Mole Rojo Oaxaqueño con Res

This is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Valles Centrales, where the seven moles live and where every cook will tell you that mole rojo is not mole negro's little sister. It is its own dish with its own logic.

Mole negro gets its near-black color from chilhuacle negro and burned tortilla. Mole rojo gets its color from guajillo, ancho, and ripe red tomato, brightened by chile costeño rojo and deepened by chile pasilla oaxaqueño. The result is sharper, fruitier, more direct than negro. It tastes like the chile, not like the smoke. Some Oaxacan cooks call it coloradito's bigger cousin and that is fair enough, though every senora I asked at the 20 de Noviembre market drew the line in a slightly different place.

The beef is not incidental. In Oaxaca, mole rojo most often goes with chicken or turkey, but in the cattle-raising parts of the Mixteca and along the road toward Tlaxiaco, you will find it ladled over slow-simmered beef shank or chuck. The richness of the beef and the brightness of the red mole hold each other up. One without the other tilts.

My mother did not cook Oaxacan food. She was from Jalisco. But there is a page in her notebook, dated 1991, copied from a woman named Doña Esperanza who ran a comedor in Etla. The note in the margin says: 'fría bien la pasta, no tenga prisa.' Fry the paste well, do not rush. That is the whole recipe in five words. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.