Monday, March 12, 2012

Mole Colorado Oaxaqueño (Reddish Mole, Oaxaca-style)

This is another type of "mole" (mo-lay) type sauce a marriage of chiles, spices, chocolate, and some type of nut. The sauce from this mole is red due to the tomatoes, guajillo peppers, and slight reddishness of dried ancho chiles and the optional small dried red peppers. The sauce is slightly sweet, spicy, savory, velvety and rich.

I learned to make this dish/ got this recipe from one of my fellow blogging buddies, Nora from Tamaulipas, Mexico she was a wonderful blog dedicated to Mexican cooking called "Gusta Usted" where she posted this wonderful red- Oaxacan mole (Oaxaca, Mexico is known for their 7 variations of mole sauces red, colorado, yellow, black, green, & chichilo).

I found it pretty appealing as she used my mom's favorite dried pepper (the guajillo chile) and we were planning on making some turkey in "chile colorado" (a type of red sauce) I noticed that the base of this recipe is the same as the "chile colorado" sauce I make so I thought why not take it a step further and transform it into a mole, and I don't regret it at all :)

Ingredients for stock:

-3- 4 lbs turkey meat (neck, breast, thighs, etc. pork, chicken, or rabbit can easily be used as well)
-1 onion
-1/2 head garlic
-1 teaspoonful of oregano
-2 tsp chicken bouillon powder
-salt and black pepper to taste
-water (enough to submerge everything)

Ingredients for sauce:
-2 dried ancho chiles (remove stem, and cut open, discard seeds, and veins set aside)
-8 dried guajillos or chile california or dried new mexican chiles (remove stems, split open discard seeds & stems)
-small handful chile japones or chile de arbol (optional only if you want to make it spicy)
-2-3 medium sized tomatoes
-1/2 an onion
-2 cloves garlic
-1 stick of cinnamon
-2-3 cloves
-1 tsp ground cumin
-freshly ground black pepper to taste
-1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
-1 corn tortilla
-1 thick slice of french bread or 1/2 a bolillo or other bread (preferably stale or hard)
-1 tablet of Mexican chocolate
-salt and sugar to taste
-olive oil or lard (for best flavor) or you can use any neutral flavored oil (like canola)
Directions:
(1) Wash your meat, drain, add to a pot together with onion, garlic, oregano, salt, bouillon powder, and enough water to cover well. Bring to a boil, skim off any thick brown foam if it forms, leave covered for 2 hours or until tender.
(2) Okay now while meat is boiling prep all your ingredients (by having them on hand), heat a medium shallow pan over medium high heat, toast the sesame seeds, cinnamon stick, cloves, peppercorns and if using whole cumin seeds toast those too. When the sesame seeds change color dump all that in the blender.
(3) Now add oil to the pan about 1/4 cup or more, and lightly fry all the chiles like for 30 seconds removing them and adding them to the blender.

(4) Quickly fry your piece of bread and the corn tortilla, remove and add to the blender.

(5) Now heat more oil in that pan if necessary and start sauteeing your onions, and garlic in that oil until they looked somewhat caramelized, and your tomatoes without the seed and fleshy part touching the oil let it fry a bit, add the chocolate and fry everything stirring constantly. Dump that mixture into the blender.
(6) When everything is in blender, add about 2 or more cups stock enough to liquify & liquify everything (start on low setting then work your way up to the higher setting, little by little to get everything really liquidied/ pureed) you can add more stock if it's having to much difficulty (I hope you have a good blender lol.)
(7) Heat a large pot that's lightly oiled
and add the blended mixture (you can choose to strain it through a strainer, I didn't my blender really blended it really well) quickly cover, and bring to a rolling bubble, cover, and then lower heat and stir occasionally for 6 minutes. Add more stock to thin it out little by little (depends how thick you want your sauce) add your meat pieces
and let it simmer over medium uncovered 10- 20 minutes to thicken and the meat get's the flavor (sometimes for these types of sauces I'll have the meat seperate, and just ladel the sauce over, I do that when I make huge batches but with this small batch it was fine)
(8) Remove from heat and serve :)

Please Note:
(1) I used turkey because my grandmother from my moms side loves turkey, specially the neck and gizzards, so I made it using neck, gizzard, and some of the bones with meat, along with a large breast that I chunked. However I MUCH rather make it with chicken or pork (specially pork spareribs, which is one of my favorite cuts of the pig)