Cooks who are comfortable with one pot cooking will want to try this sweet potato mole recipe. If thirty to forty minutes are available, the sweet potato can be braised until it melts in the mouth. With dark chocolate added at the very end to create a rich one pot meal, this Mexican-inspired vegetarian dish will not disappoint as a lunch or supper.
Sweet Potato Mole Recipe
With the ‘official’ start of autumn, it is timely to start making the best of the season’s vegetables. There follows the ingredients and directions for an original recipe for a 100% vegetarian mole that uses sweet potatoes as the star ingredient and Green and Black’s 70% cocoa dark chocolate.
When shopping for sweet potatoes for the sweet potato mole recipe, cooks should try to select large sweet potatoes which will readily cut into large wedges or teaspoon sized cubes.
Ingredients:
- olive oil for frying
- 1 large onion
- 2 large red capsicum or pepper
- 3 garlic cloves
- ground spice mix of 3 teaspoons of coriander, 1 teaspoon of cumin and ½ teaspoon of cinnamon
- 600g sweet potatoes
- 400g fresh very ripe tomatoes or canned chopped tomatoes
- 400g canned red kidney beans in chill sauce
- 6 squares or 2 rows of Green & Black’s dark chocolate
Directions:
- Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into teaspoon sized wedges and cubes.
- Chop the red capsicum or peppers into squares or triangles.
- Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic.
- Blend together the ground coriander, ground cumin and ground cinnamon into a ground spice mix.
- Heat the olive oil in a pot with a tight fitted lid available.
- Add the onions and garlic to the pot and fry on a high heat for 2 minutes.
- Then add the capsicum or red peppers and fry for another 1 minute.
- Reduce to a moderate heat and add the spices to the pot ensuring that all the onions, garlic and red pepper are covered. Fry for five minutes.
- Add the uncooked sweet potatoes to the pot and coat in the spices and cooking vegetables.
- Next add the contents of the canned red kidney beans in chilli sauce plus the skinned fresh very ripe tomatoes (or canned tomatoes in their own juice) and ½ pint of still drinking water.
- Raise the heat to high and bring the mole mixture to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes before reducing to a gentle simmer and placing a tight-fitting lid on the pot.
- Cook for 30 minutes to braise the sweet potatoes.
- Grate 6 squares of dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa content onto a plate. Green & Black’s Dark 70% chocolate is suitable for this vegetarian sweet potato mole.
- Check that the sweet potatoes can be run through with a fork.
- Add the grated dark chocolate to the simmering sweet potato mole in the pot and stir gently for five minutes. The inclusion of grated dark chocolate at the very end of cooking to the moderately hot sauce ensures that the chocolate does not ‘seize’ (becoming lumpy and too thick to use in cooking).
- Season with generous amounts of black pepper and serve immediately in bowls.
Alternative Mexican-inspired Mole Recipes
Readers of Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes: From the Cacao Pod to Muffins, Mousses and Moles written and compiled by Caroline Jeremy (Kyle Cathie, 2006) will find on the page for ‘Chicken Mole’, the book’s fiftieth recipe using chocolate, that there is written the hint of “omit the chicken and double the quantity of beans for a vegetarian mole.”
Louise Pickford, a British food writer now living in Sydney Australia, has published her ‘Quick Vegetarian Mole’ in Fast & Fresh Quick Recipes for a Busy Lives (Ryland Peters & Small, 2003).
Susan Morris - Susan Morris, Scottish food and drink business manager, organic gardener, author and editor
