At New York City’s popular La Palapa restaurant, known for its home-style Mexican cooking rather than ultra trendy dishes, Mexican-born chef-owner Barbara Sibley bases the dishes featured on her menu on traditional family fare and authentic ingredients. “One of my favorite ways to kick off a meal is with my chunky guacamole—it’s made purely with avocado and a few flavorings such as cilantro, jalape ño and lime juice, we don’t add filler ingredients like tomatoes,” says Chef Sibley. “It sets the mood for the meal. And now that we can get wonderful avocados from Mexico all year long, I can count on exceptional quality.”

But you don’t have to cook like a chef to enjoy avocados often. “They’re good in so many things,” says Sibley. In her restaurant Sibley slices avocados for a mixed vegetable salad, adds them to tomato, corn and chile pepper soup, and purees them for a spicy sauce to serve with a mild fish. Here are a few of the ways this talented chef serves avocados at her home:

• Squirts an avocado half with lime juice and a sprinkling of salt for a fast yet impressive starter
• Tops orange slices and thinly sliced sweet onions with diced avocado
• Embellishes a classic mozzarella and tomato salad by adding slices of luscious avocado
• Combines avocados with hearts of palm and endive for a classic South-of-the-border salad
• Serves shrimp cocktail in half an avocado
• Adds sliced avocado to BLT sandwiches
• Spoons guacamole on a barbecue sandwich—a match made in heaven!
• Spreads mashed avocado on a French roll and sprinkles it with a little blue cheese to make an easy, everyday-good lunch
• Tops pizza with green salsa and sliced avocado
• Combines mashed avocado with mayonnaise to make a dressing for tuna, chicken or potato salad