photo by Dave Koch
The weather is warming up, the birds are singing, and the avocados are calling my name. It is the beginning of guacamole season; that beautiful time of year where people gather around a molcajete with a cerveza in one hand and a tortilla chip in the other, jockeying for position to get the very best scoop.
Some people are looking for the biggest chunk of avocado, that somehow avoided being pulverized. Some are looking for a particularly large dice of tomato. Some poor saps are trying to find a smedge with no clear signs of cilantro, because they live their entire sorry existence in fear of biting into one of its pungent leaves.
In any case, I'm a guacamole freak. If I found a big swimming pool filled with the stuff, I would be compelled to dive in. I make a mean guac. I make the kind that sings babies to sleep. I make a guac that people write songs about. My guac makes recent widowers momentarily forget to moarn. It makes rap-stars write lyrics like, "My guacamole brings all the boys to the yard."
Unfortunately when dining out, I am all too often disappointed. There's too much fluff, too much filler, too much salsa (if you're calling it guac, it's guac, not salsa with avocado - which is good, but it's not guac). Sometimes there's onion powder, or garlic powder, or cumin; or worse yet a combination of the three. Sometimes the color is off, it's green but it's awry - it's not natural, back away!
Too often I catch myself saying "hold the guac," not because I don't like guac, I love it, but because I like it so much, that I don't trust it in your hands... I feel compelled so often to explain - but that can get confusing. I can tell by the way you are moving your lips while you read this, you're about to taze my guac. Don't taze my guac bro. This is how it's done:
Don't Taze My Guac
Ingredients:
- 4 Avocados, Haas are great but if you can find other varieties like the Bacon and the Fuerte, branch out
- 1/3 cup lime juice, about the juice of 2 limes, 3 if you're not getting much out of them
- 1/2 an onion, diced
- 3 tomatos, diced
- 1/4 cup of cilantro, coarsly chopped
- 1 tablespoon of salt
- 1/2 tablespoon of black pepper
- 1 serrano or jalapeno, minced, is OK but not necessary
Instructions:
Open a fine Mexican beer. Lo ciento novato, pero Corona y Tecate don't count. Try Negro Modelo, Bohemia, or even Pacifico. Cut a slice out of one of your limes, insert into beer. Throw all your ingredients into a bowl (not the beer, keep the beer in your hand). Mix together, but not too well.
If you want to make this ahead of time, go ahead, but squirt more lime juice on top and then cover with plastic wrap. Oxygen will turn the avocado brown and acid prevents this (just like apples).
Enjoy.
Lastly I'll leave you with a hilarious tribute song to the green (although we disagree somewhat on the accoutrements), "Some add in serrano, some like jalapeno, don't make it to hot though, when serving it to gringos"