Chicken Mole with beans and rice

Hello all, my name is (the subject line indicates) Hugo Angel (middle name Antonio).

I am a student within the IDS (Interdisciplinary Studies) program with an emphasis in Comparative Cultures. I gleefully announce that this in my last semester of the program and it has taken me 2 years to the semester to complete the program (95% on the weekends). It’s been a ravenous pace as I have taken every intersession in between the Spring and Fall semesters since fall of 2014!

Now on to food! I love to try all types of food but perhaps my favorite food that my mother would make is chicken mole. Chicken mole is a rich and aromatic dish that traditionally is VERY laborious to create (some recipes have literally dozens of ingredients). I say create because I truly feel the dish is an art. Every creator of the dish has their own version but i truly enjoyed the version my mother would make. It is a chicken dish smothered in a dark (almost black) and rich sauce. As a base the sauce has dry roasted chiles that have been rehydrated in chicken broth perfumed with garlic and boiled onions. Other aromas one picks-up are those of toasted sesame seeds, ground almonds and rich peanuts (my mom would cheat with peanut butter!). Perhaps the crowning ingredient is that of Mexican bittersweet chocolate which added a complexity to the dish that I’ve not found elsewhere. All of the mentioned ingredient and others that elude my memory (i think clove) would be placed into the blender and pureed into a sauce that approximated black velvet and once perfectly smooth would be simmered in a large saucepan and just at the right moment, the individual pieces of cooked chicken are to be placed into the dark and inviting sauce. Once the house was filled with the tickeling aroma of chile spice, sweet chocolate and playful peanuts, the plates entree was served with a side of refried beans, rice (sopa de arroz) and steaming hot corn tortillas.Today my mother has alzheimer’s and and her recipe is deep in her fading memory and I wish someone from my family had learned to make this dish (even me!).  The closest version I have been able to find is in a little restaurant in Lomita called El Jacalito.