How to make Guacamole and the Kenyan dishes to serve with
Pronounced (Gwaakə mṓlee), it is a native Mexican dish prepared as a sauce or dip to go with various kinds of food. Here in Kenya, there are several indigenous dishes that can go with guacamole to make a feast out of what would have been an ordinary meal.
I had occasion to learn (firsthand) how to prepare the exotic sauce and sample tastes of what local dishes can go with it and I can authoritatively report back. Smile!
Guacamole is made primarily from avocados, and there are several recipes that can be used to prepare it. These range from the simplest where you mash avocados and mix them with salt, to the most advanced given the number of spices that one can get their hands on. Let me go right ahead and give you the recipe of proper guacamole that will sure transform the monotonous dinner tables.
Things you should assemble to make guacamole
- Avocados- 2 to 4 ripe avocados
- Tomatoes- 1 large or 3 small ripe tomatoes, cubed into small pieces
- Onions- 1 onion, cubed as well
- Chilies- Grab about 3 fresh ones. You can do without if you don’t prefer hot peppered food
- White pepper- Also optional
- White vinegar- 1 capful
- Salt- 2 pinches
- Sugar- 1 pinch
Instructions to master
Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and clean up the area where you are going to work from.
Now cut every avocado into four long slices by guiding the knife along the diagonal length. I prefer doing this first since peeling off the skin becomes much easier and less messy. Make sure that your avocado is just the right kind of ripe so as not to be too soft when pressed and not to be still raw. 
Place the peeled avocados on your chopping board and reduce them into small blocks. Some people would prefer scooping the avocado off of its skin using a spoon and that too gets the work done.
Even when making a dip, do not overdo the mashing since what you are looking for is a blocky mixture. Some would use a mortar and pestle to smooth the avocado but still, this should not be overdone to create a very smooth mixture.
Add the tomato and onion cubes into the bowl containing your mixture. Add the sliced chilies and make everything mix proportionately by turning it around and working it using a big spoon.
Once you are satisfied that you have done the mixing in a proportionate manner, add the two pinches of salt and single pinch of sugar. Notice that all the ingredients are common to all households, so this can be done for every mealtime given the availability of avocados.
Pour one cap full of vinegar onto the mixture. The cap should be the one that comes with your bottled white vinegar.
Add the white pepper (measured in about three pinches to taste) and gently stir the mixture around to get your final results which we can now call guacamole. The process is really simple and can be prepared within ten minutes tops. You can serve it together with roast meat, rice, ugali, githeri, cooked bananas or even mokimo.
This should give a dynamic taste to the Kenyan cuisine, completely different from barbecue sauce, chili sauce, ketchup, mayonnaise or mustard that we are all too used to already. Note that it should be used immediately after being prepared. When refrigerated, it is advisable not to store it for more than a day.
