Mole Rojo – Picado Mexican

Place all ingredients for the stock in a suitable pot and turn the heat to high. Bring to the boil and lower heat to medium low. Simmer partly cover for an hour. When the stock is done, leave the chicken in it until you need to use it and make sure you keep all the stock as you’ll need it for the mole paste!Put the reserved, oily pan on the hob again at medium heat. Add a tablespoon of lard or oil to it and heat it through. Pour the contents of the blender into it and using a wooden spoon, stir constantly. Mole sauce thickens as you heat it, so you might need to add an extra cup or two of chicken stock liquid to the sauce. Initially, the colour of the sauce is a red-ish brown. If you taste it, it would be raw and even a little bitter, this is because most ingredients are not fully cooked yet and the flavours need to develop longer. Keep the heat at medium low and add extra liquid if you feel the sauce is thickening too much. If you run out of chicken stock liquid, boiled water would be fine at this point too. As you cook the sauce, you will notice the colour getting a deeper shade of red with a nice shine to it. Stop cooking after 25 minutes and taste to adjust seasoning.When you’re happy with it, put the poached chicken legs on plates and covered them with the piping hot mole sauce. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on top and serve it with a portion of Mexican Red Rice.While the stock is cooking, make the Mole Sauce: Begin by cleaning your chilies. Take out the stems and discard them. With scissors, open the chilies in half and empty all the seeds and veins into a bowl. Reserve 1 tablespoon of the seeds for later and discard the rest.Put the cleaned chilies in a pot with 1 litre of fresh water. Turn the heat to high and bring it to the boil. Lower the heat to medium and simmer the chilies for 10 minutes. Leave them in the water to cool down while you work with the rest of the steps.Heat the pork lard / oil in a large, deep, non-stick pan, on medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the pieces of bread, corn tortillas, garlic cloves, onion slices and plantain slices and gently fry these ingredients for about five minutes, stirring occasionally so all sides are fried. Tortillas need to be crispy, the garlic cloves blistered, and the bread toasted. Onions would be soft and slightly caramelised and the plantain slices should turn a brighter shade of yellow. Transfer the fried ingredients to your blender or food processor and set aside.Return the oily pan to the heat and add the reserved seeds from the chilies, the sesame seeds, the pumpkin seeds, the allspice berries, the peppercorns and the cinnamon. Keep the heat at medium while you gently fry these ingredients for about three to four minutes, stirring gently every now and then. You’ll be able to smell the spices by then and the seeds will be shiny and toasted. Once they’re done, transfer them to the blender or food processor where the other batch of ingredients are and set aside. Do not wash the pan, set it aside as you will be cooking the mole in it.Drain the rehydrated chilies of all water and transfer the chilies to the blender/food processor too. Follow by adding the chocolate roughly chopped and the salt.Take the chicken legs out of the stock and put them on a plate for later.It is now time to blend the sauce. Add at least three cups of the chicken stock to the blender/food processor and blend well. This sauce is not an easy blend, we want it as smooth as possible, so if you need more stock to aid the blending process by all means use it; there is not such a thing as too much stock! Once you’re happy that all ingredients have been blended and you have a uniformly thick-ish sauce with a little bit of nutty texture to it, the paste is done.