I saw someone make Chicken Mole on the television. The mole sauce looked good, but I wanted to try making something with quinoa, as well. I think part of that desire to make something with quinoa arose from the fact that the grain, at least to my tastes, just doesn’t have a strong flavor. The hope was that when paired with the mole sauce and some mexican cheese, I might have a coherent dish with quinoa that I like to eat.

There really isn’t a set recipe for this dish that I can link to, however I can share the individual recipes that inspired this dish. For the quinoa, I worked from this recipe on The Minimalist Baker. I really like the look and concept of Minimalist Baker, but I’m not vegan, gluten-free, or lactose-intolerant and have no desire to start any of those diets. As a result, I tend to not want to make recipes that would require more work than their conventional counterparts.

The mole sauce was constructed from a Cooks Illustrated recipe that I found here. I originally saw the recipe on America’s Test Kitchen, and, like most of the recipes from that show, sought it out on someone’s blog to get around the paywall of the ATK website. Sorry ATK, but I’m just not ready to pay for access to recipes on a website.

I really wanted this dish to be good. I really did. It ultimately took more effort than I thought it would and I was really hopeful. Alas, this dish was aggressively okay. The mole tasted good, but it did nothing to elevate the overall blandness of the quinoa. While I wouldn’t make this again, I am curious to try to make chicken mole at some point with the Cook’s Illustrated recipe. Hopefully that turns out well.