May 05, 2005

When live gives you lemons avocados, make guacamole

The radio thing really did bum me out last night, but I had a happy discovery, too. There's a new Mexican restaurant near us, and they have fabulous guacamole. Incredible guacamole. I could have happily made the entire meal out of guacamole (using a spoon so as not to fill up on chips).

The rest of dinner was nice, too, but oh that guacamole.

Of course, it ought to be hard to make bad guacamole. Even if all you do is mash up some avocados, the result should be good, because avocados are the world's perfect food.

But I dunno, maybe you can make a bad guacamole, if you follow this recipe from a 1965 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook:

Combine 1 cup mashed ripe avocado (2 avocados), 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 tablespoon grated onion, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon chili powder.

Now if you stop right there, it sounds fine. Here's where it goes wrong:

Spread top with 1/3 cup of mayonnaise or salad dressing

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!

(I have also seen recipes from old cookbooks with avocado and french dressing. I'm hoping "french dressing" was something besides that orange crap I'm imagining.)

It goes on to have you stir in the mayonnaise and add bacon, so I'm just stopping right here.

Interestingly, things were more civilized in 1930, when the Boston Cooking School recommended this for how to serve "Alligator Pears":

Cut in two, remove stones, and sprinkle with salt and lemon juice.
Posted by Nic at May 5, 2005 09:04 PM
Comments

I love, love, LOVE quacamole. Unfortunately advocado;s are a bit expensive here.
When we visited California we got a lot of cilantro in the quacamole. For me, that;s a way to ruin quacamole.

Posted by: Sweety at May 7, 2005 03:28 PM
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