Guacamole

Soft, smooth, creamy and yielding…  somehow I don’t think those adjectives came to mind to the first Mesoamericans that stumbled across an avocado.  Fortunately, their discovery was the world’s gain.  I love to celebrate that discovery every now and then by smashing together some avocados along with other new-world crops  and making what the Spanish called “the butter of the poor”, but what we’ve all come to know and love as “guacamole”.

Just in time for your Cinco de Mayo celebrations!  Wait a minute… what the hell is Cinco de Mayo anyway.  Oh… you mean a commemoration of the victory of Mexican forces over the French in the Battle of Puebla, 1862?  Sounds pretty good!  Surely Mexicans take pride in that glorious day, right? Actually, I didn’t know anything about Cinco de Mayo celebrations until I moved to the US… and I’m of Mexican heritage.  Funny, I also didn’t know what the hell Monterey Jack cheese or taco shells were and that these were combined with ground beef to make “tacos”, until I came to America.  What a country!  However, if you are attending one of these celebrations and need something to bring, lest you incur the wrath of your host, bring along this simple, yet bold guacamole.  Better yet: feign ill, grab a six pac of your favorite Mexican lager, a bag of tortilla chips and devour the whole thing yourself!

Yeah, Mexican food has received, or at least what I perceive to be, a horrible reputation.  Heavy, greasy dishes involving something fried served with rice, beans and iceberg lettuce on the side.  You hardly ever hear of the fresh, light, and vibrant dishes that you’ll find across Mexico.  Even something as simple as guacamole is often altered beyond recognition north of the border.  I mean, have you seen most ready-made or instant guacamole mixes?  Most often than not, they contain ranch dressing, cream cheese, yogurt or sour cream…. I’m pretty sure Aztecs did not have ranch dressing readily available to add that much-needed zing to their guacamole.  In all seriousness, I wanted to bring you this recipe to coincide with one of the few times each year when guacamole consumption skyrockets to illustrate how fresh, and dare I say healthy, homemade guacamole can be.  Avocados are a great source of “good” fat; it’s only when you add ranch or cream cheese that you are introducing “bad” fats.

I also wanted to share my version of guacamole because it presents a great opportunity to learn to cook.  What do I mean by “learn to cook”?  Well, I tend to look at recipes as merely guidelines (on this site, and anywhere else for that matter), and I feel that most people get caught up in following a recipe so closely that they loose focus on what they’re actually making, but more importantly, what each ingredient is adding to the dish.  I’ll always encourage you to focus on flavors and textures that appeal to YOU and proportion flavors and ingredients in your dish that way.  For example, if a recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, but you know you like things spicy, add as much pepper as you want without overpowering the dish.  This can be hard for novice cooks, I understand, but the more you cook, the more knowledgeable you become of the five basic tastes we perceive and what ingredients yield these tastes to produce a specific flavor.  Once you get a good feel for this, you can intuitively substitute ingredients to suit your needs and desires, which is the essence of cooking.  **Disclaimer: this shoot-from-the-hip approach will bite you in the ass if you are trying to bake, so follow any baking recipe exactly… now you see why I hate to bake**

Ingredients

• 6 avocados
• 1/3 cup red onion
• 1/2 cup cilantro
• 1 jalapeño
• 1 lime
• fresh ground pepper
• salt

Preparation:

Phew… on to the preparation.  Everything is quite simple.  First, take a sharp knife and halve the avocado by slicing down one side until you reach the pit, then working the knife around.  To remove the pit, simply use a spoon.   The more advanced method is to tap the blade of the knife down into the pit so that it becomes lodged about halfway down, then twist to remove the pit.  If you’re using very ripe avocados, just spoon out the flesh into a large bowl.  If your avocados are a bit on the tough side, you may need to score the flesh in a crossed pattern so you end up with “diced” pieces once you scoop out the flesh.  Once you have removed all the flesh from the skins, grab a potato masher and go to town.  It’s up to you how finely mashed or smooth you want your guacamole, I prefer a very rough and “rustic” guac, so I only do minimal mashing.

Next, finely dice your onion, then rinse it under cold water for a few seconds.  Why rinse? Rinsing tends to remove some of that bite that can overpower the dish.  After you rinse, let drain and add to the bowl.  Now, roughly chop some cilantro then seed and finely dice your jalapeño.  Add as much of each respective ingredient as you would like.  I tend to use the entire pepper (seeds and all) for a spicier guacamole, and a fair amount of cilantro for an herby aftertaste.  When these ingredients are in the bowl, WASH YOUR HANDS!  It’s no fun rubbing your eye and forgetting you handled peppers earlier.  Finally, season the guacamole with salt and pepper and lime juice to taste.  Whatever you do, please use lime juice with caution!  Like salt, it is possible to add too much.

If you look at my purposely vague ingredient list, you will see only rough estimates of what I use each time I make guacamole.  Depending on the size and ripeness of the avocados, I can add more or less onion or cilantro to adjust the overall flavors accordingly.  After I mash the avocados, I typically add the remaining ingredients in small quantities and add whatever quantity of a specific ingredient the dish needs to satisfy my mood that day.   The recipe listed will undoubtedly give you a terrific guacamole (which I’m always asked to bring whenever I’m invited to dinner or a party), but I encourage you to play around with various proportions of ingredients to see how you can completely change the flavor.  If you think you have a good understanding of the interactions between these various ingredients, you can add other things.  Personally, I think the texture of tomatoes detracts from the unctuous and sultry flavor of avocados, while garlic tends to overpower the dish, so I omit those ingredients typically found in other guacamole recipes.  However, if you happen to like tomatoes and garlic, go ahead and add them – IT’S YOUR DISH.  Hell, I would have never thought to add grapefruit to guacamole, like Marc from No Recipes did, but just goes to show how different people dress up their Aztec avocado paste.   I’m merely providing you a good foundation onto which you can build and customize a recipe to suit your palette.  Whatever you do, do not use any additive like ranch or sour cream or I’ll come to your house and pluck out your nose hairs one by one!