French Fridays with Dorie - Guacamole with Tomatoes and Bell Peppers

Today´s recipe for the French Fridays with Dorie group is "Guacamole with Tomatoes and Bell Peppers“.

Guacamole is a Mexican dish of mashed avocado mixed with lemon or lime juice and various seasonings. Sometimes finely chopped tomatoes and onions and peppers are also added.

The ingredients for Dorie´s Guacamole are perfectly ripe Hass avocados, finely chopped red onion, grape tomatoes and red bell peppers, jalapeno, coriander, freshly squeezed lime juice, fine sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and some hot sauce. Easy to find fresh ingredients, the remainder are mostly pantry items. A nice recipe for a Friday evening.

Guacamole can be served as a dip, sauce, topping or side dish. Guacamole is equally delicious as a topping for burgers and as it is as a dip for oven-roasted potatoes and freshly cut vegetables including carrots, garden cucumbers, zucchinis, kohlrabis, baby corn, and radishes. It is also usually served as an accompaniment to fajitas, along with sour cream.

You can make it chunky or smooth (using a pestle and mortar), according to taste. Whichever way you serve it, if you plan on making it ahead of time,  remember to sprinkle the guacamole with lemon or lime juice and cover the surface well with plastic wrap (directly on the surface) because avocados turn brown quite quickly once they are exposed to air. And do keep the guacamole well chilled, al all times.

Guacamole should be zingy and fresh tasting, to cut through the creamy richness of the ripe avocados and Dorie´s recipe delivers – although I did swap the red bell peppers for finely chopped orange tomatoes. Anyway, I never put red peppers in. Ever. But many people, it seems, disagree.

Rick Bayless, one of the finest and most famous Mexican chefs north of the Rio Grande, and an award-winning writer on the subject, describes guacamole in his "Rick Bayless´s Mexican Kitchen" cookbook as "a verdant, thick-textured bowl of festivity, ripe with the elusive flavour of avocado. Mash in a little lime, raw onion, coriander, chilli, perhaps tomato, and the avocado comes fully alive." True.

To see how much the other members of the French Fridays with Dorie group enjoyed this recipe, please go here.

If you happen to own Dorie Greenspan´s "Around my French Table", you will find the recipe for the Guacamole with Tomatoes and Bell Peppers on page 22.