Guac Talk

There are some foods from your childhood that are engrained in your memory as "gross." Like brussel sprouts. But then when you become an adult, with a more cultured palette, you give them another try.

And you find out that brussel sprouts still suck.

Another one of those foods, for me at least, was guacamole. It was a weird shade of green, it was mushy, it was...too exotic. Especially without the prevalence of good Mexican restaurants back then. My entree into Mexican was Chi-Chi's. It was the only game in town.

Well over the past year, I have dived headfirst into avacodos in general and guacamole, specifically. It sort of dovetailed nicely on our recent trip to Cleveland when we went to a fantastic Mexican restaurant called Momocho.

At Momocho, they make their own specialty guacs in-house and have a rotating group of flavors. Everything from guac with goat cheese/tomato/chile poblano to smoked trout/bacon/chile poblano to pickled corn/crab/chile chipotle and a host of others.

I've never made it for myself, though, until last night. I had an avocado laying around that I wanted to use before it went sideways on me. So out came the mini food prep and in went....

1 avacado, cubed
2 squeezes of fresh juice from a lemon
2 shakes of red cayenne pepper
1 handful of pine nuts (this is a very scientific recipe, as you can see)

I put my finger on the trigger for "grind" and out came a guacamole that had the zeal of the lemon juice, the zip from the cayenne, and the woodsy taste from the pine nuts. It was very tasty and super easy to do.

It seems as if guac is like risotto in the way that it adopts the flavor of whatever you put into it. I've had a wide variety of risottos and each one has been good. This guac creation inspires me to keep experimenting with different flavors.

Which is the whole fun of cooking for me in the first place.