Cookbooks are hard, this guacamole is easy

How a Food Network chef helped me reckon with a complicated childhood

Editor’s note (lol, I wish I had an editor for this thing): A previous version of this post neglected to tell you what to do with the onion in the guac recipe. We at The Half Filip regret the error.

I had the good fortune of meeting Chef Tyler Florence in April 2019. The Food Network celebrity was in town shooting “The Great Food Truck Race.” Through a series of slapdash coincidences, I ended up taking him to lunch at Rosy Tomorrows Heritage Farm in North Fort Myers.

Over plates of charcuterie crafted from the farm’s organically raised, heritage-breed pigs and verdant salads layered with farm-grown produce, Chef Florence and I talked work and life and food, all of which happen to be intertwined for us.

He asked: “Have you written a cookbook yet?”

I guffawed, shaking my head while thinking: Why no, Celebrity Chef Tyler Florence, I haven’t written a cookbook yet.

(Me and Tyler lunching it up like pals at Rosy Tomorrows in April 2019)

Sensing my surprise at what, to him, seemed like such a straight-forward question, he looked me in the eyes and asked, “Why not? I’m sure you have a million Filipino recipes, and Filipino food is super hot right now.”

I tried not to laugh again. I wanted to explain that I had a complicated relationship with the Filipino half of my roots. That I probably knew more Mexican recipes than I did Asian ones. That maybe I should seek a therapist to sort all this stuff out.

Instead, I nodded and told Celebrity Chef Extraordinaire Tyler Florence that he was right. That I should write a cookbook. I figured I had my mom and my aunt and Google — all good sources. I thought: You’re a writer! Craft some witty essays about your childhood! Slap a recipe at the bottom! Boom! (wait, that’s the other Food Network chef’s catchphrase)

So, I got to work on a cookbook. The essays came easily at first. The time with the frogs in the banana trees. The times rolling lumpia for birthdays. The time picking mangoes on Pine Island and gorging on them, the fruit still warm from the sun, till the juices stained our lips and cheeks yellow.

Then the essays stopped coming easily.

The time my dad died, and then our grandmother died, and then our uncle died. The time I was grounded in first grade for an A-minus. The time I told the kids on my bus that the woman standing in my driveway in a floral muumuu and cowboy boots was our maid and not my mother.

Somehow those stories didn’t meld quite so happily with my recipes.

That cookbook has morphed into something entirely different. I don’t know if that Something Different will ever become anything real, but I hope it will. I’m writing this newsletter and gathering your clicks and data and email addresses (which, God bless you every one!) with that Something Different in mind. If that Something Different ever becomes Something Real, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.

Until then, I’ve got plenty of recipes to share. Including (I wasn’t kidding) some really good Mexican ones.

Delicious (and simple) guacamole

Ingredients

3-4 ripe avocados

1/2 medium onion, finely minced (if you really hate onion chunks (you know who you are), you can grate the onion on the side of a box grater with the tiniest holes)

1 lime, juiced

1/2 teaspoon salt; can add more to taste

1/2 teaspoon chili powder; can add more to taste (sometimes Buddy makes his own, and it’s GAME CHANGING)

1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic; can add more to taste

1 Roma tomato, chopped

1/4-1/3 cup of cilantro, chopped

Directions

Scoop the flesh of the avocados from their skins/pits, add onion and douse it in the lime juice, salt, chili powder and granulated garlic. Using a potato masher (I swear by this) or the back of a large fork, mash the avocado till it starts to get smooth but is still full of chunks.

Using a spoon, fold in the tomato and cilantro. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.

I consider this my base guacamole. Sometimes I add crumbled queso fresco, chopped bacon, frizzled onions, feta, toasted pumpkin seeds or pine nuts. Sometimes I toss in a pinch of cumin or a dash of black pepper. Sometimes I leave out the tomatoes. Sometimes I accidentally come home with parsley and not cilantro (don’t use the parsley, just skip both should this same fate befall you).

What I’m saying is, unlike trying to write a witty cookbook-in-essays: Good guacamole is easy.

Bon appetit!