mole – Memphis Flyer

Jonathan Magallanes is a big dog rider in the kitchen. With warp speed he can whip up a mole or a salsa.

Instead of roosting in crash padding on a superslab, Magallanes is in a chef’s jacket working at breakneck speed at the stove.

An avid motorcyclist (hence the lingo), Magallanes, 42, who got his first motorcycle when he was five years old, is chef/owner with his dad, Pepe Magallanes, of Las Tortugas restaurant.

Born in Memphis but living for a while in Mexico City, Jonathan rode his little yellow 50-cylinder Yamaha, participated in Boy Scouts, practiced piano, and took karate.

Cooking sparked his interest after he made a pizza in an extracurricular cooking class at St. George’s Independent School. He remembered “preparing food being this exciting, really creative thing” when he lived in Mexico. “My dad was in the kitchen doing a million things at once and preparing food for a lot of different people. The kitchen was a fun place to be.”

Jonathan thought, “I can do this. This is something I have complete creative liberty with.”

He didn’t pursue cooking. “With so many things going on, I think it sort of went on the back burner — no pun intended — for a long time.”

He went to Mexico for a year of school when he was at Kenyon College. “We went to Africa and Greece and Western Europe. I think that trip was really where I sort of discovered this exciting world of food and exotic food. I really think I developed a love of food in a new way.”

After graduating with a business degree, Jonathan moved to Naples, Florida, where his parents lived, and got a job in sales with a paint company. He also waited tables at high-end restaurants.

His parents moved back to Memphis, where his dad opened Las Tortugas. Jonathan also returned, but he wanted Memphis to be a home base to network and do resumes.

While helping his dad at Las Tortugas, Jonathan “saw this book on Mexican cooking that was in the office and was just flipping through it. I came across a dish called Mole Verde, which is a green mole that has pumpkin seeds, and it was really exciting to me. I think the fact that it had a ton of ingredients. Then it was really up to you to make all those flavors work. It was also exotic. Sort of rustic.”

They served it as a special. “One of the first people who had it was a lady. And she said, ‘That’s one of the best moles I’ve ever had in my life.’ When she said that, it was this jolt of electricity and I felt alive in a way that, professionally, I had not really had. It was such a great feeling that I wanted to feel it again.”

He decided to go into the restaurant business with his dad, who let him “change the menu in ways that we both agreed on. I wanted to add more variety to it. Add more depth to it. Maybe add some things that people aren’t familiar with. Like moles that are done with seeds and nuts and not chocolate. I trusted my intuition. I thought that if I really liked something, people are going to like it.”

His style became dishes with a “ton of flavor” but light and colorful. “At the same time being traditional.”

In 2014, Jonathan was invited by Felicia Willett, owner of Felicia Suzanne’s restaurant, to be included in a team to cook at the James Beard House. “That was, in many ways, a career-defining experience. The friendship and respect of all your peers is what it’s all about. It keeps me motivated to do the best job that I can. And to know that you’re part of a community of people who are really trying to change how people perceive Memphis. They really are proud that they’re from Memphis. And proud that Memphis is up and coming as a food town.”

Jonathan’s contribution to that James Beard dinner was the same Mole Verde recipe he discovered in a cookbook years before. “It was really the dish that set off my culinary journey.”

Las Tortugas, 1215 S. Germantown, 751-1200

Jonathan Magallanes: Making those flavors work

It wasn’t Valentine’s Day when Tita prepared a mole (“mow-lay”) with chocolate, almonds, and sesame seeds in Laura Esquivel’s novel Like Water for Chocolate. It was a mole that, if Cupid were God, would have been for her to eat alone with Pedro, the man she loved. Instead, the mole was for a banquet honoring the firstborn child of Pedro and his wife Rosaura, Tita’s sister.

“The secret is to make it with love,” Tita tells a guest who wants her recipe. And she means it. As Tita grinds the almonds and sesame seeds together, Pedro walks into the kitchen and is transfixed by the sight of Tita’s body ungulating as she works the stone with energy and grace. They share a passionate gaze and can no longer hide their love.

The word mole comes from molli, an Aztec word that translates into sauce, mixture, or concoction. There are as many ways to make mole as there are kitchens in Mexico, but essentially it’s a ground paste of roasted chile peppers, nuts, seeds, fruit, and spices.

Ari LeVaux

Ingredients for mole

Mole is a celebratory dish served at the best of occasions, where it often headlines the meal. The idea of chocolate in a main course might seem odd, but historically, chocolate was served bitter and spicy, like the Aztec brew Cortez drank from a golden cup. Sweet chocolate as we know it comes from Europe, while modern mole, in its myriad forms, incorporates many ingredients the Europeans brought to the New World.

I’m going to share a mole recipe that was inspired by Tita’s, though I’ve tweaked it for V-Day by increasing the chocolate, and served the mole with chicken instead of the walnut-fattened turkeys Tita used. This mole is spectacular with wild game birds as well.

Remove the skin from a chicken and simmer it with a carrot, an onion, and two stalks of celery, all whole. When the chicken is falling-apart soft (1-2 hours), remove from heat and let cool. Pull out the bones and stuff.

Meanwhile, heat a heavy pan on medium. Toast, and then set aside the following:

¼ cup pumpkin seeds, toasted until they start to pop; ¼ cup almonds; ¼ cup pecans; ¼ cup sesame seeds; ¼ cup cocoa seeds or nibs; and ¼ cup peanuts, all toasted until brown.

(If you want to follow Tita’s recipe more closely, omit the pecans, pumpkin seeds, and raisins, below.)

Remove the stems and seeds of 3 dried pasilla chiles, 3 dried anchos, and a mulato (or substitute with poblano or guajillo). Break the chile skins into pieces, and then toast in the pan until crispy, but not burnt. Set aside.

Toast the chile seeds until dark brown, set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of oil to the pan, and fry a half-cup of raisins, stirring often, until they puff up.

Add more oil, sauté 5 cloves of garlic and a medium onion. Tear apart a bread roll, toast the chunks, and fry the chunks for 10 minutes with the garlic and onions.

With a mortar and pestle or spice grinder, grind 2 inches of cinnamon stick, 1 teaspoon each of black peppercorns and coriander, ½ teaspoon of anise seeds, and 5 whole cloves.

Put the roasted nuts and seeds in a food processor, run it until they’re pulverized, and begin adding the shards of chile. If at any point the food processor’s contents get too thick, add broth from the chicken pot. Add 3 tablespoons chocolate (double that if you couldn’t find cocoa seeds or nibs to roast).

Add the fried onion garlic bread, and one-half of the ground spices. Keep adding just enough chicken broth so it all keeps getting sucked through the blades.

Tease apart the chicken flesh and reheat it in enough stock to cover it.

Scoop a cup of your mole paste into the cooking chicken and mix everything really well. After it’s simmered together for 10 minutes, taste it. Add more ground spice from the mortar and pestle if you want. Add sugar, one teaspoon at a time, stirring, mixing, and tasting, until it just starts to taste sweet. Mole, like love, is bittersweet, and its flavor depends on this delicate balance.

Salt to taste. Cook another half-hour, until it starts to thicken.

Chicken mole is often served with rice or tortillas. I prefer to tear a few corn tortillas into pieces and add them to the mole 5 minutes before it’s done cooking, and then serve it in a bowl, garnished with chopped onions. A glass of red wine makes a great accompaniment. The wine’s acidic earthiness enhances the flavors of the mole.

Or, you can skip the chicken, use water or stock to facilitate the food processor stage, and serve the mole any number of ways — including straight, with a spoon, or combined with equal parts mayo to make molennaise, a great spread, dip, or edible body paint.

Tita’s mole did not create the passion that she and Pedro shared but allowed it to surface. And so, too, will your interpretation whet the appetite of any passions, if indeed they exist, between you and your Valentine. Hopefully, this love will be less star-crossed than Pedro’s and Tita’s.