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It’s National Chocolate Week and a great way to celebrate the event is holding a Chocolate and Wine tasting dinner. If you have not thought about it, this is a great way to enjoy these two indulgences.

The Chocolate dinner party menu was as follows:

Starter

A glass of prosecco and a simple starter of white chocolate spiked baba ghanoush.

Main Course

Slow Cooker Chicken Mole paired with the Château Liversan Haut-Médoc. The recipe is a Mexican family favourite with layers of flavours from the smoked chilli and richness from dark chocolate in the sauce. Matching this with a rich Bordeaux, with ripe blackberry flavours.

Dessert

A simple rich dark chocolate mousse paired with a dessert wine, the Campbells Rutherglen Muscat. This dessert wine is sweet with raisin and honey flavours. This Australian Muscat is very reasonably priced at £12.49 and if you have never tried a dessert wine, this would be one that you will love.

After dinner, we served up some dark ruby Cockburn’s Special Reserve Port with a selection of chocolate truffles from Paul A Young. A nice way to round off and evening’s indulgence. Port is an indulgence that is often overlooked today. Port shouldn’t be relegated to stuffy old academic dinners but can be enjoyed in so many different ways as we did at this Port and Chocolate matching.

Cooking with Chocolate – Slow Cooker Mexican Chicken Mole Recipe

Recently, with Tequila Fest and Mescal tasting events, I have met quite a few Mexicans in London. As this is a cuisine that i have not cooked much of before, I wanted to give this one a try. I was told that everyone has their own family recipe and I am looking forward to learning the proper way to do this from a new friend soon. But for now, I made this Chicken Mole recipe in my new Crock Pot. It worked really well and the chocolate added an earthiness to the combination of flavours. It was very easy to cook and will definitely be cooking this again.

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Slow Cooker Chicken Mole recipe

This reciepe packs a punch in flavours. Very easy to cook, just put all the ingredients in the slow cooker and let it do its job. No kitchen skills required! As we can't get dried Mexican chillies easily in the local supermarkets, you can use the jars of chipotle sauces made by Santa Maria. Adjust the heat to your own liking as these sauces can be quite powerful. I used both the dried ones and added some sauce to taste.

Prep Time15

Cook Time4

Total Time4 15

Ingredients

4 skinless chicken thighs
1 large onion
3 cloves of garlic peeled
50 g dark chocolate I used Lindt 90%
2 smoked dried chipotle chillies soaked in hot water for 15 minutes
1 tbsp chipotle chilli sauce
1 can tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
3 tbsp sliced almonds or ground almonds
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground cinnamon
salt to taste

Instructions

Soak the dried chillies in hot water for 15 minutes.
Skin the chicken thighs but leave the bones in
Peel and cut the onion into quarters and place in the slow cooker,
Add the garlic, chocolate, chilli, spices, almonds, tomatoes and tomato puree into the pot too.
place the chicken on top of this mixture and put the lid on the pot.
Cook on high for 4 hours n- 5 hours
When almost ready, remove the chicken. The chicken will be falling off the bone at this stage so work gently.
Stir to mix all the ingredients and using a stick blender, blitz the sauce to a thick paste consistency. Return the chicken to the pot and cover with the sauce.
Serve with some rice and salsa on the side.

Notes

Authentic Mexican recipes use different dried chillies in their Mole and every family has their own secret recipe. You can buy dried Ancho chilli from online retailers if you prefer.

The pairing of these wines were based on the advice by the Waitrose Cellar team.

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