Tuesday, June 23, 2009

best guacamole ever

Wait until it's really hot outside. Go to the store. Buy five perfectly ripe avocadoes. A perfectly ripe avocado is like al dente pasta, where your fingers are your teeth. One tomato, garlic, lemon. Be sure you have salt, black pepper, and cayenne in your pantry.

At home, pull out a cutting board, two knives (okay, I'm picky with the knives; I like a regular steak knife for cutting the avocadoes and the lemon, and a serrated bread knife for cutting the tomato), a soup spoon, a garlic press, a masher, a big bowl for the guacamole, a medium bowl for the scraps, and a very small bowl for the lemon juice.

Cut the avocadoes in half lengthwise. Squeeze the seed out of the side it ends up on. Use the soup spoon to scoop the avocado meat out of the shell and into the big bowl. Press two cloves of garlic into the big bowl. The best thing about a garlic press is that you don't have to peel the garlic. Cut the lemon in half widthwise and squeeze both halves into the very small bowl. Use the soup spoon to remove the seeds, and then dump the juice into the big bowl. Dash of salt, three turns of the pepper mill, and three shakes of cayenne.

Mash it all together. It's okay to leave some chunks. Chunks are good.

Cut the tomato in half widthwise and squeeze all of the seeds out into the scrap bowl, which by now also contains avocado shells and seeds, the remains of the garlic (which you have immediately scraped out of the press in order to immediately rinse the press, because lord knows there is nothing harder than removing dried garlic from a press), and a spent lemon. Chop each half of the tomato into chunky pieces and throw it on top of the guacamole. Use the soup spoon to lovingly mix the tomato into the guacamole.

Eat with tortilla chips and maybe a Corona. I'm not a big Corona fan, but it seems like the right thing to do.

Oh yeah, the scraps: put them in your compost heap!

I would have included a picture, but it's gone.

11 comments:

Julia said...

Tasty, and devastatingly delicious to read about just before lunch!! (May have to pour some salsa verde over my ham sandwich to recover ;-)

Allison said...

And my serving is where? ;-)

Brandy said...

You need to make this and bring it to the next long run so we can refuel afterwards!

MamaHen said...

Sounds GREAT!

countrypeapie said...

Thanks J! Is it hard to come by avocadoes in CZ, I wonder?

Allison: long gone. :)

Hey Brandy! The only thing about guacamole is that it doesn't keep very well. It tends to turn brown even with all of the lemon juice. It still tastes good -- just doesn't look very appetizing. But I will mos def bring the Corona. ;) (Last Saturday, someone brought frozen fruit pops to the TS and they were waiting for us when we finished. Stroke of genius!)

Thanks ER -- it IS! Also good with cheese quesadillas, which are super easy to make.

Unknown said...

Avocados are my favorite food in the whole world. I could live on avocados. With tomatoes. And cheese. Really sharp cheese.

countrypeapie said...

Amen, Patsy!

Julia said...

It is hard to come by tasty avocados here, though I do sometimes buy the rock hard/tasteless version for nostalgic reasons (and because I'm a hopeless optimist).

countrypeapie said...

J, sometimes ours are rock hard, too, and I have to let them hang out for a few days before we eat them. But these had little stickers on them that said "Ripe" -- and lo and behold, they really were!

catevanne said...

Sounds really yummy-I used to live in California and people had huge avocado trees in their back yards-free guacamole forever...

countrypeapie said...

hi catevanne ~ thanks for stopping by! ~ my brother lived in san fran for a while and he used to talk about the avocado trees ~ heaven!