Not-Quite-Homemade Chicken Mole

Chicken with chocolate sounds weird, no?  But if the chocolate is spicy and not sweet, in a sauce that envelopes shredded chicken and the dish is served (in an enchilada or on its own) with rice and a salad of oranges and red onions, the result is delicious.  

Maybe you’ve had mole in a Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurant and didn’t even realize there was chocolate in the sauce. This quick-and-easy version uses prepared mole in a jar, but it’s still good enough to serve company.

I do plan to make mole from scratch someday, using Pati Jinich’s recipe for mole poblano, but that requires many ingredients and lots of patience.  By contrast, this chicken mole has only 4-5 ingredients (salt is optional) if you don’t count water.  I checked the ingredients in the 2 brands of mole in a jar that I have recently used (Goya and Dona Maria); both brands contains many of the ingredients in Pati’s recipe and no preservatives or other additives. 

Chicken Mole

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How to Make Chicken Soup

With all the Jewish mother jokes that feature chicken soup, not to mention the many commercial products in the “chicken soup for the soul” collection, I hesitate to venture down this path.  But with so many friends and family suffering colds and flu and with a blustery wind blowing here for the past few days, I decided to be brave – so here goes – my 2¢ on good, old-fashioned Jewish chicken soup.

This isn’t a cookbook or foodblog-type recipe.  It’s the way your grandmother – or someone else’s grandmother – would have shown you how to make it.  This stuff is not a replacement for modern medicine, but if you’ve ever had a bowl of excellent Jewish chicken soup, you know what I’m talking about when I say it has healing powers that no doctor can replicate. 

To Make Jewish Chicken Soup You Need:

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Julia Child's Vichyssoise

I adore Julia Child for many reasons.  My love affair with everything Julia began in days of yore - before computers, cell phones, and cable TV celebrity chefs.  In the 1970s, I flambéd my way through my junior year of college.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking and a book of matches taught me more about experimentation than any science course I ever managed to barely pass.  Through several of her books and countless episodes of her cooking shows, I learned more valuable lessons than how to use a pastry bag or truss a chicken.  

Not too long ago, the social media world starting buzzing with news of a celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Julia Child’s birth.  I decided to participate in the festivities in my own way.  Occasionally I’ll join in the “Julia Child recipe of the week,” including vichyssoise (a chilled leek and potato soup) this week.  

But my real homage to her will be those times when I stop what I’m doing – in the kitchen, at the table, or elsewhere - and think about how much braver I am and how much more fun I have, when I think “what would Julia have done?”

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