Romancing with Food... the cookalong challenge!

Recipe Tabs

Ingredients
Steps
Here's what I cooked for the Irish Foodies Cookalong Challenge 'Food for Romance'.  Romancing my other half is dead easy: chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate! so my menu was planned accordingly: a two course chocolate-based meal consisting of Mexican Enmoladas and steamed mini chocolate puddings drowned in hot chocolate sauce.
 
Mole Sauce is considered by many Mexico's national dish. A veil of mystery surrounds the origins of the recipe: the widely accepted theory places it in the Colonial kitchens of a convent in the state of Puebla in Central Mexico. Legend has it the Archbishop dropped unexpectedly for dinner to the convent and having little or no notice, the nuns prayed and an Angel came from the sky and gave them Mole; spiritual stuff aside, it appears to be that the nuns used whatever they had on hand: stale bread, spices, seeds, dark chocolate and, with Divine intervention or not, they came up with this wonderfully fragrant and smooth concoction traditionally served with Turkey. 
 
Nowadays, Mole is served with chicken in most places and although the recipe, like a good curry, varies from region to region, its basic ingredients are always the same: a blend of chiles, stale bread, seeds, nuts, spices and chocolate. Mexicans would normally buy the Mole Paste in markets or supermarkets. No one really makes their own paste anymore as the branded and unbranded varieties available are delicious and many are based on old family recipes. I had all the intentions of making my own paste, but ended up with no time, so I opted to use the next best thing, a jar of ready made mole paste I had in the cover.  I used the same brand we sell in the shop as I love the flavour. I hope you enjoy the recipe as much as the other half and I did!
 
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Put the chicken fillets, garlic clove, the bay leaf and the salt in a pot and cover everything with water. You will need the liquid in which the chicken was cooked, so make sure to be generous with the water.Turn the heat on and bring them to the boil before lowering the heat down and let them simmer covered until the chicken is fully cooked (about 20 minutes).

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When the chicken is cooked, take it out of the pot and reserve the cooking liquid. Shred the chicken using 2 forks and leave it to the side while you get on making the mole.

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3

Put the mole paste in the blender or food processor. Add the chocolate, stale bread (if using a roll, break it into pieces so you don't clog the blender), tomato puree, the chicken stock powder, the peanuts, the onion and 1.5 cups of the reserved liquid where the chicken cooked. Blend everything together to form a runny sauce.

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4

Melt the lard at low heat in a non-stick pan deep enough to hold all the sauce. Pour the mole sauce and use another 1/2 cup of the liquid where the chicken cooked to rinse the blender and any leftover content into the pan. Stir constantly to avoid the sauce sticking to the pan or thickening too quickly. If this happens, don't worry, add a bit more of the reserved liquid from the chicken (a 1/2 cup at a time) and mix well to thin the sauce. I normally use another full cup of liquid so 3 in total. The thickness of the sauce is a matter of taste. I like to be able to covered my mole tacos in this rich sauce without having them swimming on it and going all soggy. So my mole sauce is thick as suppose to runny. I urge you to try it both ways and see which one you like most. It's just a matter of taste and texture. When you are happy with the thickness of the sauce. Remove it from the heat.

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5

Get a non-stick pan on the hob and turn on the heat to a medium high. Heat your tortillas in the pan (about 40 seconds on each side) one at a time and wrap them in a thick tea towel until all eight are heated. You are now ready to assemble your chicken mole tacos. Have two warm plates ready as it is best to prepare them on the plate you're serving them.

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Take a warm tortilla, stuff it with plenty of shredded chicken and fold it in half (resembling a quesadilla). Place it on the warm plate and repeat this step until you have 4 warm tacos on each plate. I kind of over lap them a bit.

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7

Pour the still hot mole sauce over the chicken tacos making sure they're well covered. Sprinkle the toasted sesame seeds over them and slices of fresh raw onion. Finish off with a generous drizzle of sour cream.

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We loved this dinner the mole chicken tacos were very satisfying and to top it all up and the dessert recipe came out courtesy of Nigella Lawson's Christmas Book, it's a delicious, light and fluffy pudding and the hot chocolate sauce is devine!