Mole de Xico

As tradition built it

Mole de Xico

Serves 20.

Ingredients

The poultry

• 1 (or 2 chickens) turkey, in pieces
• as needed carrots, leeks and herbs, for the broth

The mole

• 200g chile ancho, seeded and deveined
• 200g chile mulato, seeded and deveined
• 200g chile pasilla, seeded and deveined
• 300g lard
• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 tortillas, stale, broken up
• 1 bolillo (white roll), in pieces
• 120ml raisins
• 120ml prunes, pitted
• 50g sesame seeds
• 50g peanuts
• 50g almonds
• 50g walnuts or pecans
• 50g pine nuts
• 50g pumpkin seeds
• 1 plátano macho (plantain), in pieces
• 1 large tomato, roasted, peeled and blended
• 1 tablet of metate chocolate
• a pinch anise
• a pinch cinnamon
• a pinch black pepper
• a pinch oregano
• to taste sugar
• to taste salt

Method

1. Cook the turkey, or two medium chickens, in a good broth with carrots, leeks and herbs. Keep the broth.
2. Pass the chiles through half the lard, then put them in a cazuela of very hot water and boil them until soft.
3. In the same lard soften the garlic and onion. Add the tortilla, bread, raisins, prunes, sesame, peanuts, almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, plantain, tomato, chocolate and spices, and fry it all very well. Add the drained chiles and fry a few seconds more.
4. Blend everything with the broth and pass it through a coarse sieve. The sauce should keep some texture.
5. Heat the rest of the lard in a large clay cazuela, add the sauce and let it boil 5 minutes. Season with salt and sugar, and add more broth if it needs it. It should be thick.
6. Simmer it gently 20 to 30 minutes, add the turkey or chicken, and take it to the table in the cazuela.

Notes

Distinct from mole poblano in being noticeably sweeter. Built from mulato, ancho and pasilla chiles alongside twenty or more further ingredients; the recipe is traditionally held by a molera, usually a woman, whose own judgement decides the final proportion of each ingredient.

The recipe is México Desconocido's. Zarela Martínez's, her reading of one shared by Enriqueta Izaguirre de Virués, bakes the chiles dry at 275°F and grinds them, grinds the nuts, fruit and bread separately, adds apple, and keeps the mole as a paste to thin with stock. The Larousse dictionary entry lists the same ingredients. None of the three uses xoconostle.

What a modern chef changes

Twenty five separate toasts, one smooth paste

Rung 04

Method

1. Toast every dry ingredient, chile, seed and spice, separately in the spice grinder's own preheated bowl or on the Big Green Egg's plancha, exactly to its own point.
2. Blend the finished paste in a high-power blender for a properly smooth base.
3. Pass the paste through a chinois for a texture closer to a Xico molera's years of practised metate grinding than a home blender alone achieves.
4. Dehydrate a portion of the plantain before it goes in, concentrating its natural sugar so the finished mole's sweetness reads as fruit rather than as added sugar.