At Maizano, which opened toward the end of last year in Costa Mesa, Calif., chef Alan Sanz makes a white mole, which is seen less frequently in the United States than some other varieties, by cooking habanero peppers and yellow chiles, green apples, pine nuts, golden raisins, sunflower seeds, plantains, cinnamon, coriander, roasted corn, white chocolate, and assorted other ingredients in cocoa butter.
Separately he nixtamalizes chayote squash and broccolini by soaking them in an alkaline solution, firming them up on the outside while softening them inside.
Then he chars them quickly in the embers of the restaurant’s wood-fired oven and plates them over the mole. He garnishes them with hibiscus pickled onions, nasturtium leaves, and what he calls “Mexican furikake,” a blend of fried and finely ground grasshoppers, sesame seeds, and fried nopale cactus.
Price: $25