Colin Ambrose of Sag Harbor’s Estia’s Little Kitchen, has been making mole at his restaurants for more than 20 years and readily admits there is no one way to do it. “Everyone has their own version of mole sauce,” says Colin. “It has a good number of ingredients and steps, but it’ll be worth your while to give it a try while you’re sipping a margarita.” In fact his version has 16 ingredients and five steps (not that bad). But you only need three tools: a knife, a food processor and a cast iron skillet.
Colin is a recipient of Slow Food’s East End’s Snail of Approval, an honor SFEE awards to restaurants and food producers due to their dedication to sustainability of land, people and their business — in addition to producing delicious good, clean and fair food, of course!
For his cooking demo, and our fundraiser, Colin cooked a Cinco de Mayo Feast that includes roasted duck tamales with mole sauce, pickled onion Garnish, pan seared duck breast, a spring salad and hibiscus and ginger margaritas.
The duck is from Long Island, and Colin grows his own corn for the tamales. However, last year a sudden storm destroyed his crop, so he cooked with corn meal from Marilee Foster’s farm. He and Marilee grow Oaxacan green corn that they grind themselves. The corn variety, which is a startling bright emerald green is a field corn that is meant to be dried and ground.