Vallejo strives to produce moles that are “super-refined” and “completely the opposite of how many people think of it.” Like many of his contemporaries, he wants to banish the notion that it has to be heavy, dark and gluey. If you’ve been served the dish in some Mexican restaurants — both here and in Mexico, the popular mole poblano is sometimes stirred up by adding water to a premade powder — then you probably know what he means. A true mole requires hours of preparation and close attention. Fallacies abound, the most common being that it is a sauce made of chocolate, an ingredient that appears only occasionally, as in the semisweet poblano. Mexico being Mexico, a mole nearly always includes chiles. And preparation is consistent: Multiple ingredients are ground up and a liquid, like stock, is added. There’s generally an aromatic (like garlic or onions) and a thickener (nuts, seeds, bread, tortillas). But, really, there are no absolutes, allowing chefs a wide range in which to freestyle.

At the restaurant Alcalde in Guadalajara, Francisco Ruano knows that when a chef creates a mole in Mexico, he or she is announcing a declaration of principles. “When you want to make a statement on your menu, you make a mole,” he says. His own proclamation involves taking the dish’s “kind of baroque” infrastructure and giving it a more minimalist makeover. Eschewing the epic shopping list of ingredients required by some recipes, he views it as a challenge to produce the same deep, pronounced flavor with just 10 or 12. Ruano amps up the rivulets of sweetness and tartness with vinegar, charred bananas and onion purée; in one mole, he’s even brought umami to the equation with a base of seaweed. “That’s my way of cooking,” he says. “It’s not better and it’s not more sophisticated than the tradition. I just like to twist things.” His vibrantly green and velvety version of pipian (generally made from pumpkin seeds) doesn’t meet with much resistance from his customers — not unless we’re talking about his abuela, the woman from whom Ruano learned about pipian. “She tried it and said, ‘What the hell did you do?’ ” he recalls. “Grandmothers...”