Making Mole Coloradito
Mole Coloradito is our favorite mole. We've been making it with mole paste that we brought back from Oaxaca. Out of curiosity, and given that our paste is running out, we decided to make a batch from scratch using the recipe we used at Susana Trilling's Seasons of My Heart cooking school.
Making this mole takes a lot of ingredients and has a lot of steps - it makes it pretty clear why you can buy mole paste! Here is a collage of the steps (homemade stock not included). Click on the photos for an enlarged picture and a description.
Our recipe required 20 ingredients: ancho chiles, guajillo chiles, mexican cinnamon, whole allspice, black peppercorns, whole cloves, garlic, white onion, tomatoes, fresh marjoram, ripe plantain, bolillo bread, almonds, raisins, lard, sesame seeds, mexican chocolate, sugar, sea salt and chicken stock (requiring an additional six ingredients).
The mole making process basically consists of: 1 - gathering ingredients, 2 - toasting or roasting them, 3 - soaking (the chilies), 4 - blending, pureeing or grinding groups of cooked components (pictured below: sesame paste in the works)...
... 5 - running the puree through a food mill if necessary and 6 - adding each puree to a simmering pot in stages to create multiple levels of flavor.
Mexican chocolate has a grainy texture - you can actually see the sugar crystals. One of the reasons we prefer Coloradito is that it uses less chocolate and is not as sweet as the darker moles.
All in all, it took about six hours to get to the point where it could be refrigerated overnight to let the flavors meld (next time it won't take that long!). After that, several more cups of chicken stock were slowly added to the gently simmering sauce until a good balance of flavor was achieved.
Traditionally, the mole would be served over pieces of poached chicken or turkey. While this makes perfect sense (the poaching gives you stock you can use for the mole) we aren't big fans of the texture of poached chicken. We prefer it served over roast chicken.
So, is all this effort worth it? Absolutely!
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I <3 mole!!!! YUM... I could it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week straight!
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