Rockin’ Guacamole
It was a warm, clear, breezy end of summer night, with the smell of ocean in the air, on the coast of Long Island. It was decided, by my cousin and I, that the time had come. Guests were hungry, and the ingredients were sitting there on the kitchen island waiting ready to be used. I thought of Rosa Mexicano, a popular Mexican restaurant based in New York City, where I had recently dined. The restaurant has a unique activity performed in front of the diners. There is a table side cart piled high with chopped tomatoes, white onions, cilantro and jalapino peppers. Oh yeah, I almost forgot the last ingredient: Avocados. Can you guess what the ingeridants made? Guacamole.
Our plan tonight was to satisfy our hungry guests by making a custom our version of the traditional Mexican dish, Guacamole. I split up the tasks. Tomatoes were assigned to my cousin. Onions to my aunt. The tomatoes had been carefully picked out at a local farm stand (one of many in Long Island) by myself. I picked the cilantro among, many other herbs like parsley and basil, in our backyard garden. The avocados were trickier to find than the other ingredients. After trying 3 supermarkets with expensive unripened avocados we went to a local Spanish take-out place. Scanning the store with our eyes we finally spotted a mesh basket holding three green ripe avocados. Luck seemed to be on our side. Back home, with all the ingredients gathered we started the process of creating the guacamole.
If you follow the technigue used at Like at Rosa Mexicano, the cilantro must be made into a paste. In the restaurant, the cilantro was chopped into microscopic pieces, then scraped into a stone bowl. A heavy looking, black stone mallet, was used taken from the cart. (I found out later it is called a mortar and pestle)The waiter pounded the cilantro into a pasty substance so it would easily blend into the guacamole. I didn’t have a stone mallet so I placed my cilantro on a chopping board and took a large rock from outside. After cleaning the rock carefully I began to pound the cilantro into a mush much like the one at Rosa Mexicano. Once the paste had been completed it was scooped into a large bowl. Next comes the avocados.
From the Rosa Mexicano waiters, I had learned how to de-pit an avocado in a stylish clean way. Take a sharp knife and slit a circle around the avocado. Once the circle is completed slowly pull each half of the avocado off the pit. One side should be pit free, but the other still requires de-pitting. Stab your knife into the pit and slowly twist the pit until it’s free of the avocado. Keep the fruit in the skin and glide your knife in small criss crosses around the interior of the avocado. This should make it easier to take the fruit out and mush it. My cousin kept adding more salt (which the quacamole needed) when our backs were turned. With chips in another bowl, we called the other guests and headed outside to the back deck, overlooking the ocean- where the sun had not yet set. With drinks in hand, we shared a delicious guacamole experience. From the rock smashed bitter tasting cilantro , to the farm stand sweet tomatoes and spicy onions, and, of course, the Spanish market avocados, we shared our own customized guacamole dish. Have fun and try combining different ingredients yourself to get a different taste. For example, I used to use parsley instead of cilantro. The flavor is completely different. The parsley was extremely bitter and absorbed the sweet flavor of the avocado. This time the cilantro complimented the avocado and was only a side flavor instead of taking some the attention like the parsley did. I still like to add lemon. Next time! I’m ready now to start mashing… or, with summer over and I’m back at school, it may be time to head over to Rosa Mexicano and watch the waiters do all the work (though to me it would still be more fun to make it myself, with a little help from my friends).
Rosa Mexicano (New York City)-
-Lincoln Center
-Union Square
-First Avenue
Middle School Food Critic 
cool post!
Hello! Good post here.