Take a moment to honor 98 year-old Diana Kennedy, the "Queen of Mexican regional cooking"

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

International Women’s Day feels like exactly the right part of Women’s History Month to celebrate Diana Kennedy. The trailblazing cookbook author — who turned 98 last week — has devoted no less than six decades of her life to studying and documenting the richness, tradition and techniques of the regional cuisines of Mexico.

If you haven’t seen Elizabeth Carroll’s 2019 documentary about her, “Nothing Fancy,” do treat yourself. The 1 hour, 8 minute film does a wonderful job at explaining why British-born Kennedy is widely regarded — even in Mexico — as the world’s foremost expert in traditional Mexican cuisine.

“I think she’s a legend,” says Gabriela Cámara, chef and owner of Contramar in Mexico City and Cala in San Francisco, in the film. “Many Mexicans are against admitting that Diana knows more than they do about their food.”

“I think Mexico as a country will be eternally indebted to her efforts,” was celebrity TV chef Pati Jinich’s take.

The author of eight books on Mexican cooking, including the seminal 1972 book The Cuisines of Mexico, Kennedy was the pioneer who evangelized to the English-speaking world about the depth, breadth and fabulousness of traditional Mexican cooking, the way it is done in cities and villages throughout Mexico. That book is out of print, but it is collected — along with The Tortilla Book and Mexican Regional Cooking — in The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. It is a must-have for anyone interested in Mexican cooking.

It was The Cuisines of Mexico that prompted me to buy an aluminum molcajete and a tortilla press 36 years ago, when I was in my 20s. I still have both, though I’ve graduated to a giant wooden tortilla press.

I’ve learned so much from Kennedy’s books over the years, starting with the proper way to make guacamole, grinding white onion, serrano chiles, cilantro and salt in the molcajete — and no garlic, as Kennedy emphatically exclaims in the documentary. Her books are always the first place I go whenever I have any question about any Mexican dish.

I had the amazing opportunity, back in the early 1990’s, not just to meet Kennedy, but to spend a long weekend cooking with her at my friend Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch’s house in Dordogne, France. As you’ll see if you watch the documentary, Kennedy is famously crotchety, which was my experience as well. But I’ll always treasure the time, which I wrote about a few years ago, in a story about making tortillas.

If it’s interesting or vexing to contemplate the idea of honoring a British-born woman as the “queen of Mexican regional cooking,” as a Los Angeles Times story by Daniel Hernandez did last year, consider the comments in the documentary of Abigail Mendoza. The chef and owner of Tlamanalli, a restaurant in Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, had been friends for 35 years at the time the documentary was filmed. “Ella está una hija adaptiva en México — She’s an adoptive daughter of Mexico,” she said.

“She’s very Mexican in her soul and heart. I believe Diana is a Mexican, who does not have to have been born in Mexico. But she is in Mexico and lives in Mexico, is working in Mexico and is a Mexican.”

Happy International Women’s Day. I’m off now to make a batch of guacamole.

Feed your soul on election night with stress-relieving, jitters-calming, make-ahead Mexican favorites

“I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall.”

It seems fitting — in our nervous household, anyway — to feed our souls on election night with food that honors Mexican people.

Anxiety is running high. The urge to nibble nervously on election night will be real. No matter how Tumultuous Tuesday plays out, we will all need comfort and sustenance.

I already have the makings for a big pan of Chicken Enchiladas Verdes: tomatillos and chicken to roast, tortillas to roll, cheese and crema to soothe. I’ll make a big pot of Frijoles de Olla, crunchy, tangy carrots escabeches and a big plate of OG nachos, like the ones Pati Jinich just described in the New York Times as “crunchy, cheesy and truly Mexican.” And rice.

Pozole would be another great way to go: a big pot on the stove that you can return to again and again, dressing up bowls with crispy radishes and cabbage, creamy avocado, earthy oregano. (Our friend Mela Martínez has just the prescription!)

Pozole Rojo from Mely Martínez’s ‘The Mexican Home Kitchen’

Tumultuous Tuesday also happens to be Taco Tuesday. You could set a batch of carnitas, carne asada or roast chicken on the table, surround it with homemade or store-bought corn tortillas, chopped cilantro and onion, radishes and carrots to nibble — or sliced jicama drizzled with lime juice and tajín — and a couple of salsas.

I can imagine being so nervous that I’d be soothed by pressing tortillas throughout the evening and tossing them on the comal. (A recipe for roast chicken is included in our chicken enchilada recipe, or pick up a supermarket roast bird.)

Or make Josef Centeno’s supremely comforting Carne Guisada! And his Tía Carmen’s Flour Tortillas!

Stay safe, everyone. Stay healthy. Try to stay calm. Nurture yourselves and your families, soothe yourself by cooking, and we’ll see you on the other side.

RECIPE: Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

RECIPE: Frijoles de Olla

RECIPE: Mexican Rice

RECIPE: Taquería Carrots

RECIPE: Mely Martínez’s Pozole Rojo

RECIPE: Killer Carnitas

RECIPE: Serious Chingón Carne Asada

RECIPE: Corn Tortillas

RECIPE: Roasted Salsa Verde

RECIPE: Josef Centeno’s Carne Guisada

RECIPE: Josef Centeno’s Tía Carmen’s Flour Tortillas

With 'The Mexican Home Kitchen,' Mely Martínez is now everyone's abuelita

The more it goes, the more I cook, the more I’m interested in cookbooks that let you learn the basics of a cuisine by cooking dishes that real people cook at home. As inspiring as it is to pore over a tome by Enrique Olvera or René Redzepi or Pierre Gaignaire, there’s something about the very basic joy that comes from doing things the same way mamas and grandmas have done them for ages — whether those mamas are in China or Lebanon, Senegal or France, Italy or India or Uzbekistan.

And for me, since I have felt since I was about 10 years old that somewhere deep inside of me lives an old Mexican woman (seriously, I’ve always felt it as kind of a past-life thing), a book that speaks to how old Mexican women and young Mexican women cook every day at home is quite an exciting prospect.

I’ve learned to cook Mexican dishes mostly from books — starting with those from Diana Kennedy, the British expat who moved with her journalist husband to Puebla nearly 70 years ago and has been chronicling Mexican regional foodways ever since. But I’ve never had a Mexican mama or abuela to hold my hand. (Kennedy, as wonderful as her books are, is more the stern taskmaster than the hand-holder.)

Until now.

The Mexican Home Kitchen — the debut cookbook from the hugely popular food blogger Mely Martínez that has been 11 years in the making — is one of the titles I’ve been most looking forward to this very unusual fall publishing season.

Mely Martínez with epazote she grew in her backyard garden in Frisco, Texas | Photo by David Castañeda

I’ve been excited because I’m a fan of her blog, Mexico in My Kitchen, and of her Instagram posts, where she fluidly moves back and forth between English and Spanish to give background about a dish, showing us what she made for breakfast (black bean gorditas! red chilaquiles!); it’s all completely engaging and charming. No wonder she has 63K followers there.

Though I’m one of them, I had no idea until a couple weeks ago that she lives in Dallas (in Frisco, a northern suburb). We chatted at length on the phone, and she told me about her life, her cooking, how she came to write this book.

Born and raised in Tampico, a coastal city in the Gulf state of Tamaulipas, Martínez spent summers on her grandmother’s farm in Veracruz. There, she told me, “They cook what they have on hand. My uncles in the evening went out to hunt rabbits, and you knew the next day you’d have rabbit for lunch. If they went to fish in the river, we knew we’d have fish — and whatever my grandmother had planted in her garden.” Her grandmother’s big kitchen with its wood stove was where she loved being, and that’s where she learned to cook.

Eager to experience some of those flavors, I made her Pollo a la Veracruzana — Veracruz-style chicken.

Pollo a la Veracruzana from ‘The Mexican Home Kitchen’ by Mely Martínez.

It’s a simple dish — achieved by browning pieces of chicken (Martínez calls for thighs or breasts; I used both), then sautéing onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes. Add fresh tomato purée, herbs, sliced green pimento-stuffed olives, capers and raisins. Simmer the browned chicken in the sauce, and serve it with Arroz Blanco.

One bite, and I knew this would be a dish I’d make again and again. Never mind that we’re the same age; Martínez is now my very own abuela. This dish is easy, bright, deep, homey and soulful.

The idea of including raisins with the olives and capers together in a tomatoey sauce might sound odd, but the flavors meld beautifully, and the raisins add depth. I’d been unaware that raisins are used in Veracruzana dishes; that’s because on the coast, they’re not included; it’s more of an inland mountain style, as Edmund Tijerina explained in a 2011 Houston Chronicle story about Veracruz-style fish.

It’s not the kind of micro-background detail you find much of in The Mexican Home Kitchen, which keeps things more general (black beans are more common in Mexico’s Gulf states; flour tortillas are eaten more in the north) and on the way things are served and eaten.

Her main purpose in writing it was to share recipes from around Mexico with emigrants who missed the cooking — and their U.S.-born children, or non-Mexican spouses. “I realized there were no books written by Mexicans, or by Mexican-Americans,” she told me. She started writing “so people who are Mexican and have children who don’t speak Spanish can have the recipes in English.” She could be their surrogate kitchen-loving mama or abuela. Her own 25-year-old son, David Castañeda, did all the lovely photography. (And no, Martínez is not an actual abuela.)

As a young elementary school teacher, Martínez moved to the south, which gave her the opportunity to travel extensively in the Yucatán Peninsula, where she loved exploring the foods. Later, her husband’s work in human resources led them to live in states all over Mexico: Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Veracruz, Puebla, Estado de México and Tabasco. Their regional cuisines are most strongly represented in the 550-ish recipes on her blog, and in the pages of her debut book.

And in the 85 recipes in the book. Dive in just about anywhere randomly, and delicious-looking-and-sounding things jump out that you’ll want to try posthaste.

Pozole Rojo could be a great place to start — especially if you’re reading this in time for Mexican Independence Day, September 16. Throughout Mexico, says Martínez, pozole is “one of the stars” of the holiday, for which people make a much bigger deal than they do for el Cinco de Mayo. (Flautas, tamales, tostadas, empanadas and buñuelos are also popular, she says.) The celebration starts around 11 p.m. on the 15th, as friends gather, eat and drink, and at midnight there are shouts of “¡Viva México!” and “¡Viva la Revolución!” and bells are rung.

Martínez’s recipe includes the traditional garnishes: shredded lettuce, sliced radishes, dried Mexican oregano, dried chiles, chopped onions, diced avocado and limes. Where I grew up, in Southern California, shredded cabbage was a familiar garnish. I always loved that, and asked Martínez about it. “That’s what they use in the northwest part of Mexico,” she said; in the rest of Mexico, lettuce is more prevalent.

If you’re after something sweet, try one of Martínez’s personal favorites: Pastel de Tres Leches (Tres Leches Cake).

It’s a denser version than most, not a sponge cake, and requires an overnight rest for the tres leches — condensed milk, evaporated milk and heavy cream or media crema — to soak in properly. The result, topped with vanilla whipped cream, is super luscious. Not realizing that in a footnote to her recipe, Martínez suggests a variation adding rum or brandy, I had a crazy idea and pour a tablespoon or two of pineapple rum on my slice. It was insanely good. (And it taught me the lesson that Martínez’s “notas” following many of the recipes can be extremely valuable and interesting.)

There’s still so much more I want to cook from this wonderful book. I enjoyed the Crema de Elote — a soup of fresh creamed corn that was even better served chilled the next day. And I still have my eye on Chiles Rellenos, Albondigas en Chipotle, Mole Poblano, Tamales de Salsa en Salsa Verde, Picadillo, fabulous-looking Tostadas de Pollo, and many others.

It’s an impressive debut cookbook — one that deserves a celebration. To that end, Cooks Without Borders and The Dallas Morning News will be co-hosting a virtual book party for Martínez on Thursday, Sept. 24, from 5 to 6 p.m. Central time. The party is free and you’re all invited to join. RSVP here for a link, and read more about the party here.

And here is a profile of Martínez I wrote for the Dallas Morning News.

Till then, help yourself to one or more of these delicious dishes, and treat yourself (or a friend) to a copy of the book.

RECIPE: Mely Martinez’s Pollo a la Veracruzano

RECIPE: Arroz Blanco

RECIPE: Mely Martínez’s Pozole Rojo

RECIPE: Mely Martínez’s Tres Leches Cake

The Mexican Home Kitchen: Traditional Home-Style Recipes that Capture the Flavors and Memories of Mexico, by Mely Martínez. Photographs by David Castañeda. Rock Point, $28.

Celebrated Dallas restaurateur Monica Greene shares a favorite dish from her Mexico City childhood: ropa vieja

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Monica Greene in the Cooks Without Borders kitchen 

Most Texans see a brisket and think: barbecue. Monica Greene, the legendary Dallas restaurateur, sees a brisket and thinks: ropa vieja.

Everyone in town knows Monica, who visited Cooks Without Borders headquarters (my kitchen!) recently as an honored guest cook. She's no longer in the business; her last (and short-lived) restaurant – Monica's Nueva Cocina – closed in 2012.  Nevertheless, her impact on Dallas' vibrant modern Mexican cooking culture is undeniable and indelible. A pioneer of the movement, she and chef Joanne Bondy introduced the city to dishes like cabrito tacos with apple-plum butter and veal shortribs braised in mole rojo when they opened their ground-breaking restaurant Ciudad in 2000. Her long-running Deep Ellum place Monica's Aca y Alla introduced a generation of Dallasites to the joys of Mexican eating.

What her fans might not know is that Monica, who grew up in Mexico City, also loves to cook.

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"Cooking is my favorite thing in the world," she tells me as she slices onions, chops carrots and celery, fills my giant stockpot with water. She's here to make ropa vieja, a shredded cold beef salad that evokes her Mexico City childhood. 

Warm and gregarious as she is, she established her reputation as the face of her restaurants, running dining rooms. "From the very beginning, people told me 'you stay up front.' So when I opened my restaurant, I was a door person. But whenever I had a chance, I'd go work in the kitchen."

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The first order of business is getting the brisket trimmed and simmering: It will need nearly three hours to cook to tenderness. Once Monica cuts it in half and drops it into the stockpot of simmering onions, carrots, celery, garlic, herbs and cumin seeds, we take our time and put together all the components of the salad. And yes, we talk – and talk and talk.

She tells me about her childhood in Mexico City, where she was the seventh of eight children: four boys and four girls. Their mother died when she was three, but she has fond memories of gathering with her siblings every evening around the big butcher block in the center of the family kitchen, where their cook would prepare dinner. All eight kids, and inevitably their friends as well.

"Every once in a while," she says, "you got to choose what we had. I wanted to eat two dishes. One was a chicken breast wrapped in an apple. I've never seen it anywhere else in my entire life. You boil the apple to take off the skin, wrap a pounded chicken breast around it and roast it. The other was ropa vieja." 

The dish, which translates as "old clothes,"takes a different form than the well-known Cuban version, in which the braised shredded beef is served warm, like a stew. Monica's Mexico City iteration is a cold salad.  "In the north, they pan-sear and brown and seal the meat, then put it in the oven." In the south, you boil it; the beef serves as a vehicle to the other flavors: pickled onions and tomatoes and avocado and cilantro. "It’s more of a symphony."

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Monica slices nopal – a cactus paddle – before boiling it.

She talks, too, over the course of an afternoon – the kind of lazy, cooking afternoon I love – about some of the challenges she has faced in her life. How hard it was to find a job after making the transition from Eduardo Greene more than 20 years ago to Monica Greene, at a time when people didn't know what to make of such an evolution. At that point she had become a beautiful woman (she shows me photos on her phone) and she felt like a woman, but the way she looked and felt didn't match the name on her drivers' license or social security card. 

Now she's reinventing herself once again, taking time off to travel – she has just returned from Mexico (where she reconnected with one of her brothers) and then Bali. She's in Dallas for a week, spending as much time as possible with her grandchildren, and then she's off to her second home, in Aspen, Colorado for a month – or five.  "I realized I'd been working 41 years," she says, "and I wanted to take a sabbatical and pursue my passions. I have to travel – before there's a time I cannot walk up the pyramid." 

She's also writing. "I took a couple of classes at the Aspen Writers Foundation," she tells me. "They were workshops, basically. And I found I have a lot of passion for it." One project is a Mexican cookbook. "I've been working on it for two years." She's also working on a children's book ("I'm an illustrator also") and a book of fiction. "It's partly the story of my life," she says. "I think when most writers write fiction, they're writing about themselves."

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Between anecdotes and bons mots, memories of her aging father succumbing to Alzheimer's and a fabulous reunion with a cherished brother, everything starts to come together for the salad. Rounds of purple-edged Bermuda onions turn to tangy pickles, perfumed with allspice and kicked with habanero chile.  A cactus paddle is declawed, sliced, boiled till it taste like desert green beans. Eggs are boiled ("We're going to overcook them a little," she says, "because we're going to do the yolks in powder and the whites in strips.") Lime juice, jalapeño, vinegar, oil and a whole lot of cilantro get whirred up into a dressing that will pull all the flavors together. Rosé is poured, with predictions of tequila flowing in the near future.

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"I don't use technique," she says; "I use tradition." Still, it's fun watching her slice Roma tomatoes, using her knife to liberate their hearts full of sees and coax them into flat obedience on the cutting board, ready to be sliced into even strips. "Yes, I can cut fast, but that's like making love too fast."

 Monica pushes the egg yolks through a strainer, crumbles queso fresco, as I slice avocados to her specs. Neighbors show up, hungry and excited. Monica tosses the ropa vieja, then arranges it on a platter. 

It's got everything: richness, depth, wonderful tang, the prodigious perfume of cilantro. You can serve it just like that, Monica says, or spoon some onto round, fried tostadas for some crunch. 

Dinner is just as relaxed as the cooking was. "It's even better with tequila," Monica suggests, and wow! She has brought a bottle of Casa Dragones. Out come the shot glasses, but this is special, for sipping.

She's right. Tequila and ropa vieja is a match made in heaven. 

Her gift to you: This recipe. Hope for leftovers, but don't expect them.

How I learned to stop worrying about nixtamal and make fresh tortillas from masa harina

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You can wrap just about anything in a freshly made corn tortilla, hot off the comal or griddle, and it'll be wonderful.

Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. 

In another lifetime, a hundred years ago when I was in my twenties and living in L.A., I made fresh tortillas all the time. I had a cheap aluminum tortilla press and a cheap aluminum comal (tortilla griddle); I'd picked up both in a Mexican grocery. You could buy a bag of masa harina (dried powdered masa) just about anywhere. I was in a serious carnitas phase: I'd fallen in love with Diana Kennedy's version in The Cuisines of Mexico, and I'd make that with salsa verde cruda and guacamole and a big pot of pinto beans to serve on the side. 

When I moved to New York to go to graduate school a few years later, I brought my comal and tortilla press and even my molcajete – though masa harina was not so easy to find.

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The tortilla press I've had forever

A few years after that, some time in the early 90's, I lucked into an opportunity to meet Kennedy, and even spent a long weekend cooking with her and the late, wonderful Peter Kump, founder of Peter Kump's Cooking School in New York. My friend Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch (I wrote about her in my post about pissaladière) had invited Kennedy and Kump to her 500 year-old stone farmhouse in Dordogne to spend some days cooking and soaking up the delicious and gorgeous region. Danièle knew I was a huge Kennedy fan, and was wonderfully generous to invite me along.

At some point during a weekend spent making pommes sarladaise in a big pot suspended from the hearth in the center of Danièle's living room, and confit de carnard and chou farci and I can't remember what all else, Diana and I got into a discussion about corn tortillas. I'll never forget her expression when I told her I was in the habit of using masa harina to make mine: I might as well have told her I was a regular at Taco Bell. She was positively scandalized.  She insisted that masa made from nixtamal – corn kernels cooked in a solution of lime (calcium oxide) and water – was the only legitimate masa. I knew all about it from her book, but when I'd gotten to the part of the two-page process that said, "Meantime, crush the lime if it is in a lump, taking care that the dust does not get into your eyes," I stopped reading. 

With Diana, I tried to defend my position, arguing that tortillas freshly made from masa harina are way better than anything you can buy at the store. "Better to buy masa at a tortilleria in your neighborhood," she countered. But there were no tortillerias anywhere near my hood – the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It wasn't even easy to find masa harina there.  The conversation seriously deflated me (this was my Mexican cooking hero!) and I think I lost some of my joy for tortilla-making.

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That's why last summer when a review copy of Alex Stupak and Jordana Rothman's cookbook Tacos: Recipes and Provocations landed on my desk at work, I was delighted when the book fell open to the following: "In Defense of Masa Harina." "A warm tortilla prepared with harina may not hit the same celestial notes as one made with fresh masa," it said, "but it is still an absolute revelation if all you've ever tasted is reheated, store-bought tortillas. There's irrefutable value in that, so I stand by it." 

Well, of course I've tasted many a fabulous tortilla made from fresh masa, but I still think the ones you make from masa harina (all you need to add is water!) are pretty darn good. And once you get the hang of it, making them is easy – easier than making pancakes, in fact, because the dough is just harina and water.

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Though I'd already made tortillas a hundred times, I followed Stupak's instructions and found they worked perfectly, though I prefer the proportions of water to masa found on harina packages (1 1/8 cup warm water to 1 cup harina). You knead the water into the flour, roll it into a ball, and keep it moist under a damp towel while you work. "You want the texture to be as soft and moist as possible without sticking to your hands," is the way Stupak describes the right texture. 

 Set up a double griddle or two cast-iron pans and heat them so you have one side or pan hotter than the other. Line your tortilla press with plastic (so the dough doesn't stick). Roll some dough into a golf-ball-size ball. Open the press, plop in the ball, push down on the lever. Open the press, flip the tortilla onto your palm, peel off the plastic. (The thinner the plastic, the easier it is to peel off. I cut up thin, crinkly plastic bags like the ones you get at CVS if you forget to bring your own.) Drop the tortilla onto the cooler side of the griddle, cook for 15 seconds, then flip it over onto the hotter side and cook for 30 seconds. Flip it again (still on the hotter side) and leave it for 10 seconds, then flip a final time and cook 10 more seconds. At that point it may puff up a bit. Transfer it to an tortilla basket – or an insulated tortilla container (Stupak has a good section about which type is best – a "thick fabric tortilla warmer covered with culturally insensitive dancing chili peppers" was his favorite. He also explains why it doesn't work to reheat corn tortillas that have cooled completely.)

So, what shall we wrap these tender warm beauties around? That's a subject for my next post. Meanwhile, I can tell you what I put on the ones I whipped up tonight: Shredded store-bought roast chicken, diced avocado, white onion, cilantro, some leftover pinto beans, a squeeze of lime and a drizzle of leftover salsa borracha, also from Stupak's book. The salsa borracha – spiked with mezcal – was a revelation. That recipe's coming soon, too.

Meanwhile, in case you want to get some practice – or just have a fabulous vehicle in which to wrap leftovers (barbecue brisket is dreamy!) or do some creative taco improvisation – here's the corn tortilla recipe. Same thing I just gave you, but in a little more detail.

Nothing says spring like strawberry-mezcal ice cream

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I don't know what inspired this exactly. Except it's spring, so I'm jonesing for strawberries. And it's spring, so I'm jonesing for mezcal. A friend was coming to lunch last weekend, and I wanted to cook Mexican. But dessert . . . strawberry shortcake? Nah. A big ol' Pavlova smothered in strawberries and cream? Nah. Almond cake with strawberries? Nah. None of it felt right to follow the lamb barbacoa tacos I'd planned. 

But ice cream! Who makes strawberry ice cream, anyway? I would! 

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I figured I'd roast my strawberries, as they weren't exactly peak-season Harry's Berries (the fabulous ones I'd buy at the farmers market if I happened to be in Santa Monica). Roasting the supermarket berries would concentrate their flavor a bit. For some reason, when I thought about roasting them, I thought of hitting them with a little mezcal. In the back of my mind, I was remembering a wonderful nieve de naranja (orange ice) con mezcal my friend Michalene and I had when we were in Mexico City in February, at a restaurant called Fonda Fina. "Aha" moment! I thought mezcal might work well with the brightness of the berries. 

And so it did! Making the custard base is always easier than it sounds; just take it slow. Best to do this the day before you want to serve it, so the ice cream can set up in the freezer overnight – or at least for a few hours. In any case, you want to have time to chill the custard before it goes into the ice cream maker.

Want to leave out the mezcal? Just substitute half a teaspoon of vanilla. Or a teaspoon of aged balsamic vinegar. I served the ice cream with a couple of (store-bought) almond crisps.

Want the recipe? Here you go . . . 

The kid comes home from college: guacamole time!

Funny story about my molcajete – the mortar and pestle, made of rough volcanic rock, that I feel is essential for making great guacamole. Grinding onion, chiles, cilantro and salt together to a paste in the molcajete makes a base that gives the dip superb, deep flavor.

I've had my molcajete for decades – so long, I can't even remember where I got it. I was definitely living in New York, and it was before I moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn, so pre-1995. Somewhere along the way, after moves to Los Angeles and then Dallas, I lost the molcajete's pestle. I continued making guacamole, natch, but had to muddle along improvising with a wooden spoon or the pestle that belonged to my smooth marble mortar. Not good with that rough volcanic stone. At some point, I found a molinillo — a wooden tool, with a broad bulb of wood on the end, used to mix champurrado, chocolate-flavored atole. Somehow I thought I'd live the rest of my life that way, smashing chiles and cilantro and avocado with a molinillo. Feeling stupid about it one day, I started nosing around online and in cook shops. But (holy guacamole!) – a nice molcajete can cost $40.

Last summer, I happened to be shopping in a Fiesta supermarket in Austin, Texas, and found reasonably priced molcajetes for sale. That wasn't a huge surprise: A gentleman working in a restaurant supply had pointed me in that direction. What was a surprise was that Fiesta also sold the pestle part individually – for about three bucks! Eureka! But how silly I felt: Doing without something that could have been so easily and inexpensively obtained if I had just used my brain!

So now I have both parts – mismatched, to be sure – but I'm happy every time I see them together on my countertop.

So. The kid -- who just started in college this fall in Southern California – is  home for winter break, and what does he crave? My guacamole – every few days. Easily done. I'm going through avocados like they're going out of style.