Seitan stir fry with ramps and spring onions. I cooked it in a mole amarillo sauce, which is quite simple to make compared to the mole coloradito I made earlier. In this version of an amarillo, you roast two ancho chiles and one guajillo chile and soak them in hot water. Then char vegetables under the broiler: half an onion, two garlic, and a can of green tomatoes. Grind ten black peppers and ten cloves and combine them with the vegetables and chiles in a food processor. Then cook the sauce on the stove in a little canola oil. It didn’t end up yellow at all; more of an ochre; perhaps because I didn’t add any chicken broth to thin the mole. It also turned out far too hot. I would cut the number of chiles in half next time, or maybe use a different kind of chile altogether. The machine-gun heat of the anchos made it lose all personality.
(Photo: Bonsai for sale, Olney, Maryland.)
365 Days of Food 