Dinner at the Ranch

Bombia enchilada casserole with mole, pico de gallo and guacamole

This prepa­ra­tion was a very pop­u­lar item at the Blossoming Lotus Restaurant in Kapaʻa. It’s a bit com­pli­cat­ed for every­day meals, but the stun­ning effect is worth the effort when you have a lot to feed.

The basic recipe is much as it was at the Lotus, but we are famil­iar enough with it’s prepa­ra­tion to just wing it and throw it togeth­er, mak­ing it a bit of our own inter­pre­ta­tion. There are 6 sep­a­rate preps that are brought togeth­er for the com­plet­ed dish.

First, the casse­role itself has a mar­i­nat­ed and baked tem­peh (1), mixed with pin­to beans and rice. This is lay­ered with corn tor­tillas in a kind of rich enchi­la­da sauce (2) that is thick­ened with silken tofu, full of sun-dried toma­toes and gua­jil­lo and ancho chilies. This is topped with sea­soned and fer­ment­ed cashew cheese (3) and baked.

To serve, we make a thick, fair­ly sweet/spicy mole sauce (4) with chilies, carob chips, toma­toes, spices, cacao pow­der, raisins and toast­ed pump­kin and sesame seeds. Pico de gal­lo sal­sa (5) is pret­ty stan­dard fare here: our ver­sion is a very sim­ple sal­sa cru­da we pre­fer to the more com­plex prepa­ra­tion the restau­rant used. We top it with our own ver­sion of gua­camole sauce; (6) a con­cise mix­ture of avo­ca­do, lime juice, aji dulce chilies, salt and cilantro. The restau­rant used a veg­an sour crème instead.

It goes togeth­er (quite fes­tive­ly I think!) as you see here:

The enchi­la­da casse­role sits on a lay­er of mole sauce and is topped with pico de gal­lo sal­sa and guacamole

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