Guatemalan Dessert Favorites

Molletes

Guatemalans seem to make the very best use of any ingredient, and that includes using unlikely things to make into desserts. Take Plantains. They are used green as a "vegetable" side dish; medium-ripe, simply cooked, they are perfect as a side with black beans; really ripe and fried are great on their own for dessert and then comes magic. They are used sweet as Plantains in Mole Sauce for an amazing flavor sensation. Or used for Rellenitos de Platano, those amazing little fried ovals of pureed plantain with a surprise inside!

This magic is also done with homely yucca root, or squash (not too surprising as we do have Pumpkin Pie). And then bread. Bread, you ask? Well, I do love bread pudding, so I guess it's no surprise that I have always loved a dessert they call Molletes en Dulce. Molletes (pronounced "moy-YET-ez") are a particular type of bread from the Guatemalan "sweet bread/roll" panoply. An enriched bread, with a little sugar, shortening and eggs, these are delicious all on their own, smeared with a little butter and eaten with coffee or with black beans, or however/whenever you choose. And then as inevitably will happen, if they are somehow left over, rather than let them go stale and thrown out, they are turned into dessert. 

Pan Frances or French Bread

Now, a caveat. In all the 12 years I spent in Guatemala, I never, ever had Molletes en Dulce made with actual Molletes! Instead, and likely because it was more common for the "Pan Frances (their French Breads) to be left over than the Molletes, the cook made this same recipe but using the portions of Pan Frances instead. It was delicious, and a favorite dessert. Just not made with Molletes. Confusing to me at the time. 

Since in the U.S. we do not have this kind of Pan Frances, with its individually marked portions, I have made similar use of a narrow loaf of French bread, cutting it into chunks of like size, about 2 x 2 x 3-inches, approximately. Hollow out a core of the bread and fill with thick cream and raisins and proceed. It works. It's really good. But when I made Molletes last November, I decided at long last to make Molletes en Dulce. WITH Molletes!

Molletes en Dulce

Molletes en Dulce

Serves 6

1¾ cups sugar
2½ cups water
1 (4-inch) piece true cinnamon
6 molletes or other breads, about 1 to 2 ounces each, slightly dried
½ cup Mexican cream, or sour cream
18 raisins
2 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon flour
1 - 2 tablespoons oil or shortening for frying
slivered almonds, to adorn

In a large, wide pot, bring the first 3 ingredients to boil, lower to simmer and cook gently for about 20 to 30 minutes.

If actually using molletes, take out a piece from the top of each, creating a little

Cutt center from Mollete

lid, and widen the hole inside the bread. Divide cream between the wells, insert 3 raisins in each and then set the lid back on. If using French bread chunks, cut a slice into the bread, widening the hole as needed to insert the cream. Set 3 raisins into the cream.

Whip the egg whites until stiff. Separately, whip the egg yolks until they are pale yellow and drip down in ribbons from the beater or whisk. Fold the yolks into the whites, and then fold in about a tablespoon of flour to give body to the mixture.

Dip each filled piece of bread into the beaten egg mixture, till completely covered, and then fry these on all sides in the shortening in a large frying pan, turning to get the egg done on all sides. When completely fried, and thus sealed, set them gently into the simmering syrup. Gently simmer the molletes in the syrup for 20 - 30 minutes or longer. Serve adorned with almonds.

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Another use for leftover "sweet (enriched) breads" was called Boca de Reina, or Bocado de Reina. While I never once saw this dessert made anywhere but in a pastry shop, it was still one I completely fell in love with. The name means something like "A Queen's Bite or a Queen's Snack." A snack fit for a Queen would be another way to term this dessert. In the 1970s, when I was in Guatemala, my husband took me to this one pastry shop occasionally for a little sweet bite and often this was my choice. At that time, in that pastry shop, this dessert was a piece of cake that was amazingly good. Moist and tender, subtly flavored. I couldn't put a finger on what might be in it. I asked, and was told it was a cake made from leftover breads, made into crumbs. 

I returned to the U.S. once and for all in the early 1980s. Never once did I have this dessert again, nor ever heard of it anywhere, and pretty soon it was completely gone from memory.

Until.

When my oldest daughter was turning 40, I created a "Cookbook/Memoir" of all things Guatemalan that I could recall. All my children were born there, though the youngest, 3 years old at the time, remembers nothing of it. The oldest, at 10, remembered well. I found photos online of places we'd been and foods she'd known, recipes I had made and some I hadn't but still held on to. It was great. And then my son was turning 40 a few years ago, and while what I made for my daughter was good at the time, I had a LOT of new ideas and recipes I recalled while researching others, many I had actually tried out since that first book came to be. And this Bocado de Reina came into my mind. I searched online for a recipe, at least an idea. The ONLY thing that comes up when searching Guatemalan recipes and Bocado de Reina is some kind of banana bread/pudding.

I can say with 100% certainty, the Bocado de Reina I ate at that pastry shop, did NOT have bananas in it. 

My memory said that it was a darkish color, but not dark like chocolate cake. The cake had a wonderful, moist crumb. It was served cut into a square and set on a muffin paper to display. As I said, the flavors were elusive. 

Okay, so the one thing I knew was that it was made (at that pastry shop) with crumbs of day-old bread. And if that was the "flour", then I would just have to add in other cake-like ingredients. But what gave it the dark color? I know that chocolate was also not a flavor that I can recall from that cake. Yet. . . I wondered if using a small amount of Guatemalan / Mexican chocolate tablets, such as Ibarra or Abuelita, pre-sweetened and with cinnamon in them, maybe I could get this cake to have more color, while t the same time without it actually tasting of chocolate. I had just been making some of the Guatemalan breads, testing them out to see what I could use for recipes in my son's version of the Guatemalan Cookbook / Memoir. I had some leftover Molletes and Rosquitas. I went to work. 

Bocado de Reina

At a remove of 32 years from the last possible time I might have eaten this cake, I made my own version. I cannot in any way say for certain that this tastes perfectly of the Bocado de Reina I ate long years ago in Guatemala, but it fit all my remembered criteria, and it truly tastes fabulous. While maybe not 100% Guatemalan, here is my Bocado de Reina:

Bocado de Reina

Bocado de Reina

Makes one 9 x 9 cake

1½ cups (12 ounces) heavy cream
1 cup (7.3 ounces) sugar
1/3 cup (1.7 ounces) sweetened Mexican or Guatemalan chocolate, finely grated
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon true cinnamon (Ceylon, or Mexican)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
¾ cup (3.5 ounces) raisins
3 cups (8.35 ounces) “day old” enriched bread, made into crumbs
¼ cup (1.16 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (0.18 ounces) baking powder

Make bread crumbs from rich breads such as brioche, molletes, wafer cookies, animal crackers or a combination. They should not all be completely dried out. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 x 8 or 9 x 9-inch baking dish; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cream, sugar, chocolate, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and eggs. Add in the raisins and bread crumbs and allow to soak for a few minutes. Stir together the flour and baking powder and stir in. Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for about 40 to 50 minutes, until a tester inserted in the center comes out almost clean. A few remaining crumbs are okay. Cool completely. Dust the top with confectioners’ sugar if desired. 


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Fruity Sides for Jerk Chicken Meal

I have no background anywhere near the Caribbean, but it is hard to think Jerk Chicken (or pork or lamb) without the thought of tropical fruits coming to mind. When I made up my Jerk Marinade recipe recently, I also wanted something appropriately Caribbean to accompany the meat.

Grilled Pineapple Mango Salsa

My first thought was some sort of fruity salsa; maybe something with mango, green pepper, some chilies and lime juice. The more thought I put to this, the more I recalled seeing pineapple grilled and with the char marks from the grill, and my mind went in that direction. In the end, I grilled both some sliced pineapple and some mango slices and both went just perfectly together with the other salsa additions. 

Keep in mind that to grill mango, the fruit must be just a little firm. Too soft and it is difficult to keep the fruit together just to eat, and far less so if placed on the grill. For this salsa, try and select a mango that is still quite firm; not too green and not too ripe. While I wanted this salsa to accompany the grilled Jerk Chicken, it would also be quite at home at a party with some tortilla chips alongside. In the end, this is what I concocted as my salsa. 

Grilled Pineapple Mango Salsa

Grilled Pineapple Mango Salsa

Makes about 2 cups

1 good-sized mango, slightly under-ripe
½ fresh pineapple, peeled, sliced 
1/2 cup pickled or fresh red onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped (about ¾ cup)
1 hot pepper of choice, minced
1 small tomato, seeded, chopped (about ½ cup)
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
juice of 1 lime (about 1½ to 2 tablespoons) 
1 jalapeno, minced (more, if desired) 
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

Heat a grill to high and quickly grill the mango slices and pineapple slices until they acquire nice char lines on either side. The goal is to sear them, but not necessarily cook through.

Once grilled, cut the pineapple and mango into small cubes and place them in a mixing bowl with the remaining ingredients. Toss all ingredients well and taste for seasoning.

Now that I had a salsa I was pleased with, I gave thought to another side dish, and of course rice seemed the most appropriate. To give another nod to the Caribbean flavors I was looking for, I used more of the pineapple I had grilled and added this to the rice as it cooked, along with other similar ingredients to the fruit salsa. 

Caribbean Rice

I have never, ever had difficulty with making rice, though I hear and read often that others have lots of difficulties with making it. I don't have any idea why I have never had problems making rice, but this is the recipe I created, and it came out beautifully light and fluffy and full of flavor.

Caribbean Rice

Serves 4 to 6

1 cup white rice (I used Basmati)
1 cup fresh pineapple, grilled
¾ cup chopped red bell pepper
½ cup scallions, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cooking oil or coconut oil
2 cups water
1 cup frozen peas
¼ cup fresh cilantro, minced

In a medium saucepan, combine the rice, pineapple (cut into small cubes), red bell pepper, scallions, salt, cooking oil and the water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cover tightly. Time for 15 minutes, at  which point the rice should be cooked and fluffy. Add in the frozen peas, give the whole mixture a quick toss with a fork, then cover and turn the burner off, allowing the peas to heat through while keeping their bright green color. Before serving, add in the cilantro and stir. Serve immediately.

About Plantains

To round out the fruity flavors of this meal, I also opted to fry a plantain and serve alongside. To those who might know nothing of plantains and be afraid to use them, here is a little guidance:

Plantains are related to bananas, but are far more starchy and need to be cooked to be edible. They may be eaten while still quite green, in which case they have no particular sweetness and can be used as a vegetable. Partially ripe plantains will be yellow, but they are still quire firm. There is more sweetness developed in the fruit at this point and these plantains may be cooked and used as a slightly sweeter side dish, as with sweet potatoes, or they may be sliced and fried. As they cool from cooking, these partially ripe plantains will become rather unpalatably firm, so eat them while warm. Very ripe plantains will have turned nearly completely black. At this point in ripeness, the plantain is very sweet, cooks quickly and easily, and is wonderful used in more of a dessert category.

Green Plantains

"Green" plantains can be green, or already turning slightly yellow, but still quite hard. Green, they are harder and dryer and look much like a very large green banana. Look for plantains that have slightly rounded ridges. Too sharp ridges indicate the plantains were picked far too green. They may be cooked in plain water, until tender enough to pierce with a fork, as for potatoes. Serve them cooked this way or try a recipe for "Tostones", a Puerto Rican (and many other Caribbean countries) dish that makes great use of the green plantain. For Tostones, the green plantain is peeled and then sliced across into about 1-inch thick slices. The slices are fried in oil until golden on each side, then removed from the pan, blotted dry and smashed flat. These flattened discs are returned to the pan and fried once more until golden and cooked through.

Medium Ripe Plantains

Medium ripe plantains are nicely uniform yellow. At this point they will look like very large ripe bananas, but are still harder than a fully ripened plantain and while sweeter, they will not yet have full sweetness. These plantains can be used either as a part of a meal or as a dessert. They can be grilled while still in their skins, until they are soft completely through, then skins are removed and they can be eaten this way. 

Fully Ripe Plantains

Fully ripened plantains are nearly or all blackened. They should be quite soft to the touch, though nothing at all like a blackened banana. They retain enough firmness to easily peel, slice and cook them, but now the full sweetness comes through and they will retain the cooked softness more easily once cooled. They may still be cooked in water and used as a side dish, only now with more natural sweetness. These ripened plantains are wonderful as a simple dessert. Peel them and fry them whole, or slice lengthwise and fry, sprinkling them with a little cinnamon and sugar towards the end of cooking. Serve with sour cream. A Guatemalan dessert of Rellenitos de Platano is a perennial favorite at our house. 


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Pollo en Jocon; a Gutemalan Dish Using Green Sauce

Pollo en Jocon is basically a cooked chicken in green sauce. The dish can as easily be made with a beef roast (making it "Carne en Jocon") as with chicken, and I can tell you from experience that green sauce is truly excellent paired with pork also.

A few days back I wrote about making green sauce, or Salsa Verde. The recipe is absolutely delightful, and I really need to make more to keep around. I also promised a picture, which I have here, for this post. Though my husband is mostly unfamiliar with green sauce, being an upper Midwest guy (I am an Ohio gal myself, but got where I am via Guatemala for 12 years), he really liked the flavors of the chicken in the green sauce, so I took that as a big coup; winning his approval.

Pollo en Jocon

Guatemalan sauces very often contain sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, called "pepitoria". These are in most of the sauces, whether sweet or savory. Things like mole, whether a savory mole over chicken, or a sweet mole over plantains, contain these seeds, toasted and ground. Guatemalan tamales have these seeds in the sauce that is made to go over top of the tamal. Again, the tamales there have 2 versions, a sweet and a savory, and the sauce starts out the same for either one, with the same seeds involved in the recipe. These are a couple of examples, but the use is widespread. 

A word about the sesame seeds: they need to still have the hull intact, which means they are not the kind found in the little jars in the spice section of the grocery. Unhulled sesame seeds are a dull, flat tan color, and not the pretty, shiny, polished little things in the jars. The shiny ones in the jars will not brown properly in the dry skillet. Look for unhulled sesame seed a at your local health food store. 

With that in mind then, I was quite surprised to find that in the two recipes I had found

Carne en Jocon

for Jocon, somewhere in Guatemala (one was a newspaper clipping), neither one had used sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds. Hmmm. One of the two recipes did not even mention using day old tortillas in the sauce, which is a very common thickening agent. Instead of thickening a sauce with flour or cornstarch, in Guatemala they will use cookie crumbs to thicken a sweet mole sauce, or bread, soaked and stirred into a sauce as for Hilachas (or Ropa Vieja), or tortillas, soaked and blended up into a sauce like Jocon. So, in one of the recipes they suggested thickening the sauce If it is too thin, with tortillas. Corn tortillas here in the U.S., made with a lot of additives and preservatives, pressed and sold in packages that seem to be able to last forever - these really will not easily soften and dissolve. To make this easier, keep a small package of Masa harina for corn tortillas in your freezer and pull it out for times like this. It thickens beautifully and gives the authentic flavor needed. Just moisten some corn masa flour with water and stir into the stew and cook until it thickens to your desired stew consistency.

Understand that this dish is supposed to be a stew of a sort. Once the green sauce is made, the rest of the recipe (as I made it) is just cooking the cut up chicken in the green sauce, and then put to cook for a while in this sauce to infuse flavors. 

Pollo en Jocon or Carne en Jocon

Serves about 6

Pollo en Jocon

1 whole chicken, cut up,  (for Pollo en Jocon)
OR 
2 lbs beef stew meat (for Carne en Jocon)
olive oil, for browning
1½ cups (more if desired) Salsa Verde / Green Sauce
1½ teaspoons salt
1 - 2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon unhulled sesame seeds
1½ tablespoons raw, green pumpkin seeds

2 tablespoons corn tortilla flour (Masa Harina or Torti-ya)

Heat a dry skillet over medium heat until very hot, then add in the sesame seeds. Stir constantly, and they will begin to pop and snap. Once they turn a light brown, turn them out immediately to a plate to cool. Add in the green pumpkin seeds and stitrring constantly, toast them until they begin to get browned spots but do not let them burn! Once browned a bit, turn out to the plate with the sesame seeds. Once cooled, place the toasted seeds into a spice grinder or coffee grinder used only for grinding spices and grind fine.
Have the recipe for green sauce already made, either fresh or frozen. Heat some olive oil in a heavy duty oven safe enameled cast iron stew pot or Dutch oven and brown the chicken pieces or stew meat. Pour the green sauce over the meat and add in the salt, bay leaves and oregano. Stir in the toasted and ground seeds. Bring to a boil and cover with tight fitting lid. Place covered pot in a preheated 300 degree oven for 1½ to 2 hours for chicken and about 2 to 2½ hours for beef. Ensure that there is plenty of liquid in the pot, adding water if it gets low during cooking.

Once the meat is cooked through, Stir together the Corn Tortilla Masa flour with a little water to dissolve, then stir into the pot and allow to cook for about 15 minutes more, to thicken. Serve with rice.
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If you would like to thicken your sauce with a corn tortilla or two, soak it in hot water until very soft and then blend or just crumble before adding to the sauce.

My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things weekly. I would love to hear from you, to help me continue my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.  

Guatemalan Foods; Heathy and Delicious

In general, the typical foods from Guatemala are quite healthy, and certainly full of fiber. I learned a lot about  foods in Guatemala when I lived there in the 1970s and early 1980s. They use a lot of vegetables and beans in very creative ways, with the addition of tomatoes, tomatillos, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds in the most unlikely places. And the food is so good. Even now, so very many years later, I crave some of these foods. The fact that it takes a fair amount of time to create some of these dishes is the only deterrence from making them all the time. I am going to make Rellenitos de Platano today, and some time this week I am making Guatemalan Enchiladas. Guatemalan enchiladas are nothing at all like Mexican enchiladas, and I cannot wait to taste them again.

Rellenitos ready to eat

I have been eating black beans regularly for the last 4 weeks, just because I got in the mood, suddenly. I love them made "volteados" or pureed and cooked down to nearly dry  consistency, where they hold the shape of the pan, when flipped back and forth. But just pureed is easy and really good, and that is how I have made the last batch. But there are dishes using black beans that make one wonder. One of these is Rellenitos de Platano. Relleno means filled. Any word with the addition of the letters "ito" or "ita" afterwards is a diminutive. Rellenito (rrray-yen-EE-toe) means something small and filled. Platano is the Spanish word for Plantains, so we come to "small fried filled plantains".  Somehow that doesn't sound quite as lyrical as Rellenitos de Platano, but I will go on to wax lyrical about how good these little things can be! 

So, okay, what are these little things? And, how are they made?

Rellenitos de Platano are cooked, very ripe plantains, which are then pureed. A little sugar is added, with some cinnamon. For this recipe, only true cinnamon will taste right, so if you are unsure what this is, look in the Mexican section of your grocery, or go to a Mexican grocery. They always have true cinnamon. True cinnamon, cinnamomum verum, is distinguished by its very thin quills, making it very easy to break into bits. With the thick-quilled cassia we are so accustomed to, this is not an easy task. Cassia tastes very different.
 
Once you have your plantains ready, you need to have some black beans made into volteados, or very cooked down and dry and paste-like. You take a small ball of the plantain puree, probably about an ice cream scoop size. Oil your hands well and take the plantain mixture in one hand and pat it out a little. Place about 2 teaspoons or so of the black beans and place in the center, and then form the plantain mixture to encase the black beans, making it into an oval. Now you have the relleno, or filled part of the recipe. At this point, though it is not authentic, I always dredge the filled plantain lightly in flour. This helps when frying so they do not stick to the pan. If you leave off the dredge in flour, or use maybe a rice flour instead, these are naturally gluten free.

The little ovals are fried in oil in a skillet to brown. The ingredients are all cooked already (except if they are dredged in flour), so they do not need a long cooking period. In Guatemala, they generally fry them in a little oil, but I have also filled the pan with oil to about an inch or so, so that when they are frying, they partially float, ensuring that they are not sticking to the pan. If the plantains are very soft, they can stick. Once fried, they are rolled in white sugar, to coat. These are good hot or cold and oh, so delicious.

If all of this does not sound good, it is just as I said. Guatemalan foods use lots of ingredients in unlikely places, but you really have to try the foods to believe how good they can be. It may be less likely that someone just tries this out without any prior knowledge, but I do so hope that someday you all may find a good Chapina to make them for you, or lacking that, someone like me who lived there long enough to become enchanted with the foods. 


My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, continuing my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.

Delicious Guatemalan Dessert

Today I made Plantains in Mole Sauce for dessert. Called "Mole de Platano" or "Platanos en Mole" in Guatemala, this is one dessert that I learned to make that has been enjoyed even by some of my family here in the States. I am from the States, and lived in Guatemala in the 1970s. I enjoyed learning to cook all the great foods down there. Makes me really wish my children lived nearer, because at this time of year tamales would be wonderful to make. The recipe makes a huge amount, so it isn't easy to have 60 tamales around. I would be eating them forever. Not a problem except that is a lot of tamales! Guatemalan tamales are at least double or triple the size of a Mexican tamal. One makes a meal, unless you are supremely hungry.

Mole de Platano or Plantains in Mole Sauce

I digress. I guess I have been dreaming of tamales, too. Oh well. Today I made the plantains instead. I haven't made this dessert in quite a while. The recipe calls for some ingredients that you may find strange if you are not accustomed to the Central American penchant for mixing savory ingredients into sweets. It calls for sesame seeds (ajonjoli) and pumpkin seeds (pepitoria), true cinnamon, tomatillos and Roma tomatoes. It also calls for one of the Guatemalan breads that is more like a cookie, made into crumbs for thickening. These cookie-like breads are called Champurradas. That is another very Guatemalan thing; using a bread or crumbs of some kind for thickening a sauce. And lastly is chocolate, which makes the dish. The chocolate used in Guatemala is more like the Mexican Chocolate tablets you can find in some groceries or Mexican groceries. The Mexican or Guatemalan chocolate tablets are large, because they have sugar in them already, along with other flavors such as cinnamon or vanilla.

That is all the sauce ingredients, but then comes the plantains. Plantains are a much larger relative of the banana. They are very starchy and need to be cooked. One of the interesting things about plantains is that they can be used as a vegetable when green, or a dessert once ripe. If you are one of those (like me) who hate bananas once they get spots on the skin, you need to set that mindset aside when it comes to plantains. If a plantain's skin is unblemished, they are really, really green. To have a very sweet and ripe plantain, you must wait until it has nearly blackened. Then it is soft and sweet, and when cooked or fried is tender and delicious. To use as a vegetable, just cook the plantains that are yellow, but with unblemished skin.  They are quite hard still, but can be cooked in water and served that way.

For this dish it is best to have quite ripened plantains, because this will keep them softer in the dessert. If the dessert is refrigerated and the plantains were less than ripe, they will get hard in the sauce and not even heating it all again will help. It is still good, but never quite what it should be. This recipe is really delicious; if you have an adventuresome spirit, please give this recipe a try.

Mole de Platano or Plantains in Mole Sauce

Mole de Platano

or Plantains in Mole Sauce

Serves 6 to 8
3 plantains, very ripe, blackened and soft
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, unhulled variety
1½ tablespoons raw green pumpkin seeds
3 tomatillos, husks removed
3 Roma tomatoes
1 cup water
1 piece true cinnamon stick, about ½” worth
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup sugar
pinch salt
½ ounce unsweetened chocolate OR 1 whole tablet Mexican chocolate
1 large handful of simply flavored cookies, i.e. vanilla wafers, animal crackers, made into crumbs

Dry toasting sesame, pumpkin seeds,
tomatoes and tomatillos; frying plantains

In a dry skillet, toast, moving constantly, the sesame seeds until most of the seeds have popped, but have not turned too brown. Dump the seeds into a blender container. Repeat this process with the pumpkin seeds and then with the crumbled cinnamon stick to release its fragrance and add to the blender. Place the tomatillos and Roma tomatoes into the dry skillet and roll them around until the exteriors are charred and peeling. Add to the blender along with the cup of water. Blend until all the seeds and cinnamon are pulverized.

Pour this mixture into a medium saucepan and add in the sugar. Stir until the mixture begins to boil. Add the butter and salt, the chocolate and the cookie crumbs and cook until thickened and chocolate is melted.
Heat a skillet and add in some cooking oil. Peel the plantains and slice them about ¼-inch thick, on a bias. Fry the plantain slices until nicely browned and completely tender. Add them to the mole sauce as they are cooked. Once all plantain slices are done, mix well with the sauce and serve. Sprinkle with more sesame seeds as garnish.

My passion is to teach people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and help pass along my love and joy of food, both simple and exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things weekly. Join me at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook and Pinterest.