Doesn’t have to be diet. But I’ll put out one that, surprisingly, is.
CHICKEN MOLE:
whitemeat chicken, already diced [we get an economy packet, cook it on the George Foreman grill, dice it into small Ziplocks, and freeze the leftover]
ramekins for individual servings.
heat chicken: we use skillet and a little virgin olive oil. I’m going to give the amount for one serving, so it’s straight multiplication.
Turn off fire. Add 1/2 can diced tomato.
1 heaping tsp dark chili powder (heat of same to your personal taste)
1 heaping tsp cinnamon
1/2 level tsp nutmeg
1/2 level tsp ground clove
1 heaping Tablespoon peanut butter with no sugar…(Adams, or natural peanut butter; crunchy or smooth doesn’t matter)
1 heaping Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa
refire, and stir in with chicken.
When thoroughly mixed, put mixture into ramekin (individual baking dish) uncovered.
Add handful of white and yellow shredded cheese.
Microwave about 1 1/2 minutes (until cheese melts)
Top with dollop non-fat sour cream.
Voila! Honest chicken mole! (pronounced MO-leh)
Takes 20 minutes or less if you already have the chicken.
What an INTERESTING mixture of flavors! Not sure if I’d like it, but I’ll have to give it a try.
This summer I tried the peanut butter that you get in the health food store, fresh-ground in the machine that has a hopper full of peanuts and you put your container under and push the button. YUMMY. But eat it up, because it doesn’t keep very well without the alphabet-soup of preservatives. Mix a spoonful with fresh honey and it’s delectable — I can just nibble that straight off the spoon.
In Whole Foods, they have a plain peanut grinder, and also one that’s loaded with what they call honey roasted peanuts. Oh, my! Slightly sweet, with a hint of graininess from the honeyed crunchy surfaces of the nuts. Good thing it’s an hour drive to the closest Whole Foods, because I eat that stuff WAY too fast.
My mouth is watering right now. I LOVE LOVE LOVE chicken mole!
Oh my! I’m copying that down. (Must remember to copy the slightly earlier “since it’s winter” recipes / suggestions.)
It sounds like the heat from the chili powder gets toned down by the dairy, peanut butter, and other ingredients. That sounds simple to fix and tasty, especially for Southwestern folks.
Hahaha, OK, I have a foreign travel / mole story, a precaution even for friendly Anglo / Gringo types. Between high school and college, my parents and I went to Mexico. My dad had a business trip, and my mom and I went sightseeing. Wonderful trip — tremendously varied culture and history, overall friendly people (it does help when you are friendly to start with) I got to try out my Spanish in a real immersion environment (even when you’re good at it, it still requires stick-to-it-iveness). It gave me, as a recent high school grad, a very direct view of poverty: people would “wash” the cabbie’s windows for a few pesos, when pesos were worth a tiny fraction of a dollar. This was *common*. By their standards, we Americans were rich. (The cabbie was likely middle class.) — Back to the mole, though. We went to see Tenochtitlán. Impressive and modern: they had indoor plumbing and some other “modern” conveniences, before Europeans ever got there. While there, we had lunch. There was steak with a chocolate mole on the menu, and having no idea how cocoa would be with steak, I decided to try it. I did ask if it was hot. Oh no, señor. (The waiter was not the most truthful….) I tried. I really did. Mostly, I gulped tea. After only a few bites, I conceded defeat and scraped the mole sauce to the side. That did help. The rest of the meal was good. That was the only really hot dish I had while there. The others were all within my mild taste range. My mom, though, loved anything spicy. …So I’m understandably a bit cautious when I approach a mole now. :chuckles: Moles, les taupes, though, I have not much quarrel with, or prairie dogs either… unless they dig under the house and start banging on the tub. (No kidding, had one do this in the home where I grew up. LOL, took us all completely by surprise, except our dog at the time. *She* knew what was up, and had some unknown part, together with my dad, in excavating and deporting (or otherwise dispatching) a certain underground rodent.
OK, enough with me going off-topic, even if it’s a good story. :laughs: Let the recipes and holiday-making continue.
My cat, Goober, must like it when I visit your blog. He’s reading too. Or at least, he’s lying down on my arm. If I could teach him to run comp and scan, with a hani keyboard….
That sounds like a good one. Wonder how it would taste without the cocoa.
Rain today…not enough to solve our drought problems, but warmer.
BTW…just noticed the “Preview” button…..nice! 😆
The chocolate is crucial to the mole: no, it doesn’t make it taste like a candy bar. The Maya and other indigenous inhabitants of Central America used never to use sweetener with chocolate (neither did the Europeans until the 19th C.). Mole is a very ancient dish, made with hot peppers and other spices for a tasty, complex flavor. I’m not familiar with peanuts in it but that certainly would compliment the other ingredients. I tend to have “chicken stewed in mole sauce” burritos for lunch at a local, Boston Mexican restaurant near where I work.
On the subject of real peanut butter: Teddy’s is a New England (at least) brand made in Everett, the next town over from where I live. It makes unsweetened (with or without salt), just peanuts and nothing else butter, chunky and smooth (my preference) both. Very nice. If you don’t use it all that quickly, just store it in the fridge. By the way, when you open real peanut butter (ex. Teddy), you find a layer of peanut oil separated out and atop the thicker peanut butter. Just take a table knife and stir/work it back in.
Just as a note of interest,—chocolate without sugar is a staple in its native region, and figures in a lot of recipes that have to do with a dark, rich sauce. Chocolate without sugar or food-grade wax is nothing candy-like, but is indeed, a pepper-taming additive that lets the flavor of the hot peppers come through without killing your mouth. Here’s a link to the history of chocolate, and a more elaborate mole sauce — http://www.muybueno.net/articles/latino/chocolate_chicken_mole.html
What I like about the one I listed above is that it simplifies a recipe that normally takes an incredible amount of time and futziness and makes a darned good mole sauce practically instantly.
When chocolate combines with peanuts and tomato, it thickens, and if it starts thickening too much, a spoonful of water will save it and get it the right consistency.
I had always heard that the peanut was West African—and it does grow there. But it CAME to West Africa from Brazil, and it originated in Bolivia, spreading through the Americas that way, until re-imported, likely FROM Africa to the colonial American south, and maybe from Africa to the Orient via the ivory trade in the days of wooden ships. It was already known in Mexico, and a group of nuns in Mexico is credited with inventing mole sauce. http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/2389-the-humble-peanut-stars-in-mexican-cuisine-los-cacahuates
One other important note: chocolate by itself is not fattening and the flavor can be enjoyed in many dishes, if you use a sugar substitute. All the sweetness in a chocolate candy IS sugar. It is natively somewhat bitter, and therefore takes a fierce amount of sugar to bring out the chocolate flavor you know from childhood. It does have its own bit of vegetable fat, so that means it’s not a total freebie. Read the Nutrition Panel on the side of a box of unsweetened cocoa powder.
I learned that the hard way by spooning some baking cocoa into my mouth as a kid without testing it. On the other hand, I did like vanilla extract as a kid which is kind of frightening in retrospect. Moral of the story — parents, feed your kids so they don’t forage. I used to eat stuff in the yard too. I blame vitamin deficiency. 😀
Does anyone know of a good substitute for the peanut butter? Last time I had a mole my peanut allergy was a very mild nusiance. These days, encounters with peanuts take me a lot closer to eternity than I want to get right now.
Oooo. The only thing I can think of would be maybe cashew butter. Peanut butter is of course nothing but peanuts (an oily item) ground to paste and mixed with vegetable oil, and cashews, which are actually a true tree nut (peanuts aren’t) are about the oiliest. A quick check of the internet turns up butters made of: sunflowers, soy (doctored to resemble peanut butter), and almond paste.
How about tahini (sesame butter)? I’ve subbed peanut butter for tahini in humus, don’t know why it couldn’t sub for peanut butter. It could add an interesting flavor.
Uhmmm, an inter-cultural question…(or two) : Is my 400 ml can (about 14 oz) about the same size as your can of diced tomatoes? And what is a ramkin? Some sort of bowl, I think?
Other than that, I think I have everything for a mole.
Uhmmm, OK, a Ramkin is a nearly extinct noble family of Discworld… a ramekin, is a small glass or ceramic bowl (about 6-8 oz) which can survive the oven or blowtorch…
So I guess my 14 oz can is a bit larger than your can – maybe I can get three ramekins per can… I think I have everything I need.
Made this for lunch today. My wife got these 12 oz cans of diced chicken breast, so I used one of those and doubled the quantities given. I also added in half a green pepper and half a jalapeño pepper (sautéed with the chicken). Served over a little rice, along with a Green Monsta Pale Ale.
I think next time I’ll skip the cloves and maybe the nutmeg.
Also, instead of the ramekin, maybe I’ll spoon the molé into halved green peppers and bake them a little with the cheese on top.
Great recipe! Thanks!
OK, made this again today (gotta use up those canned chicken things somehow!). Skipped the cloves, halved the nutmeg, added a half-teaspoon per serving of this ground dried hot pepper mixture a friend made up for me – probably the heat equivalent of a teaspoon of cayenne.
I’m getting more familiar with this combination of spices – something I’ve never played around with before.
Yes: that recipe is very amenable to interpretation: some people taste some spices more strongly, and there are surely regional differences as well. It’s like learning to cook middle-eastern, or indo-type, and learning what to do with coriander and cardamom, or that cinnamon goes nicely on beef as well as ham.
The Southcenter Costco (Tukwila WA) carries both almond butter and Nutella as possible substitutes but be sure to make sure that the dreaded “equipment that also processes … peanuts …” disclaimer isn’t on the label. Avoiding a spouse’s severe food allergy teaches you all of the tricks.
!@#%$ that’s supposed to include Costco as the third word in the first sentence.
Edit by CJ: Lol! I got yr back, Brennan!