Steak mole tacos with avocado, lime, and Great Divide Hibernation Ale.
A lot about this dish is atypical. First, mole is a Mexican sauce that is usually served with chicken, almost like a stew. Second, it is rarely added to steak. And third, your average Mexican food eater might add, why put it in a taco? If you do that, you lose all the steeping, stewy goodness of the mole.
The short answer to that question is that it pairs better with the Great Divide Hibernation Ale. But before we get there, a sidebar about mole.
Mole, for those who don't know, is a thick sauce with a base of three different kinds of chiles: pasilla, guajillo and mulato. It is spiced with clove, cinnamon, allspice, thyme, oregano, and Mexican chocolate. It blends one broiled tomato, an onion, peanuts, raisins, almonds, sesame seeds, a plantain, chicken broth, and, if you so choose, pureed corn tortillas and bread. It's like blending everything savory and sweet you have in the kitchen with the harvest's chiles, and crossing your fingers.
Every element from the chiles to their seeds to the plantain, peanuts and cinnamon is toasted before being blended together. In this way, mole has a rich and complex roasted flavor. But it is also difficult to pair with a drink. What tanniny red wine is bold enough to stand up to the variety of chiles and the dark, toasted nuts? None that I have ever tasted.
After recently drinking the Great Divide Hibernation Ale, however--a beer with smoky, almost charcoaly malts--I thought I'd finally found the one drink that could complement the dish. The Hibernation Ale is just asking for an entree with complex roasted elements that would simultaneously enhance the sweetness of the malts in the beer. Mole seemed perfect. Of course, I'd have to make a few adjustments to make it really sing--namely cooking steak instead of chicken, and wrapping it all in a tortilla--but the result was successful.
Steak mole tacos (for 2)
- 6-8 corn tortillas
- 1 large avocado
- 1 lime
- Ingredients for mole (see below)
For mole sauce, see Diana Kennedy's recipe from the Art of Mexican Cooking (via the Food Network). I made almost no changes to this, except that I used some powdered spices instead of fresh, and did not add tortillas or bread to thicken. (In Carbondale, chiles can be found at Dona Camila Mexican grocery store across from Long Branch on Jackson and at Schnucks.)
Once mole is simmering for final 35 minutes, sear 1 pound of steak on high heat, 2 minutes per side. Put steak in simmering mole sauce another 5 minutes. Remove from sauce and slice. Slice avocados. Warm tortillas in a pan on medium-high, remove and add steak and avocado slices. Drizzle with mole sauce. Serve with lime wedge and squirt lime over taco before eating. Mexican cheese such as queso anejo and queso chihuahua (for melting) are also recommended on top.
So, how did it taste with the beer? The warmed corn tortillas and the intense roasted flavors in the mole were nice complements to each other and to the Hibernation Ale. They were so flavorful, in fact, that they corrected the overwhelming smokiness of the ale, bringing out the sweetness of the malts instead. The mole was perfect because like the ale it is smoky, but it also has a number of sweet, spicy elements--almost like a piece of dark chocolate with flecks of chile in it. Come to think of it, the Hibernation Ale might be a good complement to that chocolate, as well.
Mole is a complicated sauce and is generally made on special occasions because of the work involved. If you make a full batch, you will have a lot left over; freeze some and/or use a serving to make classic chicken mole, or just experiment--especially if you pick up a six-pack of the Hibernation Ale.
Read my review of the Great Divide Hibernation Ale here.
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