Mole Poblano - the ubiquitous Mexican dish everyone needs to know!
move over hard-shell tacos! this is what Mexican cuisine's all about!
Back in culinary school days, I had an (almost) obsessive phase of making Mexican food. The techniques & complexed flavours represented in the cuisine felt close to home and bears a striking resemblance to cuisines of the Malay Archipelago, especially through their extensive use of chillies. Indigenous Mexican cooking often uses the molcajete as a medium of making their wide array of salsas while in Malay/Indonesian cuisine, we use granite pestle and mortar or ‘Batu Lesung’ to make piquant sambals.
A Central Mexican dish that I had the chance of learning to make in school was the humble ‘mole’, meaning ‘sauce’ (as is the ‘mole’ in the popular condiment of ‘guacamole’). My team and I were assigned to recreate a ‘Mole Poblano’, originating from the state of Puebla. While the ingredients are complex, it showcases the abundance of produce of the region while highlighting indigenous ingredients like chocolate which was a prized ingredient in pre-colonial Mexico.
In this recipe, every method and ingredient possesses specific roles - the toasted dried chillies lend spicy and smoky notes, the nuts & seeds give body and richness to the sauce and the plantains, biscuits and tortilla gives the mole a thick viscosity.
Don’t be afraid to try this at home - while it might be daunting to make, the outcome is rewarding. Pair it with Mexican rice, plain rice or even wheat/corn tortillas.
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get ingredients for this recipe here!:
cinnamon
cloves
black peppercorn
cumin
thyme
oregano
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