{"id":82,"date":"2014-09-27T04:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-27T04:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2014\/09\/27\/every-tuesday"},"modified":"2015-12-10T19:22:30","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T00:22:30","slug":"every-tuesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2014\/09\/every-tuesday\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Tuesday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whoa. I got sucked into a black hole for a bit there, a (very pleasant, very festive) black hole of weddings and out-of-town visitors. Somehow it\u2019s now September 26, and I\u2019m glad to be alone tonight, in a quiet house, with a so-so brownie that I\u2019ll probably eat anyway, rain falling outside and all the lamps lit. Hello! Or, OH<\/i>–LO!<\/i>,\u00a0as June puts it.<\/p>\n

In the weeks since I was last here,\u00a0Megan<\/a> and Sam<\/a> got married<\/a>, and Gemma<\/a> and Christophe<\/a> came to help us celebrate, and after that, my in-laws arrived, and now we\u2019ve got a cousin from New York and her boyfriend in the guest-room-slash-dungeon downstairs. And because there is no one who doesn\u2019t like tacos, for the past three Tuesdays, we\u2019ve taken whoever is in town, including Sam\u2019s entire family, to Essex<\/a> for taco-and-tiki night.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Brandon started daydreaming last winter about doing something fun at Essex on Tuesdays, a night when Delancey is closed and Essex, at that point, was too. He played around with a few ideas – maybe a barbecue-only menu, or spaghetti and meatballs, something like that. We were both big fans of Alvaro Candela-Najera\u2019s Monday night tacos at Sitka and Spruce<\/a>\u00a0(which you can now find every night at The Saint<\/a>), so that got us thinking, and then\u00a0Niah<\/a> mentioned that he wanted to try doing a tiki night at Essex, and as it happens, tiki-style cocktails go well with the flavors and heat of Mexican food, and boom boom boom<\/i>,\u00a0one thing led to another, and that\u2019s how we decided to do a\u00a0special taco-and-tiki menu<\/a>\u00a0every Tuesday – with meats cooked in our wood-fired ovens (!) and tortillas made on-site from fresh masa (!!) and a free chips-and-salsa bar (!!!) and housemade hot sauce (!!!!).<\/p>\n

Of course, Brandon and I know a lot more about eating <\/i>tacos than we do about making them, so we turned for help to a couple of cooks at Delancey and Essex, Ricardo Valdes and Pedro Perez-Zamudio, whose families are from Mexico. To be fair, Tuesdays are now much more theirs than ours. After a couple of months of testing and re-testing, the menu was ready around mid-May, and that\u2019s when I added the words “Taco-&-Tiki Tuesdays, 5 to 10 pm” to the hours sign in the Essex window, and we were up and running.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve wanted to write about taco-and-tiki night here for a while now. But I wanted to share a recipe when I did, and it was hard to choose one that fit. Some of the best parts of the menu – the al pastor tacos, for instance, or the lamb barbacoa, or the lengua – involve a lot of steps, a wood-burning oven, a kind lady named Juana with a bowl of masa and very skilled hands, and spices that can be hard to find if you don\u2019t have access to the kind of vendors that supply restaurants. Happily, though, Ricardo\u2019s famous guacamole is not nearly that complicated, and he agreed to teach me how to make it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ricardo\u2019s recipe was inspired by the guacamole his grandmother Guadalupe made when he was growing up in Oxnard, California. Originally from Jalisco, Guadalupe – not sure if I am permitted to call her by her first name? Maybe not? If I\u2019m struck by lightning tomorrow, you know why – had an avocado tree in her backyard, and she grew her own cilantro, jalapenos, and serranos, all of which she used in her guacamole, along with red onion, garlic, tomato, and a generous amount of lime.\u00a0Ricardo remembers watching her make it, methodically cutting each avocado in half, removing the pit, and scoring the flesh with a small knife before scooping it out of its shell and mashing it up with two forks. (I felt wistful just typing that, possibly because the only cooking I actually witnessed my grandmother do involved a packet of Lipton soup mix, a kettle of boiling water, and a mug.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nYears later, when he was hired as the chef de cuisine of a new Mexican restaurant, Ricardo was tasked with working up a great guacamole, and he started from Guadalupe\u2019s formula. He left out the tomato, added some olive oil, and over a number of reworkings, he pinned down the quantities. The result is, and I don\u2019t know how else to say it, really special. I mean, we\u2019ve all made guacamole: you chuck some avocados in a bowl with stuff, and it\u2019s good. Right? It can\u2019t be bad<\/i>. Still, this one is special. It\u2019s bright with lime, spiked with just the right amount of herbs and heat, chunky enough to stand up on a chip but silky from a scant addition of olive oil. It\u2019s the result of a lot of repetition, of familial memory coupled to muscle memory – Guadalupe\u2019s taste and technique, honed and refined in restaurant kitchens.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n

And if you have someone smart around – someone like Ricardo, an actual professional who has the foresight to save some whole cilantro leaves for a garnish – your guacamole might even look attractive in a photograph<\/a>!\u00a0I had no idea that was possible.<\/p>\n

It occurs to me that I should also share a (life-changing, guacamole-changing) tip that Ricardo gave me about avocados and ripeness. TAKE NOTE. When you\u2019re making guacamole, of course you\u2019ll ideally use firm-ripe avocados, but if only\u00a0some<\/i> of your avocados are ripe, weep not. Take the unripe ones, scoop the flesh into a food processor, add a dribble of olive oil, and blend them until they\u2019re creamy, like soft, beaten butter. Somehow, blending them like this with oil deepens their flavor and makes them taste richer, riper, not sweet and starchy like normal unripe avocados. You can then take this blended avocado and fold it together with cubes of nicely ripened avocado, and make your guacamole from that.<\/p>\n

P.S. I\u2019m excited, and somewhat terrified, to be leading a discussion<\/a> with one of my mentors, Renee Erickson, at Book Larder<\/a> this Wednesday night, October 1, at 6:30 pm. Renee\u2019s first book, A Boat, A Whale, and A Walrus<\/a><\/i>, comes out on Tuesday, and it\u2019s every bit as good as you would expect. (Someday I will get a tattoo of my life motto: WWRD, or What Would Renee Do.) Come see us!<\/p>\n

P.P.S. On a related note, Brandon and Co. are cooking a four-course dinner<\/a> at Delancey on Monday, October 6 to celebrate Renee. \u00a0There are still a half-dozen tickets left, I believe, and you can purchase them through Book Larder.<\/p>\n

P.P.P.S. While we\u2019re talking about restaurant stuff,\u00a0this talk<\/a> by Mark Canlis, of Canlis<\/a>, is so good, so smart, and so humane. If you\u2019re interested in the industry, or even just an avid diner, it\u2019s worth listening – particularly to the first 27 minutes. Turn it on while you\u2019re cooking one night.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

\n
\n
Recipe<\/div>\n

Ricardo's Famous Guacamole<\/h2>\n

Adapted from Ricardo Valdes<\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
\n <\/figure>\n \n
\n