We are going to be so rich.
I just created a brand new dish, and quite by accident. Lee and I had a Mexican-themed lunch at Nikki’s house today, and when I was talking to her on the phone last night we agreed some guacamole had to be on the menu. Neither of us had ever made it before, and feeling adventurous, I decided to give it a try. I’ve recently come across a homemade salsa recipe I love, so it seemed only natural to add guacamole to my repertoire.
Except, I only recently found out I like guacamole, and therefore, I don’t know a whole lot about the dish. I know what good salsa looks and tastes like because I practically mainline it at every opportunity. So I scoured my favorite online recipe site for a guac recipe that looked easy and had good reviews.
My guacamole ineptitude first became apparent last night at the grocery store. I’d never bought an avocado, and as I stood in the produce section, I realized I wasn’t entirely sure what one looked like. I’d only seen them after they’d been cut or prepared. Where would I even find them? There were several employees I could’ve asked, but I did NOT want to admit that I had no clue what I was doing.
After circling the veggies for a while, I finally spotted the avocados. The first one I picked up was a little squishy, so I put it back on the pile in disgust. Instead, I found three hard-as-a-rock avocados to add to my cart.
Back home (and feeling proud that I’d found the avocados on my own), I began making the guacamole. The first instruction was to peel and dice the avocado, then mash it. I had a hard time figuring out how to get out the pit, but I managed okay. But when it was time to mash the avocado, I was at a loss. The diced avocado felt more like raw potato, and my potato masher was not getting the job done. My efforts became increasingly violent, but the tough avocado would not yield.
Surely I was doing something wrong. So I googled “avocado mash,” “how to mash avocado,” “avocado mash tips,” but got NOTHING. No help. No advice. All the websites just stated, “mash the avocado” and gave no detailed instructions about how that should be done. This only served to frustrate me and make me feel utterly incompetent. It’s like google was telling me mashing an avocado was as simple as stirring a bowl of soup. You didn’t need to tell someone how to do it, because even a newborn kitten could figure it out. But I couldn’t.
So I decided I’d show the avocado who was boss, and got out my monster 9-cup food processor. I put the diced avocado in the machine, and turned it on. And it diced the avocado smaller. And smaller. And smaller. But it never formed a consistency anything like mashed avocado.
Undaunted, I added the other ingredients, thinking I needed the lime juice and tomatoes to add some liquid so I could get a better texture. I was wrong.
Finally, I gave up, realizing I had been defeated by the guacamole recipe. All the comments on the website had claimed how startlingly easy the recipe was for first-time guacamole-makers, but apparently my skills were far below the average chef on allrecipes.com.
But I couldn’t throw it out without at least tasting it. So I dipped my chip in the diced guacamole, and it tasted good. Really good. Which only made me more aggravated, because I knew the ingredients were tasty but the preparation had been the problem.
So I googled one more thing. I googled for video of someone making guacamole, so I could see what they did differently. I found a video podcast, and watched as the woman described choosing the right avocado. “You want an avocado that is a little soft, and gives under the pressure of your thumb.” Oh. So maybe picking the three hardest avocados I could find was where I went wrong. In the video, she scooped the avocado from the peel like ice cream. Oh yeah, that was my problem. My avocados looked nothing like that.
This made me feel a little better, because I can deal with being a novice avocado purchaser more easily than I can a failed food preparer.
But when I showed my guacamole creation to Lee, I loved his take on the dish. He said it looked like the dippin’ dots ice cream of guacamole. “Dippin’guacs,” he called it.
It’s true! Guacamole is supposed to look like this (which I bought at Fresh Market on my way to Nikki’s house):

But my guacamole looks like this:

So it may not look like normal guacamole, but I think it’s tastier, and made without potassium sorbate and metabisulfite. Also, it looks a little less like boogers, which had been one of my previous hang-ups about guacamole.
Now, if only I could convince the world that Dippin’guacs are superior – I’d have little guac carts in malls and stadiums across America…