Olé Mole!

This week has been hectic, I’ve recently started a new job and it was induction time in Darlington (a 4 1/2 drive for me), then to Solihull to help paint a ‘Children’s Hospice’ as part of a volunteer team from work, and then up to Macclesfield before home down south.

Luckily, I was able to include some excellent restaurants so if you like Indian, Rose Murree in Hagley Road Birmingham is worth a trip, and for excellent English fair, Bacchus in Prestbury is also worth a trip the weekday special being extremely good value money. Click on the names to see their web sites.

I recently decided to spruce up the herb and spice cupboard and venturing food wise into Mexico, ordered a range of dried chilli’s amongst other exotic items such as Dukkah Za’atar and Ras al Hanout.

My inspiration was ‘Mole‘  Mexican for sauce. There are lots to choose from but I was going to attempt Mole Poblano,  more often used for celebrations as its apparently quite time consuming to make, it was about time for me to find out. Having the chilli’s to hand the rest of the ingredients were assembled, and there are quite a few. Peanuts, Ground Almonds, Onions, Tomatoes, Chocolate (YES, I had some special Peruvian, more of that later). Here is a picture of what you will need.

I used three different chilli varieties Pasilla, Mulato and Guajillo which needed soaking in hot water for 15 mins to soften them, after I had dry fried them for a couple of minutes in a hot pan to help; release their flavor oils.

I was using a combination of recipes for this Mole, William Harcourt-Cooze, of chocolate fame in conjunction with a web find and Tomasina Miers, Masterchef winner and owner of the ‘Wahaca‘ restaurant chain. The reason for this combination was that there were subtle differences in some of the processes, such as roasting the onions and tomatoes in a dry pan, and using Tortilla Chips as a thickening agent and flavour layer. The chocolate I used is a pure Cacao from Peru (Peruvian Black 100%), you can get it in Waitrose in the cooking section, or mail order if you click on William Harcourt-Cooze’s name above.

The spice mix on the left (Cloves, Cinnamon Bark), and the Peanuts were both dry fried to bring out their flavour before grinding into a powder. Once you have dry fried the chili’s, soak them for 15 minutes in hot water, reserve some of the liquid as this is added to the Mole to intensify the taste. Once soaked, remove the stalks and seeds before chopping up, and adding to the Onions, Garlic and Tomatoes.

       

      

Lemon Tart Revisited

       

The crème/custard is made by putting a couple of eggs, castor sugar, lemon zest and juice from 2 lemons into a saucepan and whisking over a moderate heat until thick. Don’t have the heat too high or you will end up with scrambled eggs. When thick, turn off the heat cover with some cling film to prevent a skin forming and leave to cool (you can put into a pan of cold water if you don’t have much time to speed the cooling process).

      

The bank holiday seemed an excuse to spend some time in the kitchen practising some of my new skills learnt on my recent foodie vacation.

I’ve had a go at bread before but usually use a bread machine for the kneading part, so Focaccia would be perfect as its not a ‘kneaded’ bread!!

I think Anna-Rita, Guiliano and Angelo would be proud of me, I got some fresh yeast from our local Tesco’s bakery (they do have at least one use!), added it to the warm water and sugar and put it to one side for 10 minutes to let the yeast start to feed.

In the trusty Kenwood bowl, Tipo ’00’ flour, milk and olive oil were added and the mchine put into a ‘canter’!

Once the ingediants are combined and you can see some ‘life’ in the yeast/water sugar mix, add it to the bowl and continue to mix.  The bowl on the left is after the 1st rise, as it was a sunny afternoon I put the bowl on the window ledge and let nature do its stuff.

I was thinking of a nice light dessert and remembered the Lemon Tart that was part of the ‘Italian Experience’, and the sweet confit of lemon that was served with it. Out with the Mandolin and two lemons later the slices were ready. The method I choose (thanks Google), was to pour hot water over the lemons first and allow to cool, do this twice before making a 50/50 sugar/water mix in a saucepan and simmering on a gentle ‘bubble’ for 1 1/2 hours. The soaking in hot water apparently removes any bitterness. You should end up with a jar like this.

Back to the Focaccia, after the batter has risen, add loads of olive oil to a tray, and also cover your hands in it too, tip the mix into the tray and gentle spread out to the sides, I used a combination of ‘exotic’ cherry tomato’s and Rosemary to decorate the bread and enhance the flavour. Mine looked like this when ready. I let it rise for about another hour before putting in the oven to bake.

I had picked up some Veal from our trusty farm shop to make Braciole, a stuffed meat dish that is used to flavour a tomato based sauce that goes with pasta such as Orecchiette. It needs to be flattened out to make small ‘escalopes’, stuffed with two cheeses, I used Gran Padano and Parmesan and some fresh flat leaf Parsley. Dont forget to season with Pepper, you don’t need to add salt due to the cheese. Once wrapped the rolls are secured with a couple of cocktail sticks.

Fry the Braciole in a saucepan, in Olive Oil until sealed all over, pour in a jar of Passata and simmer for 90 Minutes untill everthing is tender and the sauce reduced.  The Sauce is served with the Orecchiette.  I will talk more about the lemon dessert another day as I managed to drop mine as I was getting it out of the oven!

So there we have it, Braciole, Focaccia and Orecchiette in tomato sauce.
Delizioso, Buon appetito!