my kitchen counter

Guac On!

I have mentioned before that my friends and I have made a commitment to what we call “Family Dinner” every Sunday night. It has grown to be one of our favorite things about the summer. Everyone participates by contributing to the meal in some sort of way, and it’s been amazing to watch the meals grow and grow. We have learned that it works best to choose a theme for everyone to stick to when thinking of dishes so that we still end up with a coherent meal no matter who contributes. A few weeks ago we had one of the most successful family dinner themes of all time: mexican food. Now, most of us are from California, now living in New York, and most of us very much miss the Mexican food from home. In order to get everyone in the spirit we decided that along with normal contributions like Mexican beer and main course dishes, we wanted everyone to participate in what we deemed a “Guac-off”… a Guacamole competition. Here is a photo of the main competitors:

In the spirit of the guac off I thought it was time to blog a simple guac recipe for the benefit of those non-avocado addicts out there.

Guacamole is actually an Aztec dish, predating the Spanish colonization of Mexico. The name comes from an Aztec dialect, Nahuatl, where the word is āhuacamolli, from āhuacatl (=”avocado”) + molli (=”sauce”). The basic recipe is as follows:

Avocado

Red Onion

Lime

(plus jalapeño or tomatoes or mango or any other interesting combination one might think of).

It is simple enough, chop red onion, mash the avocado, squeeze the lime. Keep the pit in the guacamole to preserve the green color, and enjoy on pretty much anything imaginable.

posted 07 August, 2010
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recipe

eat food. not too much. mostly plants. -michael pollan my kitchen. my mission: for anyone who cooks, the kitchen is a sanctuary. a space for creating. a space for experimenting. playing. clearing the head. for anyone who eats, the table is an altar. a space for togetherness, for conversation, for enjoyment. together they are spaces that, more than anything, are overwhelmingly human. the space is the intersection of our primal need for food, and our cultural desire to enjoy it. what we eat and how we choose to eat it ultimately defines each of us. food should be accessible. it should be conscious, or rather, we should be conscious of our decisions. food should be nurturing. it should remind us of who we are, and who we want to be. it should connect us to others. it should be enjoyed. the goal of creating mykitchencounter is to help us reconnect with our food. the goal is to eliminate the fear of cooking and remind everyone that anyone can cook, the goal is to share tips, advice, ideas, discoveries, recipes, health advice, restaurant recommendations- basically anything food related. so… pull up a stool to mykitchencounter, let me pour you a glass of wine, and let’s talk about food.