Oaxacan · Main
Mole Negro Oaxaqueño
- Advanced
- 2 h
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with toasted, nutty warmth throughout, wood-smoke running underneath, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 1.6 kg turkey legs and thighs, jointed
- 2.5 L turkey or chicken stock, hot
- 120 g chilhuacle negro, stemmed and seeded, seeds reserved
- 80 g chile pasilla mexicano, stemmed and seeded, seeds reserved
- 80 g chile mulato, stemmed and seeded, seeds reserved
- 60 g chile guajillo, stemmed and seeded, seeds reserved
- 150 g lard
- 80 g almonds, skin on
- 60 g raw peanuts
- 80 g sesame seed
- 60 g raisins
- 1 very ripe plátano macho (200 g), peeled and sliced
- 60 g pan de yema and 1 stale corn tortilla, torn
- 400 g ripe tomatoes and 250 g miltomate, husked
- 200 g white onion in wedges, 40 g garlic cloves, unpeeled
- 1 stick canela, 5 cloves, 6 allspice berries, 10 black peppercorns, 3 g oregano de monte
- 3 dried hoja de aguacate
- 90 g chocolate de metate, 40 g piloncillo, fine salt
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
MoleTortillas on the comalCharring over open flameSoaking dried goods back to life
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts · peanuts · sesame
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Toast the four chillies on a dry comal, pressing them flat, until they blister and go almost black, about a minute a side; open a window first, they will smoke.
- Burn the reserved seeds in the same dry pan, stirring, until they are true charcoal, then tip seeds and chillies into hot water, soak 30 minutes and drain, throwing away every drop of that black water. 30 min
- Fry the almonds, peanuts, sesame, raisins, plantain, bread and tortilla in the lard in that order, lifting each out as it turns gold, then char the onion, garlic, tomatoes and miltomate on the comal until blistered black in patches and slumping.
- Blend the drained chillies with a little stock and sieve them until no grit stays in the mesh, then blend and sieve the fried solids and charred vegetables with the spices and avocado leaves.
- Reheat the lard until it shimmers, pour in both pastes and fry, stirring, 20-25 minutes, until the mole darkens, holds a channel behind the spoon and black fat runs at the edge. 25 min
- Thin with hot stock to the body of pouring cream, melt in the chocolate and piloncillo, salt it, and simmer the turkey in it for 30 minutes until the surface goes glossy and a slick of fat sits on top. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Tortillas on the comal 27 recipes
- It puffs. On the second turn the tortilla lifts into a dome as the trapped water flashes to steam and splits the two faces apart; a tortilla that never puffs was pressed too thick, cooked too cool, or turned too often.
- Freckled, not blackened: small brown spots across a pale field. An evenly browned tortilla has been on too long and will be a cracker by the time it reaches the table.
- It folds without cracking while warm, and still folds after five minutes under a cloth. A tortilla that splits along the fold has lost too much water on the comal.
- The edges are unbroken and roughly round, with no ragged fringe: a fringed edge means the masa was too dry when it was pressed, and no amount of heat will fix it afterwards.
- It smells of toasted corn rather than of scorch or of raw lime. Raw lime means the nixtamal was under-rinsed; scorch means the comal was above the working heat.
Where it goes wrong The masa was too dry or the comal too cool. A dry masa cracks at the edge on pressing and cannot generate the steam that puffs it; a cool comal dries the tortilla through before the water can flash, so it leaves the heat stiff, pale and already stale.
Charring over open flame 31 recipes
- The surface met the fiercest heat available (flame, a broiler, or bare hot metal) with nothing between them, and it shows as true blistering and blackening rather than gentle, even browning.
- The char matches the surface’s fate: where it will be eaten, black sits in patches over deep colour with every face having had its turn, and where the skin is to be peeled away, it may go to an even black, because the char there works on the flesh below and then leaves with the skin.
- It smells of smoke and toasted surface with no acrid edge that stings the nose: acrid means it went past, and acrid does not cook out.
- Just under the char it is cooked (softened, steaming, collapsed, or puffed, whichever the dish wants) because the flame did the surface and the trapped heat did the rest.
- A taste carries the smoke without mouthfuls of ash: the black that flakes away is a seasoning, not a layer.
Where it goes wrong It was left on one face too long or held too close, so one side carbonised to ash while the rest stayed raw, and the smell turned acrid, which follows the dish through every later step and cannot be seasoned away.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chardonnay (village Burgundy)
- Also Right
- Chianti or Barbera
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Verbena iced tea
Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.
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