Oaxacan Mole Recipe and other notes of Mexican chilis and salsas

I started a Chile and Spice series on my Substack about the evolution and migration of chiles from South American and it's journey across the world. I am concluding Volume I with a deep dive into the chiles of Mexico.

I worked as a chef in Mexico for a couple years, and I my Mexican chefs has taught me so much about their food culture. In the Mexican portion of my writing series, we start with mole (the holy grail of pre-Spanish Mexican gastronomy) and uncover the seven different regional cooking of Mexico and the chiles that are featured in that food culture. Below will be the recipe as well as link to the series:

https://thewovenpalate.substack.com/p/volume-1-chapter-5-the-architecture

Here is my recipe for simple Oaxacan mole that can serve as your base:

This is a masterfully concentrated, versatile mole starter that perfectly balances the Trinidad Sagrada—the Holy Trinity of the Mexican republic. Think of this as your master starter paste. Once you have a jar of this in your freezer, you can simmer it with chicken stock, a disk of Mexican chocolate, and charred tomatoes to build a rich, dark regional mole in under an hour.

The Ingredients

• 8 dried Ancho chiles
• 6 dried Pasilla chiles
• 6 dried Guajillo chiles
• ½ cup whole raw almonds
• ½ cup raw pumpkin seeds
• ¼ cup raisins
• 1 stale corn tortilla, torn into rough fragments
• ½ stale bolillo roll or French baguette, sliced thin
• ½ medium white onion, cut into thick wedges
• 6 cloves garlic, left unpeeled
• 2 whole cloves
• 3 whole black peppercorns
• 1-inch piece of Mexican Ceylon cinnamon
• ½ cup authentic rendered pork lard or high-heat avocado oil
• 1.5 cups hot vegetable or chicken stock (for the blender)

The Process

1. Blister the Nightshades: Stem and de-seed all of your chiles, reserving a tablespoon of the seeds for later use. Heat two tablespoons of your lard in a deep, heavy pot over medium heat. Flash-fry the dry chile pods in small batches for thirty to sixty seconds until they puff up like leather balloons and shift color. Remove them instantly with tongs and submerge them in a large bowl of boiling water for twenty minutes to rehydrate. In a dry skillet, crank the heat to high, and roast your thick onion wedges and unpeeled garlic cloves. Let them sit until the skins are deeply blistered, charred, and blackened on all sides. Once cool, slide the papery skins off the garlic and set the sweet, blackened cloves aside with the onions.
2. Fry the Nut and Bread Matrix: Melt another three tablespoons of lard into your frying pan. Fry the almonds and pumpkin seeds until they turn golden and fragrant (about two minutes), then spoon them out. Drop in your raisins; they will dramatically plump up like juicy grapes in about thirty seconds. Fish them out. Finally, toss your torn tortilla and stale bread slices into the remaining hot fat, frying them until they are crisp, brittle, and have drunk up every last drop of flavorful lard.
3. The High-Friction Grind: Drain your rehydrated chiles, discarding the bitter soaking water. In a heavy-duty blender, pack the chiles, charred onion, peeled garlic, toasted nuts, seeds, fried breads, plump raisins, cloves, peppercorns, and cinnamon. Pour in the hot stock. Blend on high for a full three to four minutes, using a tamper or plunger to continuously force the dense mass down into the spinning blades, until you achieve an absolutely smooth, ultra-thick, glistening paste.
4. The Searing Fry: This is where the chemistry happens. Heat your remaining lard in a heavy clay cazuela or a heavy Dutch oven over high heat until the fat is shimmering and dancing. Pour the blended paste in all at once. It should violently crackle, spit, and hiss as the cold water in the stock hits the smoking fat. Drop the heat to a low simmer immediately. Cook for forty-five minutes, scraping the bottom continuously with a flat wooden paddle to prevent scorching. The mole is done when the paste darkens into a deep, glossy, maroon-black hue and tiny beads of clear oil begin to separate and rise to the surface. Let it cool completely before packing.