I had been really looking forward to having about ten people over for dinner over the weekend, including two friends who were coming up from below the Mason Dixon line to explore New England. I thought Chicken Mole would be a good idea, so I planned the remainder of the menu around that. I was aiming for a Spanish feel:
- Negroni samplers in Mason jars
- Sparkling pear sangria
- Dates wrapped in bacon
- Hummus with baguette
- Roasted garlic in baby tagine
- Seasoned olives
- Baba ghanoush
- Chicken mole
- White rice with coriander
- Steamed green beans
- Chocolate mousse
- Cheesecake with gluten free gingersnap crust
- Homemade chocolate liqueur or homemade Irish cream liqueur
- Homemade buddhacello
Despite having a menu and a grocery list, when Friday morning rolled around, I still hadn’t gone grocery shopping. And I wasn’t quite up to doing it after work. So I went home and slept instead. By the time I finally motivated to get to the grocery store, I only had about 24 hours to prepare the meal. But I wasn’t quite up to starting, so I put away what absolutely had to go into the refrigerator, crawled back to bed, and decided to deal with everything the next morning.
I was feeling remarkably better when I finally put my feet on the floor on Saturday. I began the morning by puttering around the kitchen - unstacking and restacking the dishwasher, taking out the trash and recycling, sorting through the groceries I had bought the night before. Then I went out to the grocery store on the other side of town to hunt down the chiles for the mole that eluded me at my local store.
All said and done, I didn’t start actually cooking for dinner until after 1030am. This should have sent my blood pressure through the roof; however, I looked at the menu a little more closely and realized that I could adapt my menu to be prepared almost exclusively in my humble blender.
Blender #1: Gazpacho
It’s no secret that, after a gooey cheesy French onion soup, gazpacho is my favorite soup. Especially in the summer time, when tomatoes are plentiful - and flavorful. So when I saw some heirloom tomatoes from my CSA share hanging out in the kitchen, I figured that gazpacho would be the perfect addition to my Spanish themed menu.
Even with my basic blender, I was able to whip up a batch of gazpacho in about five minutes without looking at a recipe. First, I chunked all four tomatoes into the blender. I just held each tomato in my hand and cut it directly into the blender, because that was quicker and less messy than using a cutting board. Once all the tomatoes were in the blender, I added about two inches of roasted garlic olive oil. I had just bought a new (larger than usual) bottle of olive oil, but I couldn’t get it open, so I gave up and used some gourmet oil that a good friend of mine gave me for Christmas. Since my blender isn’t all that fancy, it requires about that much olive oil to get the tomatoes circulating and pureed.
I left the blender running after the tomatoes were pureed, and cut one whole cucumber directly into the puree. Of course, I didn’t take off the cover (that would be too messy); I just dropped the pieces through the hole in the cover. The blender chugged and whirred with each piece, but eventually digested all the cucumber. Next, I quartered an entire red onion through the hole in the cover and let that become one with the puree. Then I spooned in some minced garlic from the large jar that I keep in the bottom of my refrigerator.
Since the blender was becoming a little full at this point, I poured half of the puree off into my cheap straight sided plastic pitcher. Before turning the blender back on low speed, I liberally salted the mixture with kosher salt. Because we all know how well salt brings out the flavor of tomatoes! Then I chunked a green bell pepper into the mixture through the hole in the cover. It was supposed to be a red bell pepper, but I only had green on hand. So I faced the decision of whether to leave out the bell pepper entirely or use a different color for a slightly different taste. The last step was to crumble in a bread roll to give the mixture some body, and let the blender run until the mixture was a completely smooth puree.
Once the puree was smooth, I finally turned off the blender. I poured the puree into the plastic pitcher, gave it a good stir, and used my Tetris skills to fit the pitcher into my disaster of a refrigerator. Yes, decent gazpacho is that easy!
Blender #2: Hummus
I did need to refer to a recipe to make my hummus, although it is so easy that I am a bit embarrassed to mention that. Essentially, my hummus recipe is just a can of drained chickpeas, a juiced lemon, a spoonful or two of minced garlic, and about half a cup of plain yogurt. This time, I got a little fancy: I zested the lemon before I juiced it into the blender. But because I added the lemon zest, I omitted my traditional oregano and black pepper.
At first, my blender gave me a little issue with processing the chickpeas because the lemon juice wasn’t enough to get things moving along. So I stopped the blender, whacked it a few times to drop the yogurt into the chickpeas, and turned back on the blender again. Worked like magic! I thought I might have overdone the yogurt, because the hummus was very runny; however, I decided to let it chill in the refrigerator for a few hours to thicken.
Blender #3: Mole Sauce
I actually started the mole sauce in the sauté pan before I started the gazpacho in the blender because I wanted the mixture to cool. Otherwise, it could run the risk of blowing off the cover and splattering hot liquid all over the place. Definitely not what I needed that afternoon!
The mole sauce recipe that I use comes from the Cook’s Illustrated Best International Recipes cookbook. I was a little panicked about how the sauce would turn out because I wasn’t able to find the chiles that I needed, so I had to substitute chile powders instead. But using the chile powders seriously cut down on the work required to make the sauce. Without the need to toast, cool, seed, and tear up whole chiles, the recipe came together in about fifteen minutes.
Olive oil and chopped onion forms the base of the mole sauce. Once the onion is translucent, the chile powders, ground cinnamon, ground cloves, and bittersweet chocolate get thrown into the pan. Since I was concerned about the potency of the spices, I added an extra ounce of bittersweet chocolate to mellow out the sauce some. As soon as the chocolate is melted, in goes the chicken stock, diced tomatoes, golden raisins, sesame seeds, and almond butter. I tend to think that the almond butter is the secret ingredient, because it thickens the sauce right up. I like to take the sauce off the heat and cool off once it has thickened. Then it is just a matter of pureeing it in a clean blender!
Blender #4: Irish Cream Liqueur
I completely disassembled the blender to thoroughly clean it between making the mole sauce and making the Irish cream liqueur. Making fake Bailey’s isn’t rocket science. This time I just used a full 375 milliliter bottle of inexpensive bourbon instead of measuring 1.75 cups. In addition to that is a half a pint of heavy cream, one can of sweetened condensed milk, some vanilla extract, some almond extract, and some espresso powder. Pulse all that in the blender a few times (holding the cover on tightly to prevent splattering!) and then you’re done. The hardest part about the recipe is funneling the booze into clean bottles; then again, if I had the room, I could have just put the entire blender pitcher into the refrigerator and skipped the funneling.
The Rest of It
With an appetizer, starter, main course, and dessert all set, I could really relax. Anything else would be extra. With that in mind, I started cutting fruit for the sangria into the pitcher: one mango (which wasn’t as ripe as I had hoped), a few bunches of red grapes, one quart of strawberries. To that, I added a bottle of apple cider and a liquor based composed of poire william liqueur, cointreau, and dry curcao. I stirred roughly to mash some of the fruit into the liquor and set it aside to soak. When guests arrived, they could serve themselves to the pitcher and top it off with cold prosecco to make a proper glass of sparkling sangria.
Since I still had some time, I turned my hand to the chocolate mousse. It’s basically four components: melted chocolate, hollandaise sauce, whipped cream, meringue. So, maybe it’s not that simple because each component takes a bit of time to get right. And each component needs to be carefully - yet thoroughly - mixed into the base. My mousse was looking good until it came to fold in the meringue. Then it started to get a little grainy. But I didn’t want to overmix it and deflate the dessert. So grainy mousse it was!
Once the mousse was tucked into the refrigerator, I started on the roasted garlic. Again, I cheated and looked at a recipe. I rubbed off the extra skin from three heads of garlic and then cut off the top of each. After arranging the garlic in an ovenproof pan, I mixed together half a cup of chicken stock with a generous splash of cooking sherry and poured it over the beheaded garlic. I sealed the pan with aluminum foil, popped it into a very hot oven, and left it alone for about fifty minutes.
After the roasted garlic was in the oven, I cleaned, cut, and arranged the chicken breast pieces in two ovenproof containers. I slathered them with mole sauce, and popped that tray into the oven for about forty minutes.
That was about all that I had energy for, so I turned my hand to moving and setting the tables, slicing bread, and other nonculinary tasks.
The Verdict
In the end, we were a party of five instead of ten, so the modest menu that I prepared was plenty to make everyone happy - both at dinner and with their packages of leftovers.
The hummus didn’t thicken as it chilled, but no one seemed to mind. I just served it with a spoon rather than a knife. In addition to the roasted garlic, I also set out a variety of cheeses that I had received through the cheese share with my CSA. Sure enough, my guests had a good time mixing and matching their bites. I think the favorite was hummus with a clove of roasted garlic on it.
Once the chicken timer was down to about twenty minutes, I poured the rice into the boiling water on the stove. I used a two to one water to rice ratio, but completely forgot to add cardamom or coriander (or any other spice for that matter!). Everything was magically ready at nearly the same time, so we all sat down to enjoy our Chicken Mole main course along with the rice and the fabulous green beans that one the guests brought with her.
Of course, it wasn’t until we were well into the Chicken Mole main course that I realized that I forgot to serve the gazpacho. By then, we were all looking forward to dessert, so it was decided that I should bring the gazpacho to the office for lunch for the upcoming week.
As always, the best part of the meal was sharing it with good friends! Although this crew probably wouldn’t have minded if I tapped out and just ordered pizza from across the street, it made me very happy that I was able to serve them a nutritious and delicious meal - with the help of my blender!
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