Holy mole!

If you ask me my favourite cuisine, I'd probably have to say it's Japanese food. But I always say that, so I'm tweaking today's MoFo post to be all about my runner up food.

If you asked me my second favourite food, I'd probably say either Vietnamese, Mexican, or Indian depending on what day of the week. After picking up a load of exciting dried chillis the other week, I'm trying to find new ways to use them up. All I want right now is Mexican - there's something really satisfying about the combination of warming spices, comforting carbs like corn and rice, tomatoes and avocado that I keep coming back to.

This is my first attempt at making a mole-type sauce with fancy Mexican chillis. I've no idea if this is anything like a proper mole, but it's about as close to a proper mole as I can get in my little flat in South London!

This make a huge batch of sauce, and it's eminently freezable, so divide it up into portions, stick it in the deep freeze, and then bring it out when you need it. I've been using it to top tostadas along with refried beans, roast veggies, avocado, tomatoes and coriander, but I reckon you could use it to stuff burritos, or just use to make a Mexican-tasting shepherds pie.

A tribute to Mexican mole
Makes one metric shedload

Ingredients
One white onion, finely chopped
one leek, cut into four length ways, then chopped
Two garlic cloves finely sliced
One pasilla and one ancho chilli, rehydrated in 200mls of water (don't throw the water away!)
one teaspoon of oregano
a pinch of all spice
One tablespoon of cumin seeds, ground
Half a teaspoon of fennel seeds, ground
One tablespoon of paprika
75g of sultanas
One and half tablespoons of peanut butter
One tin of chopped tomatoes
One packet of Granose soya mince
One head of cavolo nero, with leaves and stalks removed, and leaves cut into fine strips

How you do it
Sweat the onion and leek until floppy and translucent - around 10 mins
Add the sliced garlic, and cook for another minute or two
While you're waiting for the onion and leek to cook, blend together the chillis and their soaking water with the oregano, allspice, ground cumin, ground fennel seeds, paprika, sultanas, and peanut butter to make a thick sauce.
Add half the tinned tomatoes and half the cooked onion-leek-garlic mix and blend til smooth.
Add the rest of the onion-leek-garlic mix, the rest of the tomatoes, the soya mince, and the chopped cavolo nero.
Put on a medium heat, and warm through until the soya mince is rehydrated and the cavolo nero is cooked.

To make this recipe six-food elimination diet friendly: swap out the soya mince for a tin or two of black beans, and swap the peanut butter for a similar amount of seed butter. If you've got no seed butter on hand - and why would you? - blend 50g of sunflower or pumpkin seeds into a paste, then stir that into your sauce.