The actor loved this dinner so much, Jamie Oliver hunted down the recipe for him.
Key Points
- Patrick Stewart cherished mole enchiladas as one of his best food experiences ever.
- Mole is a rich, traditional Mexican sauce made with chiles, nuts, spices and chocolate.
- Mole recipes vary widely, with sweet, green, red and dark versions offering endless flavor possibilities.
A delicious sauce can take any food to the next level, and mole is a perfect example. Mole is a traditional Mexican sauce made with a blend of dried chiles, nuts, spices and a little bit of chocolate. If you’ve had a really great mole, we’re willing to bet that you still remember it fondly.
You definitely wouldn’t be alone in that. In fact, Patrick Stewart held a meal of chicken mole enchiladas close to his heart for decades. The actor had the enchiladas back in 1984, when he was in Mexico City shooting Dune. Stewart, who recently died at age 86, once told celebrity chef Jamie Oliver about the meal, leading Oliver to contact the chef who had made it to get his recipe.
Oliver recreated the meal alongside Stewart on a 2019 episode of Jamie and Jimmy’s Friday Night Feastand the cozy meal looks so delicious that we can see why Stewart called eating the meal “one of the best food experiences” he’d ever had.
“Cook it for your favorite people and they’ll be mates for life,” Oliver wrote when sharing the recipe on his website. “A guaranteed crowd-pleaser.”
To make the dish, Oliver poaches a whole chicken in herbs, broth and veggies for about two hours, until the meat can be pulled and shredded for enchiladas. He also whips up a corn salsa and some rice to accompany the dish, but the real star is the flavorful mole sauce. Oliver credits the dish to a chef named Claudio, who is a grandson of Judith van Buren, the woman who opened the Mexico City restaurant Stewart enjoyed so much.
The mole is made from a combination of dried mulato, ancho and pasilla chiles, pork fat, sesame seeds, peanuts, almonds, chocolate and lots of other ingredients—nearly 20 in all. Like most moles, the challenging part isn’t following the recipe, which requires lots of slow simmering to develop flavor—it’s collecting all of the ingredients needed to achieve the perfect mole flavor.
Stewart isn’t the only celeb to spill on their love of mole. In a 2023 interview with EatingWellactor Eva Longoria said she developed a huge appreciation for the slow-simmered Mexican sauce while filming in Mexico.
“I wasn’t a fan of mole, and once I got to Oaxaca and prepared it and cooked it and really took part in the process, I really enjoyed it,” said Longoria. “There’s so many different moles: there’s sweet, green, red, dark and bitter. There’s just so many different kinds and thousands of mole recipes.”
So what did Stewart think of his favorite mole recipe, as prepared by Oliver?
“This is exceptional,” he said after taking his first bite. “It is delicious, and so like what I ate then. Thank you.”
Looking for a slightly more simple recipe? Try one of our favorite easy, Mexican-inspired recipes for dinner tonight: