Friday, June 27, 2014

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.



33 comments:

  1. Looks delicious, Andrea! Your presentation is always so festive and to the theme. Love it. We often add tomatoes to guacamole, but never pepper. I will have to give this a try.
    Wishing you and your sweet family a fun-filled w/end. xo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Colette, same here, no peppers in our guacolamole. Ever. But tomatoes are a nice and fresh addition. Thank you so much for your wonderful comment! And thank you also for nominating me for the Liebster Award! I certainly appreciate your kindness! "See" you later today - Cottage Cooking Club links will be up and I am looking forward to everyone´s picks!

      Delete
  2. I'm not so sure I would like the crunch of the pepper in my guacamole... Did you use peas in yours? I did make a faux guacamole once that used peas in place of avocado. Your guacamole looks delioius, Andrea. I must say, I adore your spice jars!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cathleen, no peas in my guacamole...I would not dream of adding peas to my guacamole but I had just bought them and was munching away on them while taking pictures for the Cottage Cooking Club and this post.

      Delete
  3. Well, being form a border state, we all LOVE our guacamole, and it made me giggle that it was a "French Friday" dish! It is the furthest thing form French food, yet I know the French adore it. We will be having deconstructed guacamole on our Southwest Black Bean burgers tomorrow noon. I will think of you! Your salt and pepper pots are the cutest thing I have ever seen! Ich wünsche Dich ein wunderbares Wochenende. ~ David

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dear David, this is actually my second recipe for guacamole that I blogged - the first was from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and we loved, loved how that tasted. Now this from Dorie for the French Fridays group - I omitted the finely chopped red peppers from the recipe but other than that, I did not change much. How nice that you like those spice jars, a recent find of mine. Your Burgers sound absolutely fabulous - are you planning on sharing pictures and the recipe?!
      Lieben Dank für den tollen Kommentar und euch beiden einen wunderschönen Sonntag!!!
      Andrea

      Delete
  4. Your guacamole looks delicious, and your photos beautiful! I'm glad you liked this - but what, no chiles (peppers?). I thought this was good, even though I'd describe it as crunchy... but I love guacamole in pretty much all its forms. I love your Rick Bayless quote - I think he is great at bringing the spirit of Mexico to life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Candy, I use chilis but no red peppers in my cooking, especially not if it is raw. We do eat and like spicy food and two of our kids are real "spiceheads" but even they are not into red peppers - maybe my English got in the way of describing that...Rick Bayless is marvelous and I would love to try some of his recipes soon, summertime seems like a wonderful time to cook Mexican inspired dishes - I should ask you for advice on choosing some really good ones.
      Thank you for your wonderful comment!

      Delete
  5. Your guacamole looks great Andrea. I came into this with no opinions on hiw guacamole should be, so I enjoyed it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gaye, we certainly enjoyed the guacamole as well, as we a lways do, just left out the red peppers - I do have some small and very passionate taste testers that I do not want to disgruntle...they are my biggest and most supportive fans and they do not like red bell peppers, other than that, we were just fine with this recipe.

      Delete
  6. Hi Andrea, I do have this book but do not recall this recipe, it's time to pull out the book again. Your presentation looks wonderful, great pictures.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cheri, honestly, I think guacamole is the last thing that comes to my mind as well when I think about French food or French Fridays with Dorie - but the recipe is in there on page 22, trust me.

      Delete
  7. Your guacamole looks delicious. This time of the year, guacamole is one of my favorite meal companions (sometimes, it's the whole meal) :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cher, around here we are fans of guacamole but not nearly as fervent about it as North Americans - but we love it too, especially the kids.

      Delete
  8. Funny, I have a Rick Bayless cookbook and I've never even bothered to check his recipe for guacamole. Probably because I've never actually followed a real recipe for it period. But I love his food so probably not a bad idea to check out what he has to say on the topic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rose, well, when I think guacamole, Rick Bayless comes to mind, love his cookbooks too.

      Delete
  9. I love this described as a bowl of festivity. So true!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mardi, isn´t it a nice way to describe that humble guacamole?!

      Delete
  10. Lovely photos. My group was skeptical of the bell pepper but it worked. No complaints.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diane, no complaints at our house either but without the diced red peppers, that´s all.

      Delete
  11. ha, wir hatten einen Tag zuvor Fajitas mit Guacamole.... Gibt man nach der Zubereitung den Avocadokern wieder in die Guacamole, bleibt sie schön grün und verändert sich nicht. Statt roter Paprika nehme ich gerne eine milde Chilischote, ganz klein gewürfelt. Die mexikanische Guacamole hat die Welt erobert wie nichts.... :-) Sehr, sehr schöne Fotos!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Liebe Wally, also, da muss ich doch gleich mal ein wenig technisches Details loswerden - ich habe so viel über Guacamole gelesen in der letzten Zeit, aber mein Lieblingsartikel war eine meterlange Abhandlung über die Geschichte, das Orginalrezept und Vieles mehr - der Kern hält Guacamole nur grün, an der Stelle wo er aufliegt, sonst nicht, die wirklich einzige Maßnahme, die gegen das "Braunwerden" hilft, ist Frischhaltefolie direkt auf der Oberfläche und der Kühlschrank...so stand es da und so habe ich es gemacht (nach der Fotosession). Was auch immer, am besten, man bereitet das Ganze "à la minute" vor, dann wird auch die Guacamole nicht so unschön braun.
      Danke für deine aufmerksamen und lieben Kommentare - heute gibt es Fußball im Fernsehen, da wird es wieder spät!
      Liebe Grüße,
      Andrea

      Delete
  12. Beautiful photos Andrea! We love guacamole but I don't make it that often, I should has avocados are always plentiful here. I think I would have left the red peppers out as well :) Have a great day!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Karen, as I mentioned above, I do have some small and very passionate taste testers that I do not want to disgruntle...they are my biggest and most supportive fans and they do not like red bell peppers, other than that, we were just fine with this recipe. But there are just so many opinions on that dish out there, it is impossible to please everyone - thank you very much for all your wonderful comments! How is the baking business coming along?!

      Delete
  13. I'm not receiving your posts, Andrea. I'm not sure why...
    anyhow, I've missed you, your artful food, your photos!
    LOVELY. xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kim, I did check with my resident darling IT-expert...we do not know why that is and from our end can only speculate as to why...may be because of the "cookies"...maybe becasue the comments end up in your "spam" account...
      Hopefully you can still see my posts on FB and I do appreciate your dropping by and leaving such kind comments!

      Delete
  14. Andrea, do you mean only red peppers or all peppers that your little testers are opposed to? A lovely post and beautiful photos! I quite enjoyed my half portion of the bowl and DH finished the rest! So there is hope that the second avocado will be used up!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Emily, hopefully you had a chance to enjoy the other avocado by now. Thank you for the comment!

      Delete
  15. Your guacamole looks delicious…glad you enjoyed it! I ate some of mine with scrambled eggs the next morning…yum! Love your little salt and pepper servers…so cute! Great photos!

    ReplyDelete
  16. I am finally starting to get caught up on my Posts and comments. I also have always used tomatoes in my guacamole, Andrea, but I did give the red bell peppers a go this time. Although I probably will return to my tried-and-true guac recipe, chunky and with tomatoes, I thought Dorie's was very tasty. I am a Rick Bayless fan. Michael and I once ate at one of his wonderful Frontera Grill in Chicago.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Lovely presentation! I enjoyed this version and the red peppers worked well for me, but I didn't make a chunky version. Your quotation from Rick Bayless is quite perfect.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Ah. Rick mentions coriander which is something I frequently throw in it myself now and then when I make this...which is always without a recipe. I did enjoy Dorie's version though but I won't make it again. At least not knowingly... lol. Because I won't follow a recipe. I love them but the bells seem too polarizing to put in a dish that is meant to bring people together, don't you think?

    ReplyDelete
  19. I'm a Rick Bayless fan too. I think I prefer his guacamole recipe, but this was a fun change. I did love the idea of making it in a mortar.

    ReplyDelete