Roberto Santibañez' Guac Recipe

What Santibañez wants cooks to realize, he told me, is this: "There is a very important textural thing to guacamole -- we never really mush up the avocado. You want to feel everything." He crushes only enough of the avocado to warrant it consideration as a dip rather than a salad, but leaves the rest of the cubes intact, bathing them in the vividly flavored chile sauce, "a bit like salad properly dressed in vinaigrette," he writes. Recipe adapted slightly from Truly Mexican (Wiley, 2011). —Genius Recipes

Prep Time: 15 Minutes Makes: About 1 3⁄4 Cup Ingredients:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons finely chopped white onion

• 1 tablespoon minced fresh serrano or jalapeno chile, including seeds, or more to taste

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, or 1/4 teaspoon fine salt (or to taste)

• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, divided

• 1 large or 2 small ripe Mexican Hass avocados, halved and pitted

• A squeeze of lime, if desired

DIRECTIONS

1. 1)  Mash the onion, chile, salt (the coarseness of kosher salt helps you make the paste), and half of the cilantro to a paste in a molcajete or other mortar. You can also mince and mash the ingredients together on a cutting board with a large knife or a fork, and then transfer the paste to a bowl.

2. 2)  Score the flesh in the avocado halves in a crosshatch pattern (not through the skin) with a knife and then scoop it with a spoon into the mortar or bowl. Toss well (it should be like salad properly dressed in vinaigrette), then add the rest of the cilantro and mash very coarsely with a pestle or a fork. Season to taste with lime juice (if you'd like) and additional chile and salt.

Recipe adapted slightly from Truly Mexican (Wiley, 2011). —Genius Recipes and Reprinted with permission from Food 52’s Genius Recipes as originally published here in their August 2021 Issue

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