Mesoamerica · Volume 01, The Highland Mole and Maize World
Mole Verde
Central Valleys, Oaxaca
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Mole verde
La tierra de los moles, INPI, 2021 . Serves 12 . 2 hours
Ingredients
- 1kg, in pieces pork leg
- 500g tomate verde (tomatillo)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 chile serrano
- ½ onion
- 3 tbsp masa, for thickening
- 1 leaf hoja santa
- 1 sprig epazote
- 1 sprig parsley
- 2 cups green beans
- 1 chayote
Method
- Blend the herbs raw with the tomatillo, garlic, chile serrano and onion base specifically to preserve their fresh aroma, rather than cooking them down with everything else.
- Do not over-boil the finished sauce: it can turn muddy and lose the clean green colour that gives the dish its name.
What a modern chef changes
Late-added chilled herb, sous vide pork
Rung 02
Method
- Blend the raw herb component in a high-power blender at the very last moment, chilled, and fold it into the finished, already-cooked tomatillo-and-masa base off the heat, rather than blending everything together and reheating, protecting the volatile aromatics that boiling destroys.
- Pass the finished sauce through a chinois for a genuinely clean, bright green rather than the slightly grainy result a home blender alone gives.
- Cook the pork leg sous vide separately to a precise, still-moist doneness, added to the sauce only at the point of serving.