Guacamole-ish

I've been having some luck with the special offers corner in my local Waitrose lately. After the £1.11 beef joint which yielded two steaks and two rather yummy salads, I've been casting my eye over it every time I walk past. I've never got that lucky again, but for one, wonderful week, it became apparent that someone was putting the ripe and ready to eat avocados into the discount shelf at 6pm on the day they went out of date. As ripe and ready to eat avocados rarely are, I grabbed them thinking they'd be good - and most of them were. Bizarrely, though, one pack of two consisted of one gorgeously soft avocado - and one so hard it could have been made of rubber.

I'd planned to make this guacamole recipe, one from the hairy bikers that I picked because it didn't contain cream or mayo or anything else odd - I wanted it to taste super-fresh, not like a dip. But the recipe calls for three avocados. I'd planned to make it with two, reducing things slightly - I used a couple of chillies, rather than four, and just one tomato - which would have been fine. But after the rubber avocado, I found myself with a pile of chopped other ingredients, and just one av. So I shrugged and ended up making it with one.

It worked. The result was light, fresh and zingy. It still had the creaminess of the one super ripe avocado, but in texture it was more like a salsa. As someone who's never been that fussed by most salsas - I'm not the world's biggest tomato fan - it was like a perfect blend of salsa and guacamole.

It tasted so light and fresh I didn't want it with tortilla chips or anything greasy - so instead, we use lettuce leaves. They were perfect - little scoops. And because they were so healthy, I didn't feel in the least bit guilty about polishing off a lot of guacamole in one go!