Montreal Bagels, Cream Cheese and Gravlox

It’s challenging for me to figure out where I want to go with this post; I’ve been to Montreal just so many times. Meals in Montreal have been shared with family, friends, text books and magazines on so many occasions over so many years that the memories of the poutines, vegan BLTs, pizzas and matzah balls have become indiscernible one from the next.


There is Peking Garden, the Chinese restaurant on Queen Mary Boulevard near my grandmother’s old apartment. We used to eat at Peking Garden with my grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins on every visit to Montreal when my grandmother was alive. The spring rolls were enormous. Practically a meal. My grandmother passed away when I was 8 and I haven’t been to Peking Garden since but I remember those spring rolls as the best I’ve ever had.







There is also Solly’s, the understated Cote-St-Luc deli where we invariably stop on our way out of town to stock up on cylindrical tubes of gefilte fish for the car ride home. The demand is high as the fish serves to stave off extreme restlessness on our traverse of a notoriously uninspiring strip of pan-Canadian highway. Some people count punch buggies.








As there are stars in the sky, so are there infinite stock images of gefilte fish on the internet.





Then there are the bagels. I adore Montreal bagels and the process of procuring them: the dense, bland, sweet dough; the Sunday morning line at St. Viateur bakery; the brown paper bag still radiating the heat acquired from the wood-fired oven. Cream cheese and lox in tote, Olympico latte in hand, the ritual is part of the reward.





All 3 meals equally scream My Montreal as do many more. Inspired by my cousin Ellen’s hospitality, her beautiful Mile End flat and her proximity to St. Viateur - home of great bagels and the best smoked-salmon spread around, I’ve made bagels, cream cheese and gravlox. It’s true, smoked salmon and gravlox are not the same thing, but until I master stove-top smoking this is as good as it gets.



RECIPES

Montreal Bagels

www.food.com/recipe/montrea-bagels-35261

Ingredients:
• 1 ½ cups warm water
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons canola oil (I used sunflower oil)
• 1 package (8 grams) dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon beaten egg
• 1 tablespoon malt drink powder or 1 tablespoon malt syrup
• 4 ½ cups unbleached white bread flour (possibly more)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup poppy seeds or sesame seeds or both
• 6 litres water
• 1/3 cup honey

Directions:
• In a large bowl, stir together the warm water, sugar, canola oil, yeast, egg and malt; keep combining until the yeast dissolves. Then, stir in salt and one cup of the flour
• Gently add enough flour to make a soft dough, about 3 cups
• Knead your dough for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring in extra flour as you need it. When your dough is firm and smooth, cover with inverted bowl and let sit 10 minutes
• Next, divvy up the dough into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a 10-inch rope, then curve each one around your hand, pressing together ends to make a bagel shape. You may need to use a few drops of water to help the ends stay together
• Let bagels rise for 30 minutes
• When ready, fill a large pot with the 6 litres of water and then stir in the honey; bring that to a boil.
• Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 425 degrees F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
• When the honey-water has come to the boil, drop in the bagels and boil for about 90 seconds turning only once. Drain your bagels on clean, dry dish towels and then place on baking sheets. Sprinkle both sides of bagels with seeds.
• Place your bagels in preheated oven and bake until golden in appearance, about 20 minutes, turning just once.


Gravlox:

Recipe is care of Mark Filipczuk

Ingredients:
• chunk of good quality salmon
• 2 bunches of bushy dill
• lemons or limes and/or tequilla
• kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, brown sugar

Directions:
• rinse fish and pat dry
• rub fish with lemon or lime juice
• make a mix of 1/3 salt: 2/3 sugar and rub all over fish.
• crush black pepper (to taste)
• in a big glass dish, make a dill blanket along bottom. Place fish on top and then cover with another layer of dill.
• put something heavy on top to press the fish.
• Let marinate for about a week in the fridge.
*if you do tequilla, just do it with the lemon.



Cream Cheese

The recipe is Ricki Carroll’s, a Vermont cheese-maker, and is found in her book Home Cheese Making.

Ingredients:
• 4 litres of light cream
• 1 packet of direct-set mesophilic starter or 8 tablespoons prepared mesophilic starter.
• Cheese salt

Directions:
• Bring cream to room temperature (22 degrees celsius). Add the starter and mix thoroughly.
• Cover and let set at 22 degrees for 12 hours. A solid curd will form.
• Pour the curd into a colander lined with butter muslin. Tie the corners of the muslin into a knot and hang the bag to drain for up to 12 hours, or until the bag stops dripping and the cheese has reached desired consistency. Changing the bag once or twice will speed up the draining process.
• Place the cheese in a bowl and add the salt.
• Place cheese in small molds and cool in the refrigerator.

Kastengel

My four day introduction to Amsterdam in April, where I reunited with friends from the New York days, had me in complete awe. The canals, the bikes, the tilted homes all squished together, the streets of brick. It seemed like humanity had been reckless in not having, some time ago, named the whole city a United Nations World Heritage Site to be cordoned off and experienced only by advanced purchase tickets of self-guided audio-tours narrated by Patrick Stewart and Jane Fonda. But instead people walk around, go to work, buy coffee and ride trams. Like it’s no big deal.

While I was captivated by the physical city and its physical history, I wouldn’t be writing this today if I hadn’t also taken notice of the food – made possible by my cohort of willing and eager companions and my unwavering ability to sit at canal-side cafés.

On my first night in town, Suzanne showed me the canal-free neighbourhood of De Pijp which I admired through the rain drops from the back-rack of a Dutch 3-speed. To add to the Dutchness of the evening, I wore the dress that I had bought that day in the charming neighbourhood of Jordaan which was made in the Philippines. When we settled in for our pre-dinner drink, we ordered the quintessential Dutch bar snacks: bitterballen and kastengel.




Bitterballen are what I would describe as orbs of deep fried roux specked with flakes of you-name-it-but-probably fish. I say that because if I had to choose one steadfast constant in Dutch cuisine it would be fish; during my four day communion with the city, I managed, without trying too hard or really at all to eat cured whole herring on a bridge over a canal just like that lady in that photo below, slices of that same herring with bread-and-butter pickles and diced onions - photo visual provided in case this is conceptually hard to grasp, battered deep fried pellets of cod, grilled whole fish, fish in sauce and apple pie. You may think that I have drawn a contrived conclusion from a series of uncanny coincidences and perhaps you’re right. After all, I did eat bitterballen again at a canal-side café with Annika, Jay, Maria and Nanna and that time some of the balls were infused with Gouda.








Which leads me to Kastengel: I don’t remembering eating kastengel that night but I know that I did thanks to my food journal. Kastengel are probably one of the only fish-free items on any Dutch menu (not really!) and are, well, cheese sticks made from Gouda. At the risk of asserting yet another unempirical claim, Gouda seems to be the national pride of the Netherlands. The Netherlands has, and successfully so, built a tourism industry around that cheese. There is even an airport shop almost exclusively dedicated to its sale.






So there you have it: fish or cheese. I went with cheese.

The kastengel recipe I found online gave all measurements in grams. Still no food-scale-the-wiser, I used a suspect online conversion program which I’m starting to think is really just a bunch of teenaged programmers trying to ruin people’s food.






Did the conversion work? That depends on your outlook on life. The biscuits turned out to be savoury shortbread. With no memory of eating them, I have no idea if they were supposed to be. Also, they became very crumbly when left on the counter. I don't know if I can blame this on the conversion programme or not. But it didn't really matter; they tasted great and did remind me of a beautiful place and a great trip.




Kastengel
http://www.food.com/recipe/kaastengels-cheese-shortbread-276847

Ingredients
• 125 g salted butter = between ½ and 2/3 cup of a cup.
• 2 egg yolks
• 25 g cornstarch (1/4 cup?)
• 150 g all-purpose flour (1 and ¼ cups?)
• 100 g grated matured edam or gouda cheese (1/2 cup)
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• For garnish:
• 50 g grated cheddar cheese
• 1 egg yolk

Directions

• Mix butter and egg yolks with a mixer then add the grated Gouda or edam.
• add the flour, cornstarch and baking powder.
• Roll the dough and cut into small rectangles about 1x3 cm.
• Preheat the oven to 350°F and place rectangles onto grease trays.
• Brush each one with the egg yolk and sprinkle with grated cheddar.
• Bake until done about 15 minutes.

Ottolenghi

I’ve been obsessed with the food of London-based Israeli chef Yotam Ottolenghi since Karina introduced me to his second cookbook, Plenty, several years back. We actually made a couple of recipes from Plenty at that fateful New Years Eve party you may recall from my post on beef stroganoff. Since then, I have acquired the complete Ottolenghi collection, being two cookbooks, and love them so much that I am willing to stick out the gruelling conversion from grams to cups - which I do without a scale - and which always makes baking a little bit more of a thrill-seeking event.






While falling for the two hardcovers, I was not blind to the fact that Ottolenghi's notoriety pre-dates the written word and originated with his café in Notting Hill, which quickly turned into four cafés speckling sprawling London. And so, when my sister and I went to London in April to visit our brother who had recently moved from Shanghai, all three of us knew that the trip was in no small part also a pilgrimage.


In anticipation of our voyage, my sister graciously plotted the Ottolenghi cafés on the communal google map. And as it is when it is written in the stars, our brother lives but a skip from the café in Islington.


My first morning in London, before my sister arrived, my brother dropped me at the café as a parent would a child at daycare. Neither of us were sure if he would be picking me up at the end of the day but, after a sublime breakfast where I could not choose and so ordered both, to my surprise I left. I think getting the double-chocolate chip cookies for the road made leaving the café bearable.


Islington was only the beginning. A couple of days later, after exploring Portobello Road, my sister and I "found ourselves" at the Notting Hill café where we savoured a selection of earthy salads teeming with nuts, grains, greens and roots. Here's a mediocre at best photo of that meal which I promise was not taken with the blog in mind.





And but a few days later we transported an Ottolenghi picnic to Hampton Court, the Tudor castle, where we sat on a bench in a 700 year-old courtyard and ate the dregs of what we weak-willed women hadn’t already eaten on the 25 minute train ride out of town immediately following breakfast.


It may sound like all we did in London and its peripheries was eat Ottolenghi, but we actually diversified quite a lot. We compared the dolphin-friendly tuna sandwich at “Pret-a-Manger” with that at “Eat”, Cornish pasty with pot pie and overwhelmed ourselves so with our lunch options that it sometimes felt that the weight of the world was on our shoulders.

We were so prolific in fact that at first it didn’t even occur to me to post on Ottolenghi. But when my family came over for Mother’s Day lunch, for which I had prepared a table full of Ottolenghi salads, I finally saw what had been before my eyes all along.


Let me walk you through these salads in just enough detail to leave you intrigued. We had (1) squash with cardamom and tahini-yogurt dressing, (2) pearl barley with allspice, pomegranate and dill, (3) a quinoa, fava beans and avocado salad, (4) a lentil, celeriac and hazelnut salad, (5) a salad of cabbage, kohlrabi, sour cherries and dill and (6) mixed green beans with a tahini sauce.





I feel a bit funny posting recipes from Ottolenghi’s cookbooks and so out of respect for the artist, genius and entrepreneur I won’t. But when you become desperate - and you will - you know where to find me, the cookbooks and the cafés.

Pupusas

In February I travelled to Honduras with a volunteer Canadian medical team to provide health care to people living in the very rural and very poor mountains outside the city of Gracias.


Given the nature of the trip, eating in Honduras was not as laden with adventure as my travel-eating experiences often are. Since Honduras is such a dangerous country, and because there was some expectation that the non-profit through which we were volunteering would deliver us home alive, we did not have free time to walk around and explore. Also, since water in Honduras is admittedly incompatible with the Canadian digestive system, and since rampant stomach flu would have derailed our stated purpose, a “no-street-food” policy was implemented.

The combination of security and health concerns resulted in fairly controlled and predictable eating. Other than the plantain and yuca chips, Hershey’s Kisses and Pringles that we bought on supervised and armed trips to a little grocery store, and other than a fantastic buffet at a highway rest-stop, at which the variety knew no bounds and the breaded deep-fried chicken left an indelible memory, our meals were not particularly varied.


That does not mean that the meals were not tasty. They were! And I will never tire of avocado, sweet plantain (maduro), queso fresco, refried beans, rice and tabasco sauce.


I did eat street food on one never-before-disclosed afternoon: no sooner were we left to our own devices that singular time, in the charming mountain town of Valle de Los Angeles, did Leigh and I find ourselves eating a pupusa that we had bought from a man with a grill by the side of the road. We responsibly declined the typical accompaniment of coleslaw and home-made hot sauce (you know, the water thing) and, amidst the colourful homes, cobblestone and previously-loved tuk-tuks, enjoyed what we hoped would not be the meal to topple the brigade. While our team was not exactly immune to the ailments that can afflict travellers, I am relieved to say that pupusa was not the source of any trauma or collective delay.

Pupusas are patties of masa harina typically stuffed with some combination of refried beans, queso fresco and meat and are served with coleslaw and hot sauce. They, I believe, were first stuffed in El Salvador but are definitely eaten in Honduras, Nicaragua (thanks, Anibal) and possibly elsewhere in Central America.


Pupusas are remarkably easy and quick to make. The only time-consuming component was preparing the refried beans (not fried!) which, like all beans, need to cook for a few hours - a major shortcoming of beans but at the very least something that can be done ahead of time.


I don’t have any pupusa-making disaster stories. I suppose my pupusas weren’t as flat as pupusas “normally” are (see picture of a flat pupusa), but this might just be one of those things that comes with practice. Leemor and Andrew certainly weren’t complaining and I got over it pretty quickly.

Pupusas

Ingredients:

Here’s a list of all the ingredients you need to make papusas. Recipes below.

• 2 cups masa harina
• Queso fresco
• 2 or 2.5 cups dried pinto beans
• 1 cooking onion
• Cumin
• Olive oil or any other oil
• 2 tomatoes
• 3 shallots
• one of those skinny red hot peppers
• cilantro, handful
• lemon juice, 1 tablespoon
• Sea salt
• Cabbage, any kind
• Oil - avocado, grapeseed or sunflower (something with a mild flavour).


Refried beans

Ingredients:

• 2 or 2.5 cups dried pinto beans
• 1 onion
• Cumin
• Olive oil or any other oil
• Salt

Directions:
• Soak pintos over night.
• Boil the beans for 3 hours.
• Fry 1 large onion until clear.
• Blend all ingredients in the food processor.



Salsa

Ingredients:
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 shallot
• 1 of those skinny red hot peppers
• Cilantro, to taste
• Fresh lemon juice, 1 tablespoon or to taste
• Sea salt
• A little bit of water

Directions:
• Blend in food processor.


Super Simple Coleslaw

Ingredients:
• Cabbage, any kind, shredded
• 1-2 shallot, shredded.
• salt
• Oil - avocado, grapeseed, sunflower or any other mild-tasting oil.

Directions:
• Shred the cabbage and shallots, mix together in a bowl with salt.
• Put oil on the table in case anyone wants to use it.

Pupusa Dough

Ingredients:
• 2 cups masa harina
• 2 cups of water (the recipe said 1 cup but I found it wasn’t enough – the dough was too dry and brittle and I couldn’t flatten the pupusas without them cracking)

Directions:
• Mix the flour and water together and make into a ball of dough, knead a bit if you like. If you’ve read any of my past posts you’ll know I hate kneading.
• Divide dough up into 8 pieces.
• Roll each piece into a ball.
• Using your finger poke a hole in the ball and make a pocket.
• Stuff the pocket with beans and shredded queso fresco.
• Close the dough around the pocket and flatten.
• Fry in a greased frying pan for 3-4 minutes per side.
• Put pupusa on a plate, place coleslaw and hot sauce on top and serve.

Stroganoff

When I was in Brazil last year visiting Su and Vivi over carnival, a certain dish etched a lasting memory: the stroganoff served at the popular and ubiquitous by-the-weight buffet restaurants of Rio. Unlike the conclusion you may be drawing, these by-the-weight restaurants are not places of last-resort and they don’t look anything like the buffets of Orlando that you may be envisioning. Rather, they are desired, and not necessarily cheap, eateries that serve really good food. For better or for worse, my most memorably delicious meals in Rio were eaten at by-the-weight buffets.

I would venture to say that stroganoff is not, at first blush, associated with Brazil. I’m also taking the brazen position that the stroganoffs of Rio are not the most authentic but rather an Ibero-American adaption of this Russian classic, where dumplings are exchanged for rice and sour cream for whipping cream among other creative twists such as the addition of condiments. Authentic or not, that thick, rich sauce was so unbelievably good that it had me doubling back to the chafing dish.

Stroganoff is curiously beloved in Rio. Rachelle told me that she actually noticed it on menus all across the country and I learned anecdotally while doing my research that fast food chains in Brazilian shopping malls even offer this high-demand dish http://jv-foodie.typepad.com/foodie/2008/03/brazilian-strog.html. Rachelle is trustworthy so I don’t think fact-checking her contribution is necessary.

My love of stroganoff did not start in Rio. It was, however, rekindled there. I had the good fortune of eating Milvi’s mom’s stroganoff in Golden, British Columbia, circa 2005/2006, on a beautiful and challenging ski trip. The dish was exquisite and I’ve been sitting on the recipe ever since. Milvi is Estonian (some politically incorrect people might say that’s close enough to Russian) but unconfirmed rumours say that her mom found the recipe in The Joy of Cooking. I guess we’ll never know.

What happened next in the stroganoff saga is that Karina and I made that revered recipe on NYE a couple of years ago. As I have never done before or since, we burned the stew so severely that it was unsalvageable. I even had to throw out the pot. The experience was so traumatic and so wasteful that I swore I would never eat or make stroganoff again.


Well if I’ve learned anything from stroganoff it’s that life is long and sentiments ephemeral. In a tribute to Rio, Golden, New Years Eves and the complex mixture of joy and sorrow that is life, I’ve made Milvi’s mom’s stroganoff and Brazilian stroganoff. The Brazilian one was a complete afterthought since I didn’t even realize that such a recipe actually existed beyond in my dreams until about an hour ago.

While my memories of Brazilian stroganoff are fond, the traditional recipe is by far the better, although what with my terrible photos this month it’s hard to tell. The traditional stroganoff is actually sensational. I really encourage you all to make it. If you don’t eat bacon or beef or combinations of meat and milk, find some substitute (liquid smoke and tofu?) or make some other creative modification. Su told me that unripened breadfruit is used as a meat substitute in Brazil – for those of you in Toronto this might be your best bet since breadfruit is so easy to come by here. Once you’ve sorted out your dietary restrictions you’re in the clear: the recipe is fairly easy - making my tale of burnt pot all the harder to understand - and I can’t imagine your end product could taste bad.

Beef Stroganoff (Milvi’s Mom)

Ingredients

• 1/4lb bacon, cut in ½ inch pieces
• 2lb stewing beef, trimmed and cut in 1-inch cubes
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 onions, chopped
• ¼ tsp each dried thyme and marjoram
• 3 cups beef stock
• 1 cup dry red wine
• ¼ cup ketchup
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• ¼ cup all purpose flour
• ½ lb mushrooms, sliced
• ½ cup sour cream
• 2-3tbsp butter
• 1 tsp salt
• Freshly ground pepper

Directions

• In large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat, cook bacon until softened.
• Add beef cubes; cook, turning to brown on all sides.
• Stir in garlic, onions, thyme, and marjoram; cook for 5 minutes, stirring often.
• Pour in stock; bring to boil, stirring constantly.
• Stir in wine, ketchup, sugar, and Worcestershire.
• Reduce hear to simmer and cook, covered, for 1 hour or until meat is tender.
• Blend together flour and ¼ cup of cold liquid (water, broth, or wine) shaking really well, and add a few spoonfuls of the warm broth before putting flour mixture into the stew.
• In skillet, melt butter, cook mushrooms for 4 to 5 minute, stirring occasionally.
• Stir into stew along with sour cream, salt, and pepper to taste.
• Transfer stew to 12-cup (3L) flame proof casserole if planning to top with pastry or biscuits. (recipe can be prepared ahead to this point and refrigerated for up to 2 days).
• Bring stew to simmer, stirring gently, and top with dumplings, pastry, or biscuits.
• Alternatively, just serve with mashed potatoes or pasta.


Brazilian Stroganoff

I got the foundation for the Brazilian stroganoff recipes at http://www.maria-brazil.org/brazilian_strogonoff.htm and http://jv-foodie.typepad.com/foodie/2008/03/brazilian-strog.html. I’ve changed a few things like “catsup” to “ketchup” and “heavy cream” to “whipping cream” and added tomato paste.

Ingredients
• 2-4 lbs beef or chicken (if using beef they recommend filet mignon)
• 1-2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• salt to taste
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 to 3/4 tsp dry oregano
• dry white wine (optional). 1 cup? 2 cups?
• 1 – 1.5 cups whipping cream or Brazilian creme de leite
• 5 tbsp ketchup
• 3 tbsp yellow mustard
• 4-6 tablespoons tomato paste

Directions
• Cut up meat into 1-inch pieces.
• Put into a bowl and mix with garlic, half of the onion, salt, nutmeg, oregano and wine. Let it marinate for 1 hour.
• Sauté remainder with a bit of oil.
• Add meat/chicken and marinade to the pan and cook.
• If it is a bit dry, add a few tablespoons of water, and cook a little while longer. Then add ketchup, mustard and tomato paste. When ready to eat, add cream and let cook for one minute.
• Serve over white rice. (you can see in the photo I used wild rice).

Molé

Maya and I backpacked in Mexico what seems like a long time ago. We had a really great time. We dined daily on street food, sharing every edible morsel and every serendipitous culinary high. Of the highs was corn-on-the-cob slathered in mayonnaise, dusted with chili powder and drizzled with lime juice. We affectionately dubbed the mayonnaise, which festered in large vats under the could-very-likely-spoil-mayonnaise-Mexico City sun, the “salmonella mayonnaise”. We thought this was funny, largely, I suppose, because it didn't make either of us sick. At least we don't think it did.


We also ate a strict diet of nothing but animal crackers, or animalitos, for 24 hours while stuck on a bus that took a very wrong turn somewhere between Mexico City and Oaxaca and refused to pull over for food or anything else. In some ways this was a low, in other ways a high. It's complicated.


My pivotal brush with gastronomical ecstasy was definitely molé. Molé is a sauce of ground nuts, spices, chilies and bitter chocolate. It is the one food I ate in Mexico that I have since sought out with a religious-like zeal.


But finding a truly satisfying molé in Toronto over the years has not always been easy. If on the menu at all, it is often sparingly drizzled over enchiladas, when in Mexico it was lavishly poured over chicken and rice. Otherwise, it is really expensive, when in Mexico, while I don’t remember anymore, it must have been cheap otherwise we wouldn’t have eaten it.

In making molé, I didn’t follow any one recipe. As a starting point, I looked to the Everything Mexican Cookbook, which you do not need to run out and buy unless you too can find it on sale for $5.00 at BMV. I also relied on the wisdom (read: chili recommendations) of my favourite bulk store owner in Kensington. Then I added veggie broth instead of chicken broth, a slew of different nuts, ignored all quantities, probably tripled the chocolate (I’d know for sure if I even knew now what an “ounce” was), and added this Mexican chocolate in the picture here,

which is sweetened, instead of unsweetened/baker’s chocolate.


And it should come as no surprise that I found the molé to be too sweet (and so did Maya). It wasn’t that sweet, and was still good, but part of the complexity of molé is that it is a spicy and savoury chocolate dish. I do believe, generally, in upping the chocolate quantities in recipes that call for baker’s chocolate (we can discuss my unsweetened chocolate loaf another time), but I would rarely suggest increasing the sugar in any recipe unless in an attempt to convert the product into a preserve.

As you can see in the photos above, my molé is more stew than sauce. I’ve stopped serving it on chicken because I just don’t see the point. It’s thick and flavourful, rich and nutty, and stands on its own. But feel free to add chicken or anything else that you want.


You may also think that my photos look weird and that maybe molé is gross. I say, wrong. And look at this photo of someone else's molé that I found online. A ridiculously horrible call on that person's part. But I'm sure that even his/her molé is delicious.

Molé

Ingredients

• 2 guajillo chilies
• 2 pasilla chilies
• 2 morita chilies
• 2 ancho chilies
• 2 mulato chilies
• 1 large onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 can of tomatoes
• ½ cup salted peanuts
• 1/3 cup raisins
• ½ cup almonds
• 1/3 cup cashews
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
• ¼ cup oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar - optional
• ¼ teaspoon anise
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ¼ teaspoon ground coriander
• ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 cup chicken stock/veggie stock
• 2-4 ounces (or more) unsweetened chocolate
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper

Directions
• Remove the stems and seeds from the chilies. Peel and quarter the onion and garlic.
• Blend chilies, onion, garlic, tomatoes and juice, peanuts, almonds, cashews, raisins and sesame seeds in food processor until you get a thick puree.
• Heat oil on medium heat in a pot. Add the puree and cook for approximately 5 minutes, constantly stirring. Stir in the sugar (optional in my opinion), anise, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin and stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes.
• Add chocolate and continue to simmer, stirring constantly.
• Season to taste.
• Serve on rice as is or toss in some shredded chicken.