Mole Poblano

INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

SPICES
Place the turkey pieces in a large pot, cover with water, add salt, bring
quickly to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until nearly done, about an hour.
Remove from the heat and pat dry with towels. While the turkey simmers,
while wearing rubber gloves, wash the chiles under running water, removing
the stems, breaking them open and removing the seeds. If you insist on
preparing the chile bare-handed, do NOT touch your eyes, nose, or any other
sensitive part of your body (or those of any loved one). Place the chiles
in a large bowl, and cover with the chicken stock. Let soak half an hour,
reserving the stock afterwards. Place the almonds in a blender and reduce
to a relatively fine chop. Place in the blender the chiles, spices,
raisins, dried tortilla, tomatoes, garlic, and onion in a blender, along
with a little of the stock in which the chiles were soaked, and reduce to a
smooth paste. In a large frying pan, melt the bacon fat and brown the
pieces of turkey, having first patted them dry with towels. Place the
browned turkey pieces in an oven-proof baking dish. Add a little more bacon
fat, if necessary, and spoon in the chile paste. Fry it over medium heat,
for about 5 minutes, slowly adding about 2 cups of the stock in which the
chiles were soaked. Finally add the chocolate, and stir well until it has
melted. The sauce should be the consistency of thick cream or a medium
cream sauce. Pour the sauce over the turkey, cover, and place the baking
dish in a 350 deg. oven for about 45 minutes. Remove, sprinkle the sesame
seeds over the top. Serve with Mexican rice, beans, "rajas en crema",
sliced avocados, and lots of fresh, warm, soft corn tortillas. Personally
we prefer the blue corn tortillas which are available in the fall in
Mexico. If Mexico could have a national dish, and to attempt to select just
one from the wide repertoire available is nearly ipossible, it must be
mole. The dish originally came from the Convent of Santa Clara in Puebla.
According to the legend the sauce was concocted by the nuns in honor of
their bishop, don Alonso de la Mota y Escobar, specifically for Lent. In
the sixteenth century the custom of not eating meat in Lent did not apply
to fowl. Consequently in honor of the bishop's visit one Lent the nuns made
a chocolate sauce, "in order to sweeten our sins." Thank heavens for a
little conventual sin! The name mole comes from the Nahuatl "molli," which
comes from the verb-stem "mola" meaning to grind something, since the most
important part of the whole recipe is the grinding of the spices. Curiously
this is very close to the Spanish word for grind, "moler." Each majortown
and city in Mexico has a "molino" or mill. This mill is dedicated to
grinding spices. The various mixes are then displayed in white enamel pans
in the shop windows. There are ground chiles, spices, and nuts, as well as
prepared pastes, such as mole poblano, adobo, and achiote. The colors run
the gamut from bright greens to earthy reads and browns, even purple. The
scent from that shop is like to die and go to heaven, or sneeze as you go
by. This recipe, and various others I have posted is from a cook-book my
wife and I wrote and published here locally, for limited distribution to
our friends two years ago. As you can see it is an anecdotal cookbook,
telling of our lives in Mexico, Peru, and Spain, where we have lived on and
off for quite a while. The recipes were those we collected as we went
along, and have incorporated into our daily lives.
Recipe by: schwallr@acc.fau.edu
Posted to MC-Recipe Digest V1 #1061 by Walt Gray <waltgray@mnsinc.com> on
Jan 29, 1998

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