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'Bowl of Chilli'
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21-09-2005 12:17am#1
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Mole Poblano is a chocolate and chili sauce. Sounds odd, tastes great. Chicken with a mole poblano sauce is excellent served with spicy vegetable rice. It takes about 20 minutes to chop everything required, and a little over an hour to cook. I'd recommend making this as a dinner dish for about four people with the ingredients below, takes a bit of time so do it on a weekend. You will need either a hand blender, or a food processer, because the sauce in this dish HAS to be blended!
Right, there are umpteen shortcuts you can use while making this, for instance substituting chicken breast fillets if you're not brave enough to buy a whole chicken and section it, but I'm going to write this up the way I'd do it and you can work back from there. Also, you can just serve this with plain boiled rice and it's good.
CHICKEN MOLE POBLANO- one whole chicken, cut into pieces and skinned
- 3 tblsp olive oil
- 1 large onion, chopped fine
- 3 fat garlic cloves, chopped fine
- Chili to taste - be this two or three tiny birdseye chilis to blow your head off, or one jalapeno with seeds out, chopped fine. I tend to like one mid-tempered jalapeno, seeds out, and one firey birdseye chili, seeds in.
- 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted (one tbsp for the sauce, one for sprinkling over the top of the finished dish)
- 1 tablespoon chopped almonds (I like to use the toasted and pre-chopped packs from the cake-making aisle of the supermarket)
- 1 1/2-inch cinnamon stick
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
- 8 whole cloves
- 3 fat vine ripened tomatoes, skinned and chopped (with seeds and juice)
- 2 tablespoons raisins (plumper and juicier the better, don't use some wizened little rabbit-turds that've been at the back of the cupboard for two years)
- 3/4 of a pint of chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon crunchy peanut butter
- one quarter of a large bar of green & blacks dark chocolate, or alternatively 25g of any good-quality dark chocolate with a high cocoa content
- salt n pepper to garnish
SPICY RICE - a shake of olive oil
- 250g of long grain rice (to serve four people)
- 4 spring onions, chopped fine
- 3 cloves of garlic, chopped fine/crushed
- a green pepper, deseeded and chopped fine
- a handful of sweetcorn kernels (I prefer to use frozen than tinned)
- a fresh mild green chili (try a jalapeno) chopped with seeds out
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 pint chicken stock
- a large handful of chopped fresh coriander
Friday Night
Take your whole chicken and section it. You want to come out with two drumsticks, two thighs, and four breast pieces, skinned but still on the bone, for tommorow's dinner. Cover these pieces and put them back into the fridge. Throw the remainder of the chicken, e.g. the skin, back, shin pieces from the end of the drumsticks, and the wings, into a big pot, top up with clean, fresh cold water (about 3 pints if it'll fit), drop in a quartered onion, a quartered carrot, a quartered stick of celery, ten whole black peppercorns and a bay leaf, and make stock. You'll use this stock tomorrow making both the sauce and the rice. Don't put herbs like parsley and thyme into the stock. Don't salt it either. Obviously you can be a peasant and use a stock cube instead of going to this trouble, but I buy free range organic chickens and there's no way I'd waste even a little bit (not for that money! :eek:)
Saturday
THE SAUCE
Chop your onion, garlic and chili. Use a dry frying pan and a medium to high heat and toast your seasme seeds, keeping a close eye or they'll burn. Set the toasted seeds to one side. Pour boiling water over your three vine tomatoes, then run cold water over them. Peel the skins off (they should split off easily), then chop them and keep flesh and seeds to one side.
Get a large, reasonably deep, heavy-bottomed pan to make the sauce. Heat your 3 tbsps of olive oil on a medium to high heat. Add the chicken pieces and seal and lightly brown them on all sides. Then remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and leave them to one side.
Add the chopped onion, garlic and chili to the pan and soften them for about five minutes. Now add one tbsp of the toasted sesame seeds, the almonds, your whole spices and your ground spices, and cook for a further five minutes. Mind your heat - nothing should be browning or burning, it should just be sweating off nicely. Now stir in your chopped tomatoes, your raisins and your 3/4 pint chicken stock.
NB: If this is last night's stock, it'll be cold, so add it slowly, stirring all the while, so you don't take all of the heat out of your pan.
When the sauce starts to simmer, stir in your peanut butter and your chocolate. They should melt into it. Season well with black pepper and sea salt. Now let the sauce simmer for another five minutes.
At this point you need to blend the sauce smooth. You may want to remove the cinnamon stick now, because it may not blend down smoothly. I make this in a deep enough pan that I can take the pan off the heat and use a hand blender directly in the pan to blend the sauce. You may need to - carefully - pour it into a food processor in batches and blend it. You want the sauce to be really smooth, but you don't want to scald the bejesus out of yourself, spattering sauce up the walls, or have it exploding out of your food processor.
Once your sauce is smooth, return it to the heat.
(At this point I tend to open my first bottle of cold beer. If you want to taste the sauce for seasoning now, you can. You're about to put half-raw chicken back into it, so better taste it now than in five minutes.)
When the sauce begins to simmer, add the chicken that you'd left to one side. Bring it to the boil, then reduce the heat right down to the lowest setting, cover and simmer for up to one hour, or until the chicken is very tender. Add more liquid if you need to (water, rather than more stock).
THE RICE
Just after you've put the lid on your chicken mole poblano, start cleaning up the almighty mess you've just made. You want to start over with your spicy rice, so clean down chopping boards and wash up the blender. This will take about 20 minutes of your time.
The next 20 minutes should be spent chopping your spring onions, garlic, green pepper, chilli and coriander. Give your chicken mole sauce a quick glance, to make sure nothing's drying out. Now put another large saucepan onto the heat. Put your olive oil in the pan, heat it, add the spring onions and garlic and soften. Then add the peppers, chili and sweetcorn and cook for 5 minutes.
Now add your cumin, and then your uncooked long grain rice and stir to coat every grain. Stir in a pint of chicken stock, again slowly if it's last night's cold stock, bring to boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes (turn the heat down!) or until the stock has been absorbed and the rice is tender.
While you're waiting sort out your serving bowls, make sure your remaining tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds is to hand and grate some dark chocolate for serving. Remove the rice from the heat and fluff it up with a fork. Stir through the remaining chopped coriander and season to taste with salt. Leave the rice to stand, covered for another five minutes while you finish with the chicken mole poblano.
Move your chicken mole into a serving dish. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and some grated chocolate. You could even slice some more raw chili and use it for garnish. Move the rice into a serving dish. Bring the mole and the rice to the table in serving dishes with large spoons so people can help themselves.
Open more cold beer.
Eat.0 -
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I love it served over white rice with cheese on top.
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There's a jar of Homepride mild Chile sauce in the cupboard. Has anyone tried it before? Advertisement