Posts Tagged ‘avocado’

California BLTs

Life is nothing short of hectic these days with four teenagers, all on different afternoon and evening schedules. There’s baseball training, newspaper layout sessions, driver’s ed classes, sports broadcasts, Spanish tutoring, yearbook meetings, study sessions, alumni college interviews, guitar lessons, piano lessons, bass lessons—well, you get the idea. Some nights, it’s like Grand Central Station with ridiculously staggered arrivals and departures.

On those crazy nights, instead of wasting time cooking something that will be shoveled down on the fly between activities, I often put together the components for BLTs (or in this case, California BLTs!) and let the troops assemble themselves as time allows. They’re easy and satisfying, and the cool secret is cooking the…


The Best Guacamole

Want the best guacamole recipe? Hands-down, it’s this one I adapted about 20 years ago from Diane Rossen Worthington’s The Cuisine of California. I’ve used it ever since, to rave reviews. As my sister likes to say, “It’s seriously so good that it makes people faint!”

Assuming you use creamy, ripe avocados, you’ll end up with the most luscious dip or spread you can imagine. Adjust the cumin and jalapeño to your own taste, of course. We love to scoop it up with blue corn tortilla chips, but really, the possibilities are limitless. Use it atop any kind of taco. Serve it alongside warm scrambled eggs. Put it on a burger. Spread it on toast for…


The moment David laid his eyes on this recipe in the new issue of Food & Wine, he became a ticking time bomb, set to detonate if he did not make these tacos within 24 hours. And so, the following night, these babies were indeed on the dinner table.

Our awesome butcher, Anthony, upgraded Dave to a prime flat-iron steak, which he marinated diligently in a scrumptiously fragrant concoction. Zack mixed up the fresh pico de gallo and blended up the avocado salsa, a velvety-smooth, though fairly bland sauce. I sliced up over 3-1/2 pounds of the expertly grilled steak ““ very thinly ““ and let everyone have at it, assembling their…


Back in “the day” (whatever that means!) when I was a hose-‘n-pumps corporate chick in Downtown Providence, RI, I used to take out the most awesome sandwiches from this little place called Barclay’s Gourmet on Weybosset Street. They were among the earliest adopters of Boar’s Head provisions and they used fresh breads, great cheeses and good quality veggies on their creative sandwiches. One of my faves was the “BLTA” — you know what the B, L and T stand for, but the A was the genius addition of avocado.

These California BLTs bring back memories of the early 90s: standing behind the same giant, buff attorney every day in line at Barclay’s, tall white cans of hair spray,…


What a simple, fresh salad. Jake loved learning how easy it is to work with avocados, from peeling and pitting them to dicing the creamy flesh. The key, of course, is finding perfectly ripe avocados…our first try at Citarella yielded bright green baseballs, which we wisely left at the store.

The salad is bright and lemony, with a nice textural contrast between the crunchy endive and the creamy avocados. Unfortunately, instead of serving this as a salad course, we ate it alongside lamb chops and grilled veggies. As I got into the lamb, I found the avocado way too rich. I would stick to this dish as a salad course, with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc.

Ben,…