A Good Mole is Forever

My husband has undoubtably one dish that he declares his "signature"-- Venison Enchiladas with Mole. It's not his signature because he does anything different, really. In fact, the entire meal follows a very specific recipe, carefully followed and printed off the internet. The reason(s) he thinks of this as his signature dish are:

1. There are a lot of steps
2. It takes all day
3. Making it inevitably intimidates others
4. It tastes really, really good.

A few weeks ago, Dave declared that he was going to make his Venison Enchiladas with Mole for his entire office--that's 20 people. And so it began.


Never one to shy away from asking for a bit of help in the kitchen, Dave's first
order of business was to appoint a sous chef.

I always get duped into being his sous chef, partly because I genuinely like cooking, but also probably because I always fall for the line "I can't cut the onions as well as you." A true sucker for feminine flattery.

And really, if you're going to make a dish like this, you need another person, if for no other reason than to assemble all your ingredients in an imposing manner.

That's mole x3. There were so many ingredients in the sauce that we couldn't find a pot that would hold everything. So we just made it. Three times. Check out those spices:


The funny thing about making food in large quantities is that it messing up your natural sense of proportions. Does half a cup of garlic sound right? Was I supposed to add 4 teaspoons of salt, or 4 tablespoons?

But luckily, everything pretty much just gets dumped into a pot, after which you get to wait for a hour while it simmers away to find out if you were right.

The result was, fortunately, AWESOME. Enchiladas come, and enchiladas go, but a good mole sauce is forever. It helps that this recipe makes way more sauce than you need, too.

After the sauce the recipe is really just a question of How Fast Can I Get the Rest of This Done So I Can Put This Sauce on Something and Eat It?


Sure, the venison is good, but I'm pretty sure I would eat this stuff over a bowl of crackers.

At this point, we enter assembly line mode. Thank God for disposable baking containers.


Cover with cheese, bake, devour, and sleep. What an eventful day.


Oh wait, I forgot the last step. Make mint chip ice cream.



Did I mention that I have problems?