Sharing his culinary experiences and demonstrating how to make Black Moles
Chef Colin Tooke shares his method for making Mexican Black Mole. Photo: Deepti Batra/The Dialog
On Jan. 26, the centre for hospitality and culinary arts’ Taste of Tomorrow series, started the year with south-western cooking. Chef Colin Tooke, owner of Grand Electric and Electric Mud, demonstrated how to make black moles and shared his culinary experiences.
The evening started with Chef Tooke sharing the story of his rise to fame, and all the road bumps and up-hill battles he’s crossed so far, while having the courage to accept his flaws and the major mistakes he made along the way.
He talked about starting with a minuscule investment and utilizing his resources to the best possible way during the initial stages of starting out with his partner at Grand Electric.
Later, after gaining support from regular customers for the consistent quality of food and the true Mexican ambience of his restaurant, he started sourcing authentic Mexican ingredients, from Mexico.
Today he owns two Mexican themed outlets, one operating in Parkdale and the other in Muskoka, and employs over 100 hospitality staff.
The company also organizes regular motivational group trips to Mexico to get inspiration from local cuisine.
He mentioned that it’s very difficult to re-create real Mexican cuisine due to lack of locally available ingredients and weather conditions in Toronto. Tooke said, “most of the dishes at Grand Electric are Mexican inspired rather than being authentic Mexican dishes.”
Further sharing his Mexican cuisine experience, more relevant to his recipe demo of Black Mole, he quipped, “it is fun to burn the ingredients and then sell it to customers and make profit.” The packed atrium at the chef school to burst into laughter.
To learn more about what made Tooke say that, read his recipe on black moles as demonstrated in the series of Taste of Tomorrow at the chef school.
Tooke suggests getting ingredients from Perola Supermarket in Kensington Market, in Toronto.
