Mexican Mole Sauce

I'm making an interesting "beef" stew later in the current menu cycle but when I went looking for recipes for this particular ingredient (all will be revealed AFTER the family has tried it!!) I found one I wanted to use but it used canned/bottled pre-made mole sauce, unavailable where I live. The recipe was American SO I decided to research mole sauce and make my own.

Here's the recipe I came up with. I wanted something fairly easy and some of them were extraordinarily hard but also something close to real and at least in keeping with the Mexican original.

Mole Sauce Recipe

2 tsp vegetable oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 tbs cocoa powder or 35g dark chocolate (I used Lindt 70%, only because I had a bar and the chocolate seemed more original than the cocoa)

1 heaped tsp cumin seeds

1 heaped tsp coriander seeds

2.5cm piece of cinnamon

1.5 cups tomato "sauce".......pureed tomatoes

fresh chillies (I used 2 fresh from the garden and 2 from a Mexican pickled chilli jar)

salt

water

Grind the cumin, coriander and cinnamon in a mortar and pestle.

Heat the oil and fry the onion, garlic, chilli and ground spices for about 10 minutes on a medium heat till the onion is very soft.

Add the tomato sauce and use water to thin a bit if your tomatoes are very thick.

Cook for about 30 minutes till thick again (the water seems a touch stupid doesn't it? But you need the cooking time to amalgamate all the flavours!)

Add salt to taste.

Add in the chopped chocolate and cook a further 5 to 10 minutes.

Voila! Yummy and easy Mole Sauce.

You could try it with chicken, rice, beans, tomato, salad leaves and avocado wrapped in a tortilla....................though like I said, mine will be stored in the fridge for a few days in anticipation of a special recipe coming up soon!