This was our location for our dinner where we used all the ingredients we purchased earlier in the day. We split our group into 3 teams – Andrea was on the team that worked on tamales and I was on the team that worked on the mole negro. Another team worked on another mole that was primarily composed of almond and sesame to go with roasted cauliflower and a soup. Chef Alex gave us directions on each of these.
You can see the ingredients from the mole had more than 20 ingredients including 4 types of chiles, onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, almonds, pecans, sesame, cinnamon, orgegano, thyme and much more. Most of it was cooked on the comal until blackened and then eventually combined and blended. It was then continued to simmer as it thickened and the flavors melded and developed. in the end it was fantastic.
A couple additional things we all worked on – a gordito and the chocolate drink. The gordito was very decadent – with the masa, chef mixed in chicharron. This was then formed into thick tortillas which we roasted on the comal. We then sliced the tortillas and stuffed them with more chicharron. These were later then fried. They were so incredibly good.
For the chocolate drink, we took roasted cocoa, the flowers from the cocoa, almonds, and cinnamon and eventually sugar and ground them over several rounds until it became basically a paste. This ended up being the best tasting Oaxacan chocolate we’ve had on this trip because it wasn’t too sweet, had a very cacao forward taste, and bit of nuttiness and spice from the cinnamon. It was perfect.
For dessert, we had flan which was a very delicious take on one of my all time favorite desserts. There was coconut in the flan which provided just a bit of interesting texture quite different from the perfectly smooth flan from every other version we’ve had. The caramel sauce had a bit of orange juice in it and finally the flan was topped with some orange zest. The orange gave it a bit of brightness which gave a bit of zip to what is otherwise a heavy, sweet dessert. Delicious.
This was such a fantastic cooking experience and Chef Alex is so personable and friendly. It was quite a special treat to be able to do this all with him.
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