Chilaquiles con Mole Poblano

This is a Puebla dish, and more specifically a Puebla morning dish. Chilaquiles exist all over Mexico, in salsa verde, in salsa roja, in red mole, in green mole, but the version finished with mole poblano belongs to the kitchens of the Angelopolis, where mole is made in such quantity for Sunday and for special occasions that there is always some left in the cazuela on Monday morning. That leftover is what becomes breakfast.

Let me be clear about one thing before you start. Chilaquiles are breakfast. They are not nachos. Nachos are a Tex-Mex invention from Piedras Negras that took a wrong turn at the border. Chilaquiles are day-old corn tortillas, cut and fried in lard until crisp, then dressed in a warm sauce at the moment of service. The structure matters. The texture matters. Too much sauce and you have soup. Too little and you have dry chips. You are aiming for the moment between crisp and soft, the bite where the totopo gives way under the tooth but has not yet surrendered.

The mole poblano is the second non-negotiable. Real mole poblano is not chocolate sauce. It is a slow-built sauce of chile mulato, chile ancho, chile pasilla, and chile chipotle, with toasted nuts and seeds, dried fruit, spices, day-old bolillo or tortilla for body, and a small amount of chocolate at the end to round the bitter edge. If you are making this dish from scratch mole, set aside two days. If you are making it from yesterday's mole, which is the point, set aside thirty minutes. Mole always tastes better on the second day. The chiles and the spices marry overnight.

My mother kept a page in her notebook for chilaquiles, three different versions, one in salsa verde, one in salsa roja, and one she copied from a poblana woman who lived in our building in Colonia Roma. The poblana version had a note in the margin: 'el mole de ayer, nunca el de hoy.' Yesterday's mole, never today's. She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and using leftovers well is half of that knowledge.