Spicy Guacamole
These past few weeks have taken me on a speedy tour de USA. Between NY, Santa Barbara, Kansas City and sweet home Chicago, I've been running my carry-on suitcase's wheels into the ground and eating my metaphorical cojones off.
We had the pleasure of spending several leisurely days over the Fourth of July in beautiful Carpinteria, CA (just South of Santa Barbara) with Chris' college friends and their lovely ladies, and spent several days soaking in the sun, exploring the area, and cleaning the Santa Ynez Valley completely out of wine. We ate our hearts out. We had private chefs come prepare dinner on our last night there, and the scenery alone was enough to make my mouth water.
Have you ever seen a more magical magic hour? No. You haven't.
I mean, truly, it was the kind of lighting that Instagram filters attempt to emulate. We didn't want to leave. Not pictured: us kicking and screaming at 4AM that Sunday to make our crack-of-dawn flight. The only bad part about vacation is the sheer horror of realizing you have to go back to real life.
Once we returned from paradise, we found ourselves in a psychotic scramble to catch up. My summers always seem to go this way: over-committed social sprees of back to back events, weddings, dinners, and trips, and before you know it, it's September and I'm getting into my sweatpants to hibernate for the remainder of the year. With all the craziness, I realized that I haven't had the chance to sit down and cook something in weeks. WEEKS. My soul was atrophying.
So here's where the story leads us to my favorite place in the world, the Mariano's on the corner of Halsted and Clybourn.
The Mariano's on the corner of Halsted and Clybourn is not just a grocery store. No. It's a mystical, twinkling wonderland of shimmering shopping carts, vibrant produce in rainbow colors, fifty kinds of grainy mustard, and all the cheese samples your heart could ever desire. It's sheer, rapturous, shopping bliss.
It was on this trip to Mariano's that I won the lottery. The avocado lottery.
Chris had mentioned a desire for pulled chicken tacos (one of my favorite, stupid-easy, monkey-could-do-it weeknight meals to make), so I had all the good stuff on the list. Fresh tortillas, bright tomatoes, spicy peppers. And of course, God's gift to the people of planet Earth, the humble avocado. They were $1 a piece which were prices I hadn't seen since the Great Depression, so I grabbed four. I figured that for a buck a pop, I was probably going to get some dumpy avocado with stringy pulp that would just barely qualify as a candidate for guac. Boy, was I wrong.
There's always a moment of nervous anticipation when I cut into an avocado, because I know that the odds are staggeringly high that when I pull that puppy apart, it's going to have dark brown spots littering it like an aging Vegas grandma's face that I'm going to need to carve out and throw away. But not these. These were the most picture perfect avocados ever known to mankind.
I wanted to personally drive to Michoacán and find the farmer who grew these avocados and kiss his face.
I'm sure at this point you're probably like, shut the f%ck up about these avocados and give me the damn recipe, woman! So I will. But I wanted to give you fair warning that I like my guac spicy. Real spicy. I'm talking:
Jalapeños.
Habaneros.
And ground cayenne pepper. Which I didn't feel like you needed a photo of since we're all adults here and we know what cayenne pepper is.
So with that in mind, just know that this ain't your basic mild guac. Let's do the damn thing.
Ingredients (Serves 6):
- 2 large ripe Hass avocados (or 3 smaller ones)
- 1 jalapeño pepper (cored/seeded and finely diced)
- 1 habanero pepper (cored/seeded and finely diced)
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 medium onion, diced
- 1 large beefsteak tomato (or 2 small Romas), cored, seeded, and chopped
- 1 large lime, juiced and set aside
- 1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
- 1/2 tsp salt (add more or less to taste)
- Optional: 1/2 tsp cumin
Directions
1. Dice the large tomato, half of the medium onion, and finely mince three cloves of garlic; add them to a large bowl.
2. With plastic gloves on (peeps - this is the real deal), chop the stems off the jalapeño and habanero, split them in half lengthwise, and remove about 70% of the pith (where all the fire lives) and seeds. Once removed, finely dice the peppers and add to the bowl. Discard your gloves.
3. Juice your lime thoroughly and set aside (you will need every drop you can get - this gives fabulous flavor, but more importantly, keeps your guacamole from turning brown.)
4. Halve your avocados, scooping out the flesh into the large bowl, mashing with a fork to your desired consistency. Save the avocado pits.
5. Add the lime juice, stirring around to cover as much of the mixture with juice as you can. Stir in the cayenne, salt, and cumin (if using).
6. Once well blended, push the pits back down into the guacamole. Cover with two layers of plastic wrap (my power move to keep things bright and green) - the first layer should be lightly pressed down against the guac in the bowl, minimizing air contact and oxidation. The second layer should go across the entire bowl as you would usually wrap it.
7. Refrigerate for 1 - 4 hours (the longer you wait, the better the flavors will blend). Remove the pits before serving, but save them if you aren't going to finish it in one sitting! Serve with your favorite tortilla chips. My newest obsession are Rick Bayless' Frontera chips.
This ain't your TGIFriday's staged, overproduced food photography. This is real, dirt mcgirt, delicious guac for regular people.
Ta-da! You're done! You've made the best spicy guac this side of Texas. And you've spent about 15 minutes reading about my infatuation with an avocado, and that's a feat in and of itself.
I'll be back on my cooking A-game over the next couple weeks, so more fun, easy recipes coming soon. Cheers!
