On Sundays my daughter spends the day making Mexican mole — the deep brown chocolate and chile sauce that fills the house with its rich aroma and the stinging scent of roasting chiles that makes our eyes weep. The ingredients fill every inch of counter space around the stove — dried ancho and guajillo chiles that are first roasted and then soaked in water, assorted spices that includes the grated pit of an avocado, nuts and seeds, raisins, garlic, onions, tomatoes, papery tomatillo, and finally dark chocolate — its sweetness to balance the heat. She roasts, chops, grinds, sieves, stirs, boils, and then simmers. And some eight hours later we will pour it over chicken or shrimp, or just plain rice and scarf it down with corn tortillas, grilled cheese-stuffed green chiles, tangy limes, and cool avocados.
*So this is becoming a multi-part post as I am adding photos throughout the day of the mole as it comes together. I’ll just keep adding them up to the plate…
Here’s the fragrant mixture of everything except the chiles — and is just waiting to go into the blender and then through the sieve where it will then join the chiles already blended and sieved in another pot.
And here is the first combining of the blended and sieved chiles with sieved "everything else." I love the swirl of burnt red and ocher of the two mixtures.
And here is the chocolate being stirred in — which one is required to do over a low flame for a long time! The mole is more or less made at this point — but it’s one of those magical foods that deepens its flavors over time. There’s enough here for the week — which means in about two or three days, the mole will be absolutely velvety.
While we are finishing cooking, please enjoy Mole Sunday with Lila Down’s video, "La Cumbia del Mole" (Cumbia is a kind of dance) which is a fun celebration of the famous Oaxacan moles.