OPC Recipe Club: Super Bowl Guacamole

If you're going to make guacamole for the Super Bowl on Sunday - and I don't know why you wouldn't - then today's the day to buy your avocados, if you haven't already. Go to the store today, get some avocados that are still pretty firm, then put them in a brown paper bag till Sunday morning, by which time they will have ripened nicely, and will be soft enough to turn into guacamole.

You'll also need a plum tomato, so you can pick that up too, plus fresh garlic, lime juice and maybe some cilantro or onions if you don't have them at home. I recommend you not execute the rest of this recipe until midday on Sunday, because guacamole has an unfortunate tendency to start turning brownish very quickly, although it remains delicious. Anyway, on Sunday, what I'll be doing is slicing the avocados in half lengthwise, discarding the pit, then taking a sharp-pointed paring knife and scoring the avocado flesh, still in the skin, in a crosshatch pattern, making little cubes of avocado. Then you can turn the avocado skin inside-out, and dump the little cubes into a bowl for easy mashing.

You'll similarly dice the tomato up into small cubes; you can remove the skin as well, but I think that's too much work. Throw that in the bowl with the avocado. Put a clove of garlic through a garlic press, or, if you don't have a garlic press, cut it up into very small pieces. I think one medium-sized clove is plenty, but if you like garlic, make it two. Or if you don't like garlic, leave it out. Put in a tablespoon or so of lime juice as well.

Then there are the more optional ingredients. I plan to put a little cilantro in mine for color and a little extra flavor. I don't eat onions, but many people like a little chopped onion as well. You could even chop up a little jalapeno, but that wouldn't fly in my house. I also want to stress that the amounts are totally up to you: You're going to have to eat this stuff, not me. Make it with more of the ingredients you like and less of the ones you don't.

Once everything is in a bowl, I take a potato masher and crush everything together. You don't want to use an electric mixer and make it soupy, but you do want to limit the number of big chunks of avocado. When the consistency is to your liking, serve with blue corn chips for a colorful treat. And I like the Cardinals in an upset, 30-24.