A Recipe for True Guacomole

My aunt Cheri sent me this recipe for authentic guacamole by way of an amusing anecdote. I thought it was pretty amusing, as well as sounding quite delicious, so I figured I'd share it with my readers. The story appears below, as told by Cheri Kennedy-the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

My cousin Robin Bee makes the best guacamole that I’ve ever eaten in my life. Just ask her how good it is – she’ll tell you! Even though she did so very reluctantly, Robin shared her secret recipe with me when she and I compiled a family cookbook that included - not only recipes - but some stories from our aunts, cousins, mothers, and sisters who contributed their favorite recipes to the cookbook. We distributed our creation at the Brosch Family Reunion in 1991. The Brosches are my maternal grandmother’s family and most of them still live in southeast Texas.

When I first asked Robin for her guacamole recipe, she flatly refused. I asked her at least two more times with the same result. Finally, hoping to appeal to her sense of vanity, I told her, “This is no joke. People really don’t know how truly wonderful guacamole is made. You should share your secret with the family.” That did it!.

I could almost see her puff out her chest as she said, “You’re right. Even some Mexican restaurants can’t do it right--make that many Mexican restaurants can’t do it right. I don’t understand why I was blessed with the knowledge of how to make the ‘True Guacamole,’ but I was; and it has indeed been a blessing in my life. I’ll share it with you because you’re blood kin - and it’s important that I share this knowledge within the family.” Robin admonished me to be cautious about passing this recipe on to strangers.

Robin started dictating the recipe to me by telling me how to choose avocados at the grocery store. The ones with the rough skin are the best. The great big ones with smooth, shiny skins are great for splitting in half and filling with some sort of meat or fish salad, but they’re too wet to make really good guacamole.

“So, you’ve found the right avocados,” Robin continued. “Now you want to gently press on them and feel how much they give to the pressure of your thumb and forefinger. If they don’t give at all, you won’t be able to use them for three or four days. If they give too much, they’re past their prime and should be sold at a reduced price. You’re looking for avocados that are prime – somewhere between hard and mushy, but leaning towards soft, pliable, ripe – you know - perfection.”

This takes practice! If the entire avocado pile in the grocery store is too hard, Robin told me to bring a couple home with me anyway. I’d just have to wait to make the guacamole. She instructed to put the avocados in a paper bag and then put it in the kitchen window. Or, since I had a gas stove, I could put it in the oven, but take it out if I planned to bake anything. The avocados should just sit there, undisturbed in the paper bag for a day or two or three. Then I could open up the paper bag, say hello, and squeeze them once a day until they meet the “squeezeability” test (which she reminded me she had explained previously).

“So,” Robin went on enthusiastically, “somehow you have acquired avocados that are ready to die for guacamole. Now we can get on with the actual recipe part.” She said, parenthetically, “You will need to taste this concoction until you think it’s right.”

Robin’s instructions were to peel three avocados and remove the seed. Save the seeds, but throw the peelings away, or compost them. Put the flesh of the avocados in a bowl. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Using whole peppercorns and a grinder, grind black pepper over the avocados, using more pepper than salt. Cut a lemon in half; but before you cut it, roll it back and forth on the kitchen counter, pressing it down while you roll it, to get more juice from it when it’s squeezed. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon over the avocados in the bowl.

Now talking freely, Robin continued. “With a pastry blender or a potato masher, chop, mash, cut, etc., the avocados until they are still partly chunky, but mostly mashed. Stir this mixture with a fork, just a little bit. Now taste it. You can either use a fork or your fingers to hold the guacamole for tasting -- or, a tortilla chip,” she said as an afterthought.

At this point, Robin put her hands on her hips and looked directly into my eyes. “Here’s the secret to GREAT guacamole,” she said with utmost gravity. “IT’S THE BALANCE BETWEEN THE LEMON AND THE SALT. At this point, you’ll most likely need to add either more salt or more lemon juice, or more of both. You have to keep tasting after each addition in order to get it right.”

“After you’ve gotten it right, you can add some very finely minced onion, very finely chopped tomato, minced garlic, a dusting of cumin, minced cilantro, or a sprinkling of chili powder. But don’t add all of them – just maybe two or three of the above. NEVER ADD SOUR CREAM. If you add sour cream, you are making dip, and that’s not what I’m teaching you here. If you think you can put mayonnaise or salad dressing in this, you’re wrong. Adding either ingredient is a dreadful, terrible mistake. Don’t’ even think of trying it.”

“Now,” Robin went on, “Put this guacamole in a terrific-looking bowl. If you have to wait a while before it’s going to be eaten, stick a couple of those seeds I told you to save on top and the guacamole won’t turn black. Really! Serve it proudly on shredded lettuce as a salad, or with tortilla chips as an appetizer, or with flour tortillas, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, etc, in a burrito.”

I asked Robin where she learned to make guacamole like this. She told me she didn’t remember, but she thought perhaps her Grandmother Bee may have taught her when Robin first expressed an interest in cooking. She remembered her grandmother making it for Christmas Eve gatherings. Robin told me she’d found a recipe for avocado salad in a book of clippings her grandmother collected that was very close to the way she makes her “True Guacamole.”

Just before I finished typing out Robin’s recipe for our recipe book and she was getting ready to go home, she told me I should add this note: “You can make avocado seeds sprout by sticking toothpicks in them and balancing it end-down over a glass of water, but I never understood which end should be down, so I can’t really help you get you own avocado tree for your back yard. But I read somewhere that it works. Go to the library for more information.”