December 17, 2012 Oaxacan Green Mole with pork and Mexican Vegetables and rice

December 17, 2012 Oaxacan Green Mole with pork and Mexican Vegetables and rice

We had a simple but exceedingly filling meal of PPI Oaxacan Green Mole with pork and Mexican Vegetables and rice tonight.  I included the recipe for this dish in my last Thursday or Friday blog.

On Sunday I went to Pro’s Ranch Market and obtained their last bunch of Epazote.  When I asked for assistance from a produce worker, he walked over to the cooler where the herbs and specialty items are kept and picked up a bag filled with a beautiful fresh bunch of a long stemmed herb and said, ‘You are the lucky one.” as he handed me the last bag of fresh epazote.

The recipe calls for making a puree with three herbs (parsley, hoja de santo or green fennel tops and epazote or cilantro) and about 1/3 cup of broth from the dish, so on Monday evening I picked three of four sprigs of parsley and Suzette harvested about ½ cup of fresh green tops from the fennel plants in the garden and I chopped those with the bunch of epazote and some cilantro from Pro’s Market (about 1 cup total).  We stirred the pureed herbs into the dish and simmered it for about thirty minutes to cook the squash and the herbs, while we cooked 1 cup of basmati rice.   I also made guacamole with avocados, white onion, garlic, lime juice and cilantro.
Then we spooned rice and then the stew into a pasta bowl and enjoyed it with beers and guacamole and Mexican style (cooked in lard) corn chips.  No corn tortillas available.

The stew was amazingly fresh and healthy tasting, the nopales did not turn to mush but kept their cactus like firm consistency and the tomatillo puree and herb puree gave the dish a citrusy and herby flavor that is hard to describe, perhaps because we did not put in the large quantity of pork broth that would have pushed the flavor toward a more meat like flavor.  I prefer using Mexican Squash to the chayote that the recipe calls for and we did not use any masa to thicken the dish because I wanted the dish to stand on the strength of it vegetable ingredients.  

The looseness of the stewed vegetables was fine with me and since we did not use a lot of pork broth we did not need to add a lot of masa to cream the dish.

Bon Appètit