Pork Shoulder with Mole Sauce

Recipe: Pork Shoulder with Mole Sauce
Page: 183
Date Cooked: September 19, 2010

I delved into this recipe slightly uncertain. I had never used chocolate in a savory recipe, had never made a mole, and wasn't all to familiar with cooking pork shoulder. Furthermore, the recipe seemed to be quite complex and time consuming. But at the end of it all, I was pleasantly surprised and the smell of the stew was intoxicating from beginning to end.

Ingredients: Boneless pork shoulder, garlic cloves, cilantro, sake, dried pasilla chiles, serrano chiles, habanero chiles, onions, bacon, tomatoes, unsalted butter, chicken broth, basmati rice, salt, pepper, unsweetened chocolate, and all-purpose flour.

I think the moment you realize a dish requires more than one day to make, it begins to feel burdensome. Luckily, Jonathan Waxman's pork shoulder marinade wasn't much of a fuss at all - garlic, cilantro stems, and sake were the components of the marinade. Also, the pork shoulder was cut into 1-inch cubes. He suggests marinating it for at least 8 hours and I ended up marinating it for almost a full 24 hours.

Pork shoulder with marinade

The next day it was all about making the stew. The recipe calls for three different kinds of chiles - pasilla, serrano, and habanero. The pasilla chiles start off in dried form and are placed in warm water to bring them back to life. Prep for the serrano and habanero chiles was familiar - the same blackened and blistered steps utilized in the Warm Lobster Tacos with Guacamole recipe. However, these chiles were smaller and a bit harder to seed. All the chiles were finely chopped and mixed together.

Pasilla chiles being soaked. Habanero and serrano chiles blackened and blistered.

Then it was on to the chopping - the onions, the garlic, the tomatoes, and the bacon. The recipe calls for either a large enameled cast-iron casserole or Dutch oven. Luckily for me, my roommate invested in a Dutch oven a few weeks back and I was able to put it to use (Thanks Cari!). The bacon is cooked for a few minutes to render some of its fat and then the other chopped components as well as half of the chiles are added and sautéed. Once complete, the bacon-vegetable mixture is removed and the pot is wiped out. I would like to mention that the smells were already amazing at this point.

Left: Bacon with some of its fat rendered and chopped components
Middle: All the components before being sautéed
Right: After being sautéed  

The pork shoulder was now ready to leave the marinade (the marinade is reserved for later in the recipe) and be browned using butter in the pot over medium-high heat. The delicious smell of pork just continued to waft in my home. I also hate to admit that I was tempted to not finish the recipe and eat the browned pork and the bacon-vegetable mixture on their own.

Beginning to brown the pork shoulder 

Once all the pork has been browned and removed from the pot. The strained marinade and chicken broth are used to deglaze the pot and scrape up any browned bits. The pork and the bacon-vegetable mixture are now placed back into the pot and brought to a boil. The heat is then reduced to a simmer, the pot is covered, and the stew now cooks for approximately 2 hours.

Marinade and chicken broth in pot with bacon-vegetable mixture and browned pork shoulder.

Approximately 20 minutes before the stew is complete, the recipe instructs you to begin preparing the basmati rice. Jonathan Waxman calls for the rice to be cooked with some butter as well as salt and pepper to taste. Just in case I forget to mention it later - the rice was delicious! But what isn't delicious when you add butter?

In order to finish the stew and I suppose in order to really call it a mole, it was now time to use the chocolate. The chocolate was chopped and set aside. While, the flour and butter were mixed together with the remaining half of the chiles. The flour mixture was whisked into the stew and the chocolate was added. The moment the chocolate was introduced into the stew - the color changed to a deep brown (chocolate brown, actually).

This picture highlight the color change once the chocolate is added to the stew.

The pork shoulder with mole sauce was almost complete - another 10 minutes on high heat with constant stirring. The cooked rice was then placed into bowls, topped with stew, garnished with cilantro, and ready for consumption.

Pork Shoulder with Mole Sauce

The adjective "rich" is the best word to describe Jonathan Waxman's Pork Shoulder with Mole Sauce. The first bite was interesting. I wasn't ready for the flavor and unsure of what to expect. I tasted a richness - a mixture of dark chocolate and pork. I went in for the second bite, this time picking up bits of the browned bacon and again thinking about how rich the dish was. After the third bite I was convinced...it was delicious!

The pork was cooked perfectly, it melted in your mouth. The rice helped cut the richness of the mole sauce and provided a well needed texture contrast. The things I couldn't taste and really wanted to taste were the garlic, the onions, and the tomatoes. The smell of those ingredients had taunted me while cooking and their flavors seemed to get lost in the richness of the mole sauce. Moreover, I didn't get the full impact of the heat of the three different kinds of chiles required for this dish. Granted, I personally am a fan of spicy and therefore wanted a little more of a kick.

All in all, Jonathan Waxman's Pork Shoulder with Mole Sauce was rich and delicious. The recipe appeared to be painstakingly tedious, but actually was not too bad. It's a recipe that I plan on keeping in my repertoire.

Enjoy!

Note: The ingredients for the recipe were halved.