Duck Mole Enchiladas

A while back, we had an idea to make a pasta "al forno" with duck meat sauce appetizer.  Demoing it by mistake with a chipotle sauce, we decided to skip pasta and make enchiladas!  The initial difficulty lay in making tortillas, which none of us had done previously.  We knew we wanted a semi-perfect cigar shape, so we tried making "pasta-tillas" because we did know how to make pasta.  It was really rubbery and hard to make and kind of.....odd.  Our next inspiration became "crepe-tillas" which are awesome!

This is a recipe for crepetilla batter:

1 ½ cup Masa Harina

½ cup Flour

4 ea Eggs

Milk, as needed

Salt, TT

- Whisk all ingredients to thin, creamy consistency.

Once we had our wrapper, the next difficulty lay in developing a filling.  We knew we wanted to utilize the awesome shelling beans which were coming from our farm at the time.  We developed a chunky bean and cheese filling for the enchiladas, which tasted great.  When we baked it, however, they flattened out and looked sloppy.  So we had to come up with a system that has been pretty foolproof, if a bit complex.  Here it is:

First we shuck all the beans from their husks.  This must be done by as many people as possible simultaneously, otherwise it takes forever.

These beans are called "Dragon's Tongue" cool, right?  The taste is pretty comparable to an average white bean. They come from our farm, called Popelouchum in San Juan Bautista.

The beans are then simmered until very tender and buttery.  We keep the flavor simple and use only salted water.

Then we pass the beans through a metal sieve called a tamis.  This allows us to determine how smooth our beans will be and removes the undesired skins.

 We then add shredded mozzarella, salt, and melted seaweed starch called Agar Agar.  Agar has the advantage of melting only at extremely high temperatures.  This way, when the cheese is melty and gooey in the enchiladas, the bean puree will still be fudgy and cake-like.

Above, Sous Chef Chris prepares special PVC pipes with Acetate paper and pipes the bean puree inside the tubes.

"Keep it Simple" - One pauses to appreciate the irony.

Once the bean mixture has cooled, we remove it from the pipes with a wooden dowel.  Here they are looking extremely uniform.  Awesome!

Next we cut the bean tubes into sections, lay them out next to "Crepetillas" painted with duck mole and roll up. Now there's our perfect cigar-shaped duck enchilada roll!

The duck Mole is made from simmered duck legs, mixed with dried and fresh peppers, spices and chocolate. On the side, we serve a small salad of Figs, Arugula, Orange Segments, some crispy Tortillas and Queso Fresco.

...SICK!!