Flavors of Mexico: A Red Mole for Noche Buena

A hands-on cooking class culminating in dinner served with wine and beer.

There are a number of dishes Norma Listman eats at home for Christmas Eve, but the most representative of the holiday season is Revoltijo. 

Revoltijo is a special type of mole that appears on the Mexican table only twice a year: once during Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) and again during Lent. Cultivated as well as wild vegetables and weeds play a big roll in this dish; dry shrimp cakes, new potatoes, nopales, and romeritos (known as Suaeda Pulvinata in Mexico, this plant grows by the shores of the lake of Texcoco) add unique complexity to this rich, red mole.

During this hands-on class, we’ll learn about the origins of this particular mole, how to make it, and how to successfully make substitutions for hard-to-find ingredients. 

MENU

Revoltijo (a traditional red mole)
Beans
Fresh Tortillas
Ponche de fruta (a traditional hot punch made with winter fruits)

. 

Norma Listman is an Oakland, California-based chef and artist. Inspired by her youth growing up in Mexico City, Norma brings a vibrant and authentic energy to the food scene in the Bay Area. Her practice both as a chef and artist is dictated by her heritage, she is most interested in traditional cooking methods and the historical periods of Mexican gastronomy. Listman’s passion for the preservation of her culture and her father’s life-long work with maize have ignited her interest for working with native varieties of the crop. Her interest in the preservation of traditional values demands the closest attention to local farming procedures. 

She began her career in restaurants in the front of the house. She managed nationally acclaimed Camino Restaurant in Oakland before deciding to follow her passion and become a professional chef. She was mentored in the kitchen by Chefs Anthony Strong of Delfina in San Francisco and Russell More of Camino in Oakland.

Included in her past culinary and artistic practice are Paraiso, an early twentieth century salon-inspired dinner series held at her Victorian home; A Sors, a historical-food performance commissioned by the Andy Warhol foundation held in commemoration of the beheading of the Austrian-placed Mexican emperor Maximilian; The Alchemy of Dreams, a performance-dinner inspired by the artist Remedios Varo; and a dinner  for Museo Experimental El Eco in Mexico City for their 60th anniversary.