It has turned cool and rainy in Vancouver, plus Luke is going to bed earlier and in his crib, so we decided to start a new weekend tradition of cooking a big, fancy meal. We choose a recipe we’ve never tried before, shop for ingredients and cook together. Yesterday was our second time doing this and it was an adventure.
The shopping part took a while, as our kitchen is ill equipped for this sort of thing. The equipment shortage is due to the fact that the “furnished” apartment we rented seriously lacks appropriate kitchen gear if you want to do more than eat take out. Sprinkle in the fact that I was adamant about putting everything we own into storage, and the conversation around choosing a recipe goes something like this:
Keith: “this sounds good…”
Steph (looking at recipe): “requires a blender, no good…”
Keith: “uh huh”… as he’s thinking, I told you we should bring more stuff ...but he knew better than to say it.
So this is the year we decide to become cooks---this year while our very nice, expensive blender, sharp knives, specialty utensils, etc. are in storage somewhere near O’Hare airport. Therefore, although this cooking at home thing should save us money, with the equipment and pantry start-up costs, we would have spent less eating out!
Yesterday we decided to make chicken mole. If you don’t know mole, it’s a traditional Mexican sauce that has a rich, complex flavor driven by an uncommon mix of ingredients. The recipe we chose included ground almonds, french bread, ancho chiles, tomatoes, cinnamon sticks, and about fifteen other things that are blended and simmered for a long time.
The problem with us attempting to make mole is that our benchmark is a mole we loved at an authentic Mexican place in Chicago. As one restaurant critic said, “I’ve swooned over Mexican sauces all over this city…but the moles here can stop your heart.” So, that’s what we—novice home chefs—were trying to make.
The recipe we found was in Bon Appetite; a magazine that assumes its readers actually know how to cook. That said, the directions were a little vague for us, with instructions like “lower flame and cook until the chicken is done” Umm… lower to simmer or just low? And how LONG does it take to get “done”? Keith just kept going to Wikipedia to find out how to, how long, or how come we needed to do something.
Of course this recipe required a blender AND a stockpot, neither of which our “furnished” kitchen contains. Luckily, we have a fantastic store in our building that sells everything you can imagine. Yesterday I was there three times, but luckily Luke LOVES that store, so it doubled as a fun outing for him. Of course the blender I grabbed was not exactly like the one on display—I got the French one, so I’ll need to learn how to read chop, puree, etc. in French. And then the stockpot. They had only one that wasn’t part of a set and I knew I was in trouble when I saw the price… it was $12.99. And this is a place where everything costs double what it would in the US. I actually laughed out loud when I picked it up…with one pinky. I almost had Luke carry it out of the store. Then I thought longingly about my nice, expensive stockpot…in storage somewhere near O'Hare.
So back to cooking. It’s funny cooking with Keith because he’s vigilant about following recipes. I’m no experienced chef, but I recognize when it’s OK to improvise a little or make a small substitution. Keith is VERY BOTHERED when I attempt to do things like this, so I typically try to hide it. For instance, the mole recipe called for 6 peppercorns but the only peppercorns we had were in a jar with a built-in grinder, which you can’t remove, so I suggested grinding some pepper into the mix. “How will I know when it’s 6 peppercorns’ worth?!” Keith exclaimed. He was serious.
At my suggestion, he was the head chef for this meal and I was the prep/ sous (“Sue”) chef. And though blending would typically be a sous job, Keith was working our new blender when it exploded. Actually, I think it was more like user error than equipment malfunction, though unfortunately I didn’t see the incident unfold. The picture shows what I walked in on as Keith was shouting “Sue, get back here!”
Long story short, the mole was excellent! We congratulated ourselves several times while inhaling it.
The only bummer about this dish was that it took 3 hours to prepare, an hour to clean up and about 10 minutes to eat. I think we’ll just fly to Chicago for our mole fix next time.
Stay tuned for our next cooking adventure!
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