Cooking and sunrise

At least some of you know that I’m member of a very special „club“: a group of 5 people that meet once a year to watch the sunrise. You definitely have reason to wonder because we don’t even know ourselves how that crazy idea started. What we know is that it came up about one year before we finished school. On Nadja’s birthday we all agreed to meet for a sunrise at the Wasserkuppe (the highest mountain in our region) if we all passed our Abitur. Since then we (try to) meet every year.

This year we even met in London because two of us were there anyway. You can read about it on Nadja’s blog. Somehow I didn’t manage to write about it here.

As I was in Mexico last year I couldn’t join the others when they met. You should know that in this case the rules of our club are very strict: who misses a meeting has to cook for the rest of the group. That’s what I did last Thursday. Here is a picture…



I thought about something originally Mexican and what I came up with was chicken and potatoes with “mole poblano” and “flan” as dessert. Vanessa (she missed one meeting, too)’s part was the first course which was salad wrapped in ham with olives and I guess some more ingredients (sorry, I concentrated too hard on preparing my part).

My friends at least said they liked what I prepared and asked for the recipe. So here is also for the rest of you:

Mole Poblano:
about 400g chilis (depends on the chilis and your taste)
about the same amount of onions
4 tomatoes
10 cloves of garlic
150g of almonds (ground)
8 pinks
10 pepper kernels
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 bars of chocolate
juice of 1 lime
oil and butter
1l chicken broth

Cut the chilis (best: using rubber cloves otherwise even your fingers will hurt afterwards). Fry them slightly in a pan. Then add water and let them soak some minutes.

Cut the onions, tomatoes and garlic and fry them, too. Mash everything (including the chilis without water) in a mixer.

Stew almonds, pinks, pepper, cinnamon and coriander and mash them as well.

Put all that in a high pot and add the lemon juice. Cook it slightly during 10 minutes while constantly stirring. Break the chocolate bars into little pieces and add them to the sauce. Fill up with chicken broth and let it cook about 20 to 30 minutes. If it thickens too much add more of the broth. Don’t forget to stir it constantly!


Chicken and potatoes:
If you don’t know how to prepare that, you better don’t try the mole.


Flan:
2 cups of whipped cream
1 cup of milk
1 pinch of salt
½ teaspoon of natural vanilla
1 cup of sugar
4 eggs
2 egg yolks
7 teaspoons of sugar

Mix the whipped cream, milk, salt and vanilla in a pot. Heat it until it starts to cook. Withdraw it from the cooker and let it cool at least 30 minutes.

Put the cup of sugar in a small pan and stir it until the sugar is completely melted. Rapidly put the sugar in 6 fire-proof dishes.

Stir the eggs, egg yolk and sugar. Bit by bit add it to the cream. Put everything in the dishes with the sugar.

Put the dishes in a baking pan (or something similar). Add water until the dishes are half way in the water. Put it in the oven at 180°C for about 40 to 50 minutes (until the mass hardens).

Let it cool for at least 2 hours afterwards. Put the dishes upside down on a plate and remove the flan.

Enjoy you meal!