bacontarian

I spent much of last week on the West Coast of the United States, a strange and foreign place that I enjoy visiting, but which still instills a certain amount of culture shock. Specifically, I have yet to understand the phenomenon of “California Cuisine”. As far as I can tell, California Cuisine involves cooking otherwise unremarkable food and burying it under slices of fresh avocado. (Evidently, avocados grow in California with the wild abandon that kudzu spreads through the American Deep South. Local chefs prevent themselves from being crushed by avocados by incorporating the fruit into every possible dish.)

The frequent presence of avocado on California menus led me to meditate on the deep parallels between bacon and guacamole. Much of this meditation occurred while eating a Quizno’s Turkey, Bacon and Guacamole sub, an inspired creation which elevates the dullest of meats to the honored status of blank canvas, an empty stage on which the tastes of bacon and guacamole dance a pas de deux.

Like bacon, guacamole is deployed to turn the ordinary dish into something extraordinary. The hamburger, accented with bacon and guacamole, turns from simple sandwich into ecstatic experience. Both have the reputation of being “sinful”, perhaps due to high fat content, perhaps because America’s puritanical culture is predisposed to turning the pleasurable into the forbidden.

As bacon is apotheosis of pig, guacamole is the pinnacle of avocado. As avocados ripen on the trees that surround every California town, they dream of being squashed with salt and fresh lime juice into a smooth, savory paste. While I’m incapable of twisting my mind into the contorted mind of a vegetarian, guacamole is one of the few foods I can imagine those crippled souls lusting for in the same way I lust for bacon. When the world looks like an ugly and dark place, I am cheered by the notion that vegans – and even raw foodists – can enjoy guacamole.

With this in mind, I offer a – potentially heretical – theological assertion: “Guacamole is the vegetarian’s bacon”. While admittedly devoid of the presence of the LARD, guacamole is far worthier of this analogic distinction than pathetic poseurs like “turkey b*con” or the various soy-based, pork-bereft fakes that act as false prophets to misled veggies.

With that as precursor, I offer the following recipe:

Ethan’s Blue State Cheeseburgers

for the guacamole:
2 ripe avocados
2 large limes
salt
pico de gallo (or medium-hot salsa)
one chipotle (smoked jalapeño) chili pepper
(Keeping with the blue state theme, chipotles and pico should be obtained from California, or New Mexico)

for the burgers:
0.5 kilo ground beef
six strips thick-cut bacon
small onion
2 garlic cloves
200 grams sharp cheddar cheese (Cabot, from Vermont, is available in the US in slice form and works very well)
2 soft white rolls

Place the chipotle pepper on an iron skillet and slowly heat it. As the pepper warms, it will swell and soften. Once the pepper is is pliable, remove it from heat and CAREFULLY remove seeds and stem, and finely dice the pepper. (If you burn the pepper, you’ll make your kitchen uninhabitable for at least an hour, due to the natural pepper gas you create. If you’re stupid enough to touch a mucus membrane or, god forbid, an eye after handling the pepper, well, you’ll be very unhappy.)

Peel and halve the avocados, remove the pits and place the flesh in a stoneware, not metal, bowl. Add chipotle flakes, the juice of two limes, a pinch of sea salt, and a teaspoon or two of pico or salsa. Use a wooden spoon to mash the mixture into a thick, chunky paste. (Metal will encourage the avocado to oxidize, turning it black.) Set aside.

Fry the bacon in the skillet. As it cooks, finely chop a small onion and two cloves of carlic. When the bacon is done, cook the onion and garlic in bacon fat until they brown. Mix them with the ground beef and form it into two patties. Place the patties in the bacon greased skillet.

While the burgers cook, slice the rolls and toast them. When burgers are done on one side, turn them over and place thick slices of cheddar on top of them, letting the cheese melt as the bottom of the burgers cook. Once burgers are done, smear a thick layer of guacamole on each half of the bun. Place three strips of bacon on each burger and burger on bun.

Serves two blissful supplicants.