Chiles en Nogada using Skrub'a and Solea

In a perfect world, I would have made this dish in September, which is when Mexican Independence day is and, significantly smack dab in pomegranate season. Chiles en Nogada is a dish fabled to have been created by nuns at the Santa Monica convent for the Emperor of Mexico. Like the Mexican flag, the colors of the dish are green (the chile), white (the walnut “nogada” sauce) and red (the pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top). In the same perfect world, I would have used Poblano chiles which are more appropriate to the dish, but the Serrano chiles I had looked perfect, and indeed tasted perfect for Chiles en Nogada after adding some good old hot sauce.

Ingredients:

4 large Serrano chiles

Nogada sauce:

35 shelled walnut halves

1 cup milk

½ cup cream

3T goat cheese

1 piece dry white bread without the crust

1T cinnamon

Filling:

1.5lb lean ground pork

3 cloves of garlic

1 small white onion diced

1 peach diced

1 Fuji apple diced

½ cup papaya diced

½ cup chopped almonds (no skin)

¼ cup raisins

¾ cup chicken stock

2T Mexican hot sauce

1 inch stick of cinnamon

8 cloves

10 black peppercorns

The first thing I did was to soak the walnuts in milk for a few hours to soften them. Also before putting it all together, I got the most laborious part of the dish out of the way. From taking a cooking class in Puerto Vallarta years ago, I know how to skin a chile pepper. On your gas stove or grill, put the chiles as close to the flame as possible. The skin will become charred and will bubble. Keep turning the chiles so that each part is evenly charred. Then pop them into a plastic bag and close the bag. This allows the chiles to sweat and that causes the skin to separate, making it easier to remove. That’s the simple part! In the past, it was a chore to then gently and deftly scrape the charred skin off the chiles without breaking the delicious meat underneath the skin.

Luckily, I had just received my first pair of Skrub’a Veggie gloves! These gloves, made by Fabrikators, are designed to clean vegetables. I have the green ones for green vegetables, but you might find the Potato (brown) or Carrot (orange) gloves equally useful. They are all made from the same material. No one had suggested using Skrub’a gloves to take off the skins of chiles, but it seemed like a natural fit, and was indeed the perfect thing for the job! I laid out a towel to avoid a mess, put on the gloves and scrubbed the skins off without breaking the delicate chiles.

I then slit open one side of each chile and removed the seeds and veins (the veins are the hottest parts of chiles).

The above you can do ahead of time. Then, when you are ready to prepare the dish you can follow the instructions below.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grind up the spices using a mortar and pestle. Crush the garlic. Chop the ingredients for the stuffing. Lightly toast the chopped garlic in a saucepan like the Solea pot, on medium heat. Add the ground pork and break it into small chunks using a large spoon. Add the onions and fruits and nuts. Slightly sauté the mixture until the onions become clear. Then add the chicken stock and hot sauce and let the flavors meld together as it cooks for about 5 more minutes. Meanwhile, make the sauce.

Put the soaked walnuts along with the milk, cream, cheese, bread, and cinnamon into a blender. Blend until smooth.

Put the chiles on a greased pan and stuff them with the filling. Bake in oven for 10 minutes. Flip chiles onto a plate so the open side is facing down. Pour nogada sauce over the top, then garnish with pomegranate seeds.

It’s an immensely tasty dish! We get it ever year in Puerto Vallarta, and I am happy to be able to make it at home.

Day of the Dead Mole Poblano! In the Vitaquick pressure cooker!

Certain things came together recently, pushing me towards conquering one of the recipes that has always been one of the great culinary challenges: making mole poblano. The Mexican stew made with chocolate and chiles is infamous for having many tedious steps. But I was given a package of Kekua Mexican chocolate and a mole poblano recipe (this is the authentic Mexican chocolate used in cooking). And I heard Diana Kennedy (the "Julia Child of Mexican cuisine") interviewed on NPR recently about her new Oaxacan cookbook. And finally, I was also gifted with a bottle of Mar Azul chocolate flavored tequila. That wasn't going to go into the mole but I knew it would make a nice after-dinner drink following a mole poblano feast. On top of that, it's turkey season, the traditional main ingredient of mole poblano (though there may be more chiles than turkey in the dish). And finally, today is Dia de los Muertes, the Day of the Dead, celebrated in Mexico to remember the deceased, which seems like an appropriate time to prepare a feast food like Mole Poblano.

I took a few steps to make the preparation of my mole easier. The first was the use of a pressure cooker to cook the turkey. This cut the cooking time in half and kept the kitchen from getting hot and steamy. Since I'm the main Fissler Foodie I was able to get my hands on a preview model of the new Fissler Vitaquick pressure cooker that will be available in the U.S. in the spring of 2011. It's a deep pressure cooker with plenty of room for a big dish like turkey mole. Another shortcut was using store-bought roasted peanuts, so I didn't have to pan fry them. I also used canned, fire roasted tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes. The best thing I did to make the preparation of my mole easier was simply reminding myself of what I'd read on many websites and in a number of cookbooks: that every Mexican cook has his or her own recipe for mole. There is no exact list of ingredients that must go into mole poblano. If you follow this recipe and you can't find every type of chile, or you have nutmeg instead of cloves, or you use fresh tomatoes instead of canned, or you use pecans instead of peanuts, it will still be mole poblano. It will just be YOUR mole poblano instead of mine.
My mole turned out not to be as difficult as I thought it would be and I had a huge sense of accomplishment when it was done. It came out great!

Fissler Foodie Mole Poblano

2 turkey legs

2 turkey thighs

2 Tbsps olive oil or coconut oil

1 can crushed or whole tomatoes (14 ½ oz)

1 can (7 oz) chipotle chiles in adobo sauce

1 quart stock (chicken or vegetable)

6 dried mulato chiles

10 dried ancho chiles

8 dried pasilla chiles

1 cup brown sesame seeds

2 Tbsps coriander seeds or cumin seeds

1 cup raisins

1 cup peanuts or almonds

1 white dinner roll (French bread type) crushed

1 fried corn tortilla (a tostada) or a handful of tortilla chips (optional)

2 red bell peppers cut into one inch pieces

3 cloves garlic

½ cup coconut oil

1 tsp cinnamon powder

½ tsp cloves

½ to 1 tsp anise or fennel seeds or star anise

2 tablets Kekua chocolate, each broken into four pieces

¼ cup sucanat or brown sugar

Water

Salt

1. Prepare your ingredients by slitting the chiles with a knife and removing and discarding seeds and stems.

2. Toast sesame seeds in a dry pan until very lightly browned. Add coriander and anise seeds (or substitutes) and continue stirring and toasting for a few more minutes until browned. Allow to cool (this can be done the day before). Process in food processor with S blade until finely ground. Set aside.

3. Process tomatoes and chipotle chiles in blender until smooth.

4. Heat oil in the pressure cooker over medium heat without lid. Brown the turkey pieces in the oil on all sides. Remove half the fat, then add tomato/chipotle mixture. Allow to simmer until reduced (about twenty minutes, while doing step 5).

5. Put one cup water into food processor with S blade.

Heat frypan with half of the coconut oil. Fry chiles in batches until lightly browned. After each batch throw fried chiles into food processor. When you have finished frying chiles, add the rest of the coconut oil to pan and fry raisins. Remove and add to food processor. Process until well ground up. At this point, add sesame seed/spice mixture to food processor. Continue processing. If your peanuts or almonds were roasted when you bought them, add them to the food processor. If they are raw, fry them in the oil until lightly browned, then add to processor and process. Fry crushed bread roll. Throw in remaining spices (cinnamon, cloves). The bread will absorb the oil in the pan. Add crushed bread to processor along with, tortilla, bell pepper and garlic cloves. Continue processing. Add water as needed to produce a smooth paste.

6. About twenty minutes into step 5 you should add the stock to the pressure cooker with the turkey and tomato mixture, bring to a boil, seal with pressure lid and bring to high pressure. Reduce heat and cook at high pressure for 30 minutes. Turn off heat and release pressure. Remove lid.

7. Turn heat back on and continue simmering. Add chocolate. Add half the mole. Allow to simmer and thicken. Balance flavor with sucanat/sugar and a little salt. At this point, taste and decide if you want to add the remainder of the mole, for a stronger, richer stew. If you decide not to add the remaining mole, put the rest in the freezer for future use. Continue simmering for another fifteen minutes or up to half an hour.
Serve with rice and/or tortillas and a salad. And for dessert; a glass of chilled Mar Azul chocolate tequila. If you can't wait until after dinner for a glass of this tequila, serve it as a cocktail on the rocks, mixed half and half with tequila reposada (aged tequila).