So, watching the fights on TV, eating a Sonora Grill burrito that I’d picked up to go…crunching on SG chips and salsa…I had an epiphany…a thought that came to me in an instant from nowhere…encapsulating my entire personal history in the Universe…I’d have liked to have been an MMA fighter, but these chips and this salsa…dang! That’s some pretty good food they gots down there at Sonora Grill. The ambience inside is amazing and you could probably convince the bartender to change the channel from football to MMA, but more people dig football…far and away, much more popular sport so it’s more likely to be played in most public establishments.

Anyway, I took it home, Mike Brown scored a knockout and then I watched Donald Cerrone destroy his opponent…definitely fight of the night…glad I don’t get punched out by one of these guys for money…for some people…like me, cooking and cheffing is natural, it’s safe…other guys are a little more dangerous. 

Whole Foods is opening a store in Ogden! Finally!

 Mole Coloradito Oaxaqueño

(Respectfully…Ripped off from Seasons Of My Heart: A Culinary Journey Through Oaxaca by Susana Trilling (Ballantine Books, 1999). Copyright 1999 by Susana Trilling.
(who has to be one of the coolest people I’ve met. Great cook, incredible cookbook. She’s one of those people that went to check it out and ‘went native’…blows your mind at every turn.)

8 servings
I learned to make this flavorful combination of chiles and spices from my friend and teacher Carlota Santos. She has a little restaurant in her home where my husband Eric used to eat quite often before I came to live in Oaxaca. She always joked that she lost her best customer when I started to cook here, but gained a friend in me when she taught me the dishes she knew he liked to eat! I spent hours in her kitchen learning about this mole and the tamales and enchiladas you can make with the leftovers.
Seasoning ingredients:
2 large onions, each studded with a whole clove
4 celery ribs with leaves
2 small heads garlic
4 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
2 bay leaves
2 chiles de arbol
6 black peppercorns
2 sprigs fresh thyme or 2 pinches dried
2 whole allspice
2 tablespoons salt
1 1/2 chickens (about 4 1/2 pounds), cut into 8 servings, reserving the back and neck for stock
18 chiles anchos (about 9 ounces), stemmed and seeded
21 chiles guajillos (about 4 1/2 ounces), stemmed and seeded
2 black peppercorns
2 whole cloves
1 whole allspice
1 piece of Mexican cinnamon, about 1 inch long
1/2 small head of garlic, cloves separated
1 small white onion, quartered
1 pound ripe tomatoes (2 medium-large round or 8-10 plum), quartered
1 sprig marjoram or Oaxacan oregano, or ½ teaspoon dried
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon sunflower or vegetable oil
1/2 ripe plantain, sliced
1/2 bolillo or French roll, sliced
1 tablespoon raisins
5 whole, unpeeled almonds
3 tablespoons lard, sunflower oil, or vegetable oil
1/2 cup sesame seeds
2 bars Mexican chocolate (3 ounces each), or to taste
Salt to taste
In a heavy 7-quart stockpot, heat 6 quarts water and the seasoning ingredients to a boil. Add the chicken pieces and lower heat to a simmer. Cover and cook the chicken for about 35 to 45 minutes or until the meat is tender and the juices run clear when the dark meat is pierced with a fork. Remove the chicken, strain, and reserve the stock.
Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil. On a 10-inch dry comal, griddle, or in a cast-iron frying pan over low heat, toast the chiles on both sides for about 10 minutes, toasting the chiles anchos a bit slower and longer than the chiles guajillos because of their thicker skins. Toast them on both sides until their skins start to blister and they give off their aroma. Remove the chiles from the comal or pan, place them in a medium bowl, and cover with the hot water. Soak the chiles for 20 minutes, turning to soften them. Puree in a blender, using as little of the chile water as possible, about 1 cup. Pass the puree through a sieve or food mill to remove the skins.
On the comal, toast the peppercorns, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon stick. Quickly grill the garlic and onion, turning them often until they become translucent. Cool them, then puree the spices, onion, and garlic in a blender with ½ cup of the reserved stock. Set aside.
In an 8-inch cast-iron frying pan over medium heat, cook tomato pieces and marjoram or oregano with no oil until condensed, 10 to 15 minutes. First they will give off their juices, then they will dry out. Puree the tomato mixture in a blender then pass the mixture through a sieve or food mill.
In a medium frying pan, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium heat and fry the plantain and bread slices until brown, about 12 minutes. Remove from the pan. Add more oil (if needed) and fry the raisins until they are plump, about 3 minutes. Remove them from the pan. Fry the almonds until light brown, about 4 minutes. Remove from the pan. Place the plantain, bolillo, raisins, and almonds in a blender with 1-1/2 cups of the reserved broth and blend until smooth. Wipe out the frying pan and put over low heat. Add 1 teaspoon of oil and the sesame seeds and fry until brown, about 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Cool the seeds and grind in a molcajete or spice grinder.
In a heavy 6-quart stockpot, heat 1 tablespoon of lard over high heat until smoking. Add the chile puree a little at a time, stirring constantly. It will splatter about a bit, but keep stirring. Lower heat to medium and after about 20 minutes, or when chile puree is thick, add the tomato mixture and continue to cook, about 15 minutes, stirring to keep the mole from sticking or burning. Add the onion and ground spice mixture and stir well. Add the pureed plantain mixture and ground sesame seeds, stirring constantly, about 10 minutes. Add 4-1/2 to 5 cups of the reserved broth to thin the sauce, then add the chocolate, stirring constantly. When the chocolate dissolves, add the salt. Let it cook down for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. The more time it has to cook, the better.
Return the chicken pieces to the broth and heat through. Add more broth to the mole if needed. The mole should be thick enough to just coat a spoon, no more. Place a piece of chicken on a serving plate and ladle a large spoonful of mole on top. It should completely cover the meat. Serve with corn tortillas.
Hint: You can use turkey or pork instead of chicken. If you want to make it less picante, use half the amount of chiles and the same amount of the other ingredients.

Downtown Ogden’s only Community Garden, The Oasis is located between 24th and 25th and between Monroe and Madison…it’s not super well known yet…it’s by that 7-11 where all the Ogden PD are always hanging out…the neighborhood has fallen into disrepair, to say the least, and those of us who live in the community want to be part of bringing that area back to life. The Sonora Grill and Rickenbacker’s employees went to the Oasis Saturday morning and did some maintenance …shoveled some mulch, picked up some trash, pulled weeds…left no garbage behind…If you want to do something to satisfy your soul, hit the Oasis, bring a friend and a Frisbee…volunteer a little time to checking in on the place. Bring the kids…It’s fun, free and easy.

It’s awesome here in Ogden today because it’s still quite hot outside. I am a hot weather person. I used to love living and cooking in San Diego. It’s no secret. Cooked for 8 years in Las Vegas as the Executive Chef of the Border Grill inside Mandalay Bay Casino, Hotel and Resort on the Las Vegas Strip…I like it hot. Hot, like Mexico and Mexican food…Las Vegas is trashy though… however, San Diego…I lived there on and off for a couple years, between bouts of San Francisco, learning to cook, losing jobs, you know, on to the next one. But San Diego, there was a truly great city.
There’s a lot of great food there. Some stupid food too…I got fired at one hotel for refusing to make hollandaise sauce from a powdered hollandaise sauce mix.

Every afternoon I put in several prime ribs to roast and I removed a couple of the cooked ones for service…this hotel, we sold tons of it. We served great big deadly slabs of prime ribs and topped it with space-age Hollandaise sauce that we made from a secret yellow powdered chemical mix. Better living through chemistry. Just add water.

I had been told to use it by the sous chef. He would get busted and I would get fired if I didn’t go with the yellow powder but I just couldn’t. I knew what I was supposed to do, but I could make it 10 times better with actual fresh ingredients and it costs less and takes half the time. So every afternoon when the sous chef walked away, I slipped around the corner to the refrigerator, grabbed the eggs and vinegar, clarified some butter and threw together some delicious hollandaise sauce. It takes about a second and a half. No one ever knew…until the fateful afternoon the Executive Chef caught me in the act and insisted that I use the powdered hollandaise sauce mix. I refused.

I said, no I won’t, this powdered sauce is garbage!
He said, in his Swiss accent, O.K. Chris! You must do what I tell you or you get off of my line and don’t come back.
Good! Fine! I’m too good for this kitchen anyway!
And I rolled up all my knives in my knife roll and I split. Of course I needed the job pretty bad, but I had my self-respect. I can be a little stuck-up. A little elitist…Believe me, it’s not that hard to make hollandaise from scratch. And then I was out the door and on to the next one…

I bumped into a local guy at the grocery store today; someone who recognized me from Sonora Grill. Out doing some Sunday family grocery shopping. We each introduced our respective families to each other and then we talked about cooking and specifically about making a roasted tomato, garlic, jalapeno salsa…and he was getting ingredients with which to make the salsa…we just had a good chat.
I grew up in a high population density type location, so it’s taken some time to adjust to the one-on-one that sometimes occurs in Ogden…my social skills need a bit of work. I was grateful for just being able to talk to someone about Mexican food. Just being a chef. Being able to eat as much food as I possibly can and then never getting too fat…A chef really doesn’t eat as much as folks might imagine. We’re too busy running around cooking. Another opportunity to be grateful; I get to go to work in the kitchen almost daily. It has truly been a blessing. Thanks, grocery store.

Well, snow is upon us. I can feel it in the air. It hailed like mad last night downtown. I just live several blocks from the restaurant (which is quite convenient for when you need a fix of some awesome Mexican food). They opened a new coffee place down by the Sonora Grill. It’s nice. The cold rain and the coffee, ahhh…it all reminds me of a time when I was a younger Executive Chef in Portland, Oregon. I had a good time in the Pacific NW… Making Northwest style food, like salmon and berries and hazelnuts and spring greens and whole lambs and all that sort of thing…hitting Grateful Dead hippy comunes type organic farms on Sauvie Island on the weekends…kind of had that green culture vibe in Portland. I think it exists here in Ogden too.

The company I worked for, McCormick and Schmick’s had sent me to Seattle to be the Executive Chef at this Seafood joint downtown. It was an awesome job, for sure. I loved every cold and wet, coffee-drinking minute of it. I can handle rain. Snow, that’s a little tougher…

Anyhow, the company loved me, respected me, and sent me to the big city to basically be the Hatchet Man and fire everyone in the restaurant, one at a time… It’s a hardcore business for sure…I recall standing there in the Seattle drizzling mist, across the street from the restaurant with a paper cup of Starbucks coffee in my hand and a cigarette in my mouth, thinking…who am I gonna fire today? Which one of these poor guys is going home without a job today? and then I’d walk in and cut someone’s head off…after several years of that, I was ready to quit smoking for sure…I did too!

Come test your tongue! We are looking for contestants to participate in the 2nd Annual Habanero Eating Contest.

Winner will receive $100 gift card, $50 cash and a sweet mountain bike. Prizes will also be awarded to 2nd and 3rd place contestants.

If you are not brave enough to participate, come and witness the pain first hand.

Check out the pictures from last year here. And some video action here.

MARGARITA SPECIAL – ECLIPSE MARGARITA, IN HONOR OF THAT  TWILIGHT MOVIE COMING OUT. YAY! JOSE CUERVO, BLUE CURACAO ORANGE LIQUOR, FRESH LIME, CRANBERRY JUICE, CHATEAU MONET RASPBERRY LIQUEUR. ONCE YOU STIR IT, IT TURNS BLACK LIKE A VAMPIRE`S HEART! WE STILL HAVE HEINKEN LIGHT FOR THREE DOLLARS. GO TEAM EDWARD!

Still looking for the perfect father’s day gift for dad? Bring him to our sister restaurant, Rickenbacker’s bistro. We’ll be serving a BBQ lunch buffet from 11am to 4pm, Sunday June 20. Can’t wait to see you there!