This recipe or concept make absolutely no sense until you have some context. So for those who aren’t already aware, my parents are in their seventies and living in Montreal, Québec’s COVID epicenter. They are therefore locked down in the house and other than their two walks outside daily, keep abreast of the world thanks to talk radio. My Mother waits as long as possible before calling groceries in from a local fruit shop and last night, as we shared supper over a Zoom meeting, she mentioned that she had made lots of turkey burritos but that her pantry was short on avocadoes and the couple she did have looked pretty sorry. ‘All cabbage all the time!” she concluded, given the single vegetable she does have in large amounts at all times, is cabbage. As I did the dishes later, I figured there had to be a way to stretch those avocadoes into a functional guacamole using the staple food of most Northern climes: both for its storage qualities and affordability. Now that you have the background story, it perhaps makes more sense how we’ve come round to cabbage guacamole.

What’s weird once all is said and done is that, although not really like any guacamole I’ve ever eaten, it’s a really good dip in its own right that works with breads, chips, vegetable sticks or in sandwiches. So before passing to the next (or previous) post, consider giving it a try.

Yield: 3 cups

What you need:

• 2 cups well-cooked cabbage, cooled (steamed)
• 1 small onion, well-cooked and cooled (steamed along with the cabbage or sautéed if you prefer)
• 2 avocados
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice (or just 1 if you don’t want a hint of sour)
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder (or a minced clove of fresh garlic, or more if you prefer)
• 1/2 teaspoon herb salt (or more or less, to desired level)

What you do:

1. Purée the cooked cabbage, onion, garlic (powder), salt and lime or lemon juice until as smooth as possible. Given how fibrous cabbage is, this will take several minutes and you’ll have to stop between pulses to open up the food processor and scrape/push the mixture back down and into the blades. Persist; because if the texture isn’t smooth at this point, the finished dip just won’t make the cut – you want to establish your ‘as-creamy-as-possible’ before you let the avocados join the party.
2. Add the avocados and pulse until relatively smooth, stopping a couple of times to open the machine and scrape the mixture down off the sides.
3. Taste. Adjust flavours as desired with more lime or lemon juice, salt or spices.
4. Serve.

Variations:

• Feel free to add cumin powder, coriander powder, fresh cilantro and/or hot sauce if you like. Keep in mind, the recipe was meant for a kitchen that’s running out of everything so there’s not much jazz other than the basic melody!