on how thick you want your sauce. I like to make a more concentrated version in the blender, freeze it, and then thin it out later when I'm ready to serve
Ingredients:
1/2 cup almonds
1/2 cup peanuts
1/2 red onion, medium sliced
5-6 garlic cloves
3 large dried ancho chilis, seeds removed
5 dried arbol chilis, seeds removed
2 1/2 oz bag of dried guajillo chilis, seed removed and reserved
1 disk Mexican chocolate (brand: Ibarra, disk is 3.1 oz)
white bread- 3, 1 inch slices of a bread that is about 2-3 inches wide
1 corn tortilla
1 9/16 oz package of sesame seeds
3 whole cloves
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 small stick cinnamon
1 T black pepper
1 tsp. salt
1/2 T. chicken bouillon
2-4 cups Chicken Broth (homemade is recommended and that recipe is below, make in advance)
Canola Oil, A good blender!
Directions:
1. Fry everything seperately in oil in a saute pan and then put in the blender. Here it is step by step:
2. Slice red onion. place into a saute pan with 1-2 Tbs canola oil and fry over medium heat for about five minutes or until golden brown.
3. Peel garlic and keep cloves whole, cook in same saute pan with a little oil until garlic is golden brown.
4. Using a pair of kitchen scissors, remove all the seeds from the dried chilis but reserve the guajillo seeds. Toast each pepper over low heat in oil until they are slightly "puffed" or colored.
5. Toast almonds in oil while constantly stirring.
6. Toast bread slices in oil. cube once toasted and put into blender.
7. Toast tortilla in oil until golden brown.
8. Toast whole cloves in oil
9. Toast sesame seeds in oil
10. Toast Peanuts in oil (notice the pattern emerging haha)
11. Toast guajuillo seeds over low heat
12. Toast cinnamon stick in oil
13. Put all of the toasted ingredients into the blender. You can add ingredients to the blender as you go, whatever system works best for you and your kitchen.
14. Add cumin, salt, pepper, chicken bouillon, and 1 cup of the chicken stock. Blend everything together until it has a smooth consistency. You may need to add more chicken stock to help the blender get through all the ingredients.
15. Crush chocolate a little and add to blender. Using hot chicken broth makes this step a lot easier.
16. Once the sauce is really well incorporated you can remove it from the blender, put into small batches and refrigerate or freeze.
When you're ready to eat the mole here's how to heat it up:
1. Add some mole sauce concentrate to a pan. Cook over medium heat, adding more chicken stock to get your desired consistency.
2. Add pre-cooked meat like chicken to sauce. Cook chicken in sauce for about 5 minutes to heat through and then serve!
3. We ate our chicken mole with Spanish Rice which is a dish that will appear in another post.
CHICKEN BROTH RECIPE
This is a simple home made chicken broth. Veronica and Rocio think it's very important to make the broth so I'm going to do it : )
Ingredients:
1 onion, roughly chopped
1/2 garlic bulb, not peeled
1 gallon water
5 pieces raw chicken or leftover chicken parts from whole chickens
2 T salt
Directions:
1. combine all the ingredients in a large pot. Cook over low heat for 40-50 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Strain liquid and keep your broth!
You can use the cooked chicken in your mole sauce or for leftovers another day!
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