Mole Poblano Chicken Casserole with Black Beans and Queso Fresco

When asked to list my favorite foods, I always top the list with red beans and rice and macaroni and cheese. Both are pretty simple fare – they require basic ingredients and are easy on the wallet, but when they’re done right, red beans and rice and mac and cheese are really, really good.

One food I always overlook is mole poblano. Good god, I love mole sauce. The first time I had mole sauce, I was seventeen years old and had read a review of Café Noche, a traditional Mexican restaurant in Houston down near Westheimer and Montrose – way edgier than Spring – in the Houston Press. The article mentioned Café Noche’s outstanding mole sauce, a blend of a long list of spices, chiles, pumpkin seeds, and – of all things – chocolate. Maybe it was because I had just read Like Water For Chocolate, but all I knew was that I needed to get whatever that mole stuff was into my belly, stat.

As soon as I tasted mole, I was hooked, and ordered it every time I saw it on a menu. When I was about four months pregnant, I went to Chicago for business and was lucky that the partner I was traveling with was much of a food lover as I am, because as soon as the client said, “Chicago,” we said, “Rick Bayless!” You’d better believe I had a big plate of mole poblano, and, god help me if I didn’t stammer like a schoolgirl when the ever-so-gracious Rick Bayless made the rounds of the dining room. “I love your mole, Mr. Bayless! It’s so, so, uh, RICH!”

While Chris and I have read Rick Bayless’ mole poblano recipe from Mexico: One Plate at a Time several times and have even scoped out all the ingredients at the latin supermarket near my house, we’ve yet to attempt mole poblano. We’ve always talked about making mole from scratch, and about eight years ago, I made enchiladas using a jarred mole poblano when I needed a quick fix. Other than that, though, we’ve had a mole-less kitchen.

Which brings us to this casserole.

Last month, the New York Times reviewed Nancy Silverton’s new cookbook, A Twist of the Wrist, which the review described as a wholesome hybrid of Rachael Ray’s 30-minute meals and Sandra Lee’s “semi-homemade cooking,” except with out that skeevy feeling some (at least, me and Amanda Hesser) get from Sandra Lee. But while the recipes mentioned in the review looked delicious – orzo with porcini mushrooms, papardelle with anchovy sauce - Chris and I couldn’t figure out what the convenience factor was supposed to be. What, we saved time and effort by not preserving our own anchovies or making our own orzo? When I saw the cookbook at the library a few weeks ago, though, I figured I’d check it out and try a few recipes, because for hurried weeknight meals, I am always looking for an alternative to the 20-minutes or less section of Cooking Light.

When I read Silverton’s introduction, the whole “twist of the wrist” concept came full-circle. In the introduction’s first paragraph, Silverton writes that the book was inspired by an “awakening that started a few years ago, after I read a review by Amanda Hesser in the New York Times of a cookbook in which the author used packaged ingredients to create quick, easy meals. As Amanda pointed out in the review, the author’s premise was to get people in and out of the kitchen as quickly as possible so they could do something enjoyable – like talk to their husbands and play with their children. Anything but cook!” I thought, “Oh my god! I totally remember that review!” While – full disclosure – I have never made a Sandra Lee recipe, as her use of heavily-processed ingredients isn’t my cup of tea, I was appalled that Lee described her techniques as, “a new way of cooking” (Sorry, Sandra – that’s Sally Schneider’s arena), and I wasn’t surprised at all when Hesser made authentic versions of Lee’s concoctions for less money and in less time than Lee’s recipes. And if Nancy Silverton was still horrified by Sandra Lee nearly four years after Hesser’s review, I figured, I can get down with that, and went a-hunting in A Twist of the Wrist for a recipe to try.

All of the recipes in the book look promising. The salads look substantial enough to serve as a light supper, and there are several pasta dishes that I’m looking forward to trying, but I was really drawn to the “main dish” section, and in particular, her recipe for Mole Poblano Chicken Casserole, a recipe that featured corn tortillas, jack cheese, black beans, a rotisserie chicken, and jarred mole sauce.

I was familiar with jarred mole and I trusted Nancy Silverton, and the casserole looked like a simple enough Saturday night supper, so I gave it a whirl. Start to finish, the recipe took longer than the promised 55 minutes – more like an hour and 30 minutes start to finish, and that was with both Chris and I working simultaneously with the prep and the cooking - but it was still worth it for a weekend dinner. The casserole was rich but not overwhelmingly so, and the combination of the chicken, the corn tortillas, the cheeses, the black beans, and the mole sauce was, for me, spot-on outstanding.

I used a rotisserie chicken from Whole Foods (because I didn’t have any leftover roast chicken handy) and boxed chicken broth (because while I have three roast chicken carcasses in the deepfreeze waiting to be made into stock, the deep-freeze is sadly bereft of actual stock), and if you have a Latin supermarket in your neighborhood, go there for your cheese and crema, as I have found that in Atlanta, at least, queso fresco is substantially less expensive at a Latin market than it is at Publix or Whole Foods. Silverton’s recipe serves four, but I doubled it anticipating that I would want a fridge full of leftovers.

Adapted from: Nancy Silverton’s Mole Poblano Chicken Casserole with Black Beans and Queso Fresco (Jimmy Shaw, Loteria Grill, Los Angeles)
Serves 8 (but you probably won’t want to share it with that many people)

For the tortillas:
½ cup vegetable or corn oil, plus extra if needed
24 corn tortillas

For the mole:
2 teaspoon sesame seeds
1 8-ounce jar mole sauce (Doña Maria is a good brand to try)
6 cups chicken broth
3 or 4 squares of high-quality, dark chocolate
Salt to taste

For the rest of the casserole:
3-4 cups roasted chicken (about a whole chicken), meat shredded and skin and bones discarded
8 ounces Monterrey Jack cheese, shredded (about 2 cups)
½ white onion, finely chopped (slice the other half into rings to top the casserole)
2 cans black beans, rinsed and drained
4 ounces queso fresco, crumbled
½ cup Mexican crema or sour cream
Salt

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 300˚F.

Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over high heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the oil is almost smoking (you’ll start to smell the oil when it’s hot enough). Place one tortilla in the oil to fry for about 5 seconds, until the tortilla is golden brown, and place it on paper towels to drain. Repeat this step for the rest of the tortillas, adding more oil to the skillet if necessary. When all the tortillas have been fried, stack them and cut them in half. (Alternatively, if you are looking for a slightly healthier way to cook your tortillas, you could try spraying them with cooking spray on each side and baking them at 350˚F for a few minutes – not too long, or they’ll be too crispy – but until they’re just golden.)

To make the mole, toast the sesame seeds in a large skillet over medium heat for about three minutes, shaking the pan frequently to prevent them from burning, until they’re light golden and fragrant.

In a large pot, combine the entire jar of mole sauce with the chicken broth and bring to a light boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer. Stir in half the sesame seeds and the chocolate and return to a light boil, stirring constantly. Simmer the sauce for 15 minutes, stirring it often to keep it from scorching, and add salt to taste. (If you have a spouse, child, or other competent person handy, you can get them to stir the mole while you fry the tortillas, or vice-versa, thus saving about 20 minutes.)

Spoon just enough mole to cover the bottom of a 9 x 13 casserole pan. Cover the mole with a layer of overlapping tortilla halves, using 12 of the halves, with the flat sides facing the edge of the pan. Cover the tortillas with a thin layer of mole (about 2/3 cup). Scatter a third of the shredded chicken over the mole, top with a third of the jack cheese, a third of the chopped onion, and a third of the black beans. Cover with mole sauce, and then more tortillas, repeating the layers two more times, ending with a layer of tortillas slathered with mole (if you are like me, it will be very, very hard not to eat all the mole as if it were soup). Scatter the queso fresco over the casserole. Drizzle with the crema, sprinkle with the remaining sesame seeds and the onion rings, and sprinkle kosher salt over the whole thing.

Cover the pan with foil (spray the side of the foil that will contact the casserole with cooking spray to prevent the cheese from sticking) and bake for 20 minutes. Uncover the pan and bake for another 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the casserole is heated through.

Enjoy!

(Also, thinking about eating the mole sauce as if it were soup reminded me of how I could also eat béchamel sauce as if it were soup, which lead me to think about how entirely awesome it would be to make something that combined both béchamel and mole sauce. Oh, Madre de Dios…)

Comments

[VanillaBean/Maria]

Go for it with the soup idea! I love experimenting like that.

[Jill]

MMM. Frontera Grill. If you can come up with the Mexican Coffee recipe that they serve there, I might pay you in gold. My experiments haven't worked yet.

[hannah]

I am sorely tempted by that cookbook every time I go to La Brea Bakery, which is, um, tri-weekly. (What? I have a colicky baby who loves walks and it is two blocks away. God wants me to have regular doses of better-than-oreo cookies, clearly.)

Your review inspired me to join the Good Cook bookclub for it yet again, instead.

[hannah]

The super no-cook version of this dish? Stop at Loteria for lunch.

[Teri]

Jealous!

Have you been to Nancy Silverton's pizza place yet? I need to eat vicariously, apparently.

[hannah]

Hell to the yes, twice so far. It is INCREDIBLE- better than Pizzeria Bianca, even, in my opinion. I'd go every week if we could get a table.

[Teri]

I have got to plan a trip to LA.

[hannah]

I finally made this and while it is not as good as a Loteria chicken mole taco, it is pretty good. I did not find the prep that onerous but I baked the tortillas in the oven and did all the onion dicing/chicken shredding etc while the mole was simmering and the tortillas were crisping and just stirred the mole sporadically.