Tag Archives: avocado

Mushrooms on Toast with “Limon Tuzu”

Last week I received a mysterious parcel. The box read “alternating pressure pump”, but inside was neither pressure pump, bicycle pump nor breast pump. Instead, this was box recycling at its best: what once held a pressure pump now bore a wonder of delights from my friend Tim Clinch, that rad peep photographer I met in Gascony last summer and who runs stellar food photography workshops in beautiful places like France, Bulgaria and Spain.

A few weeks ago I sent Tim a sample of the life-changing salsa macha, along with some dried chillies so he can make his own. In return, he sent me some of his homemade “oh fukkah it’s really good” dukkah along with an array of Turkish delights like date syrup, the best sumac ever (so far), dried gooseberries, a curious “raisin sausage” and this “limon tuzu”, aka lemon salt. Foodie pen pals are the best pen pals, don’t you think?

I’ve been having fun experimenting with the dukkah and spices (I’m saving the “sausage” for a special occasion). The dukkah is quickly becoming one of those “good with everything” sort of foods (much like salsa macha, and Chicago-style giardiniera since we’re on the subject). Today, it was time to tap the tuzu.

It was a spontaneous act, adding the lemon salt to the mushrooms. I was in a hunger-induced, post-swim, post-dog-walk panic, hastily frying the mushrooms, toasting the toast and barely finding the will to wash the rocket. It was time to salt the shrooms and I saw the tuzu before the sea salt, so in it went, and it totally transformed this fairly common breakfast into something totally tart, fresh and “fukkah yeah awesome”. A bit of thyme would have been great in here, but I couldn’t be bothered going outside so settled for a pinch of za’atar, which actually worked a treat.

In one sentence, here’s how it all came together: sautéed mushrooms with lemon salt and black pepper, served on sourdough toast with avocado, rocket and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

It took maybe 10 minutes to make, and I had to fight myself not to devour it in the same short amount of time.

My next mission is to photograph the dukkah as well as Tim photographed my chillies (see his blog – seriously, Tim, I will pay you for a print). Maybe Tim can help on this front, too… in fact, I know he can. And besides, I’ve always wanted to go to Bulgaria (I hear they have good cheese…and great photographers).

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Avocado Ice Cream

This week is Holy Week, or as I’ve decided to call it, Holy Mole Week, because yesterday saw another one of my epic gatherings at Orchard Cottage, this time for a Mexican fiesta party featuring tamales, mole sauce, black beans, salsa and for dessert: chocolate cake and ice cream.

My original plan was to do chilli chocolate brownies with vanilla ice cream, but a chocolate tour in Camden with Jennifer Earle and Kavey Favelle introduced me to Artisan du Chocolate and their Lumi milk chocolate bar. Lumis are ripe limes boiled in salt water and sun-dried, giving the the chocolate a fresh tanginess. Given that my meal plan already involved lots of chilli and rich flavour from the mole sauce, I loved the idea of adding a fresh element to the cake, rather than more chilli. Plus, lime was totally fitting with the Mexican theme.

As for ice cream, I debated whether to make lime sorbet, coconut ice cream or avocado ice cream, and in the end decided to make all three, it what is now infamously known as “the trio” (a phrase I apparently kept repeating all night long, following many bottles of Prosecco – I still maintain that the phrase has a nice ring to it).

All of the ice creams in “the trio” were good, really good, but the avocado was absolutely outstanding and perfect with the cake.

I made the ice cream on Kavey’s suggestion, who did an avocado ice cream on her blog last year. I was ultimately drawn to David Lebovitz’s recipe in The Perfect Scoop for its inclusion of sour cream and lime, both of which sounded perfect for my cake. But the avocado ice cream didn’t need the cake at all (though it didn’t hurt): this ice cream totally stands on its own. It’s creamy but fresh-tasting at the same time, especially with that little hint of lime. It was so good that Patrick secretly stashed some extra avocado ice cream in the freezer so that we didn’t eat it all at once. Because we would have.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Avocado Ice Cream

Author: David Lebovitz

Ingredients

3 medium ripe avocados (about 675g)
¾ cup (150g) sugar
1 cup (240g) sour cream
½ cup (125ml) heavy cream
1 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
Big pinch of salt

Instructions

Cut open the avocados, remove the pits, and scoop out the flesh.
Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until absolutely smooth.
Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

I’m including the avocado ice cream in Kavey’s Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream round-up under the fruit theme (yes, avocado is a fruit!).

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Carrot and Courgette “Pasta” with Poached Egg

Ok, it’s not pasta. It’s peelings of carrots and courgette given the pasta treatment. I mostly followed this recipe for Zucchini “Pasta”, which is basically a raw mixture of zucchini, tomato, basil, garlic, oil and walnuts. I added carrots, and also cooked the garlic in the olive oil, then added the zucchini and carrots very briefly. I used pine nuts instead of walnuts, and added a poached egg and an avocado (because that seems to be what I do).

Would make again. Next time, I’d like to try the raw version with walnuts.

Recipe: Zucchini “Pasta”

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Avocado Tahini Dressing

Once again, the elusive avocado threatened to defeat me today. Just one light squeeze and I could tell it was on the far side of ripe – and slicing the avocado open confirmed my suspicions. It was green, but starting to get those unpleasant stringy bits. I had no desire to eat the avocado as is, and yet, it didn’t seem totally useless. And besides, avocados are expensive. Waste not, right?

So I got this idea in my head to turn it into a salad dressing. I started with this cilantro avocado dressing on 101 Cookbooks, subbing lemon for lime, parsley for cilantro and tahini for yogurt. The result was pretty stellar, the perfect splooge for my baked falafel. I think I’ll try the rest with roasted pumpkin, or maybe these crispy cornmeal sweet potato fries.

I reckon this is a good starting point for all kinds of creamy vegan dressings. I’d like to try it with other fresh herbs – basil and chives come to mind. Some jalapeño wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Best of all, I have something I can do with my almost-off avocados. Which reminds me, Katy Salter wrote about her quest for the perfect avocado in the Guardian yesterday, which confirms some of my suspicions: The myth of the ripe and ready range.

Avocado Tahini Dressing

Recipe type: Salad Dressing

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 1 min

Total time: 6 mins

Serves: 6

Ingredients

1 large avocado, ripe
juice of 1 lemon
¼ cup parsley
1 clove garlic
2 Tbsp tahini
¾ cup water
½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt

Instructions

Whizz together all of the ingredients in a blender. Taste, and add more lemon, tahini, salt or anything else as you see fit.

Nutrition Information

Calories: 85 Fat: 7.6 Saturated fat: 1.1 Carbohydrates: 4.2 Fiber: 2.8 Protein: 1.6 Cholesterol: 0

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Ceviche Revelation

I think I’ve discovered my new favourite thing to do with pollock: turn it into ceviche.

Pollock is all the rage at the moment as a sustainable alternative to cod. I got into pollock thanks to Rosalind Rathouse at Cookery School who uses it to make beautiful fish cakes and goujons (fish fingers for grown-ups). Her Fish and Shellfish class futher taught me how amazing poached pollack works with black butter sauce (but what wouldn’t be good with black butter sauce?).

Pollock is relatively inexpensive compared to most fish, but also, relatively flavourless. This makes pollock a good candidate for high flavour preparations like curries, fish tacos and, as I discovered this week, ceviche.

Ceviche is interesting – it’s an ancient method of preparing fish originating from South America where the fish gets diced and “cooked” by letting it marinate in citrus juice or other acidic liquid. Although no heat is applied, the fish obtains the colour and texture of cooked fish thanks to the interaction of acid in the citrus and protein in fish. To quote McGee, “the high acidity denatures and coagulates the proteins in the muscle tissue, so that the gel-like translucent tissue becomes opague and firm: but more delicately than it does when heated.”

Yotam Ottolenghi has a recipe for smoked corn and avocado ceviche using sea bass, one of my most favourite fish but also one I reserve for “special occasions”. Wild sea bass (the good stuff), is expensive, and when I have it, I like to cook it simply so I can really enjoy the flavour of the fish, not hide it in lime juice and spices.

Instead, I made his ceviche recipe with pollock, and I think it’s up there with one of the best fish dishes I’ve ever made. I served the ceviche on a crispy corn tortilla (which I achieved by heating a corn tortilla on an oiled frying pan until it was browned on both sides), with a dollop of fresh wasabi I recently acquired from The Wasabi Company. Total win.

Recipe: Smoked corn and avocado ceviche [guardian.co.uk]

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Watercress and Apple Smoothie

My green smoothie experiments continue, and this one was a bit of a risk.

I got a big bag of watercress in the organic box this week. I don’t like watercress at the best of times, but yesterday afternoon I found myself craving a cold beverage and eager to try another green smoothie, but watercress was the only greenery I had in the house. Fruit, too, was running low – except for apples (the benefits of “Orchard Cottage”). I didn’t have many options, and so became the smoothie of randoms:

A handful of watercress
1 apple
1/2 frozen banana
1/4 avocado
a few ice cubes
enough water to blend it to a fine puree in the Vitamix

Shock of the day: it was actually really damn good. I thought the watercress would overpower the smoothie but it didn’t at all. It added a subtle flavour akin to a cross between mint and parsley which worked really well with the apple. It also made my “green smoothie” properly green.

I should also note that this is my first time using apple in a smoothie: revelation. My new plan is to chop up and freeze a massive quantity of orchard apples, enough to supply me with numerous smoothies for many months to come.

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Nectarine & Avocado Breakfast Barley

Sounds weird, right? But hey, I’m into these sweet-savoury breakfast bowl concepts lately that combine fruit and grains. Today’s was made of this:

1 apricot, diced
1/8 large avocado (from Mexico!), diced
50g cooked barley
8g tamari-toasted sunflower seeds
a good handful of coriander, mint and chives, chopped
a squeeze of lime juice
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper
a few slices of green chilli
a bit of finely sliced romaine lettuce (for crunch)
a bit of Tracklements apricot ginger chutney

The chutney was an afterthought – the apricot was a bit tart and I felt like this needed some sweetness. Not sure if lime was the right citrus here. But all in all it was very satisfying. Fruit and avocado are really nice together, especially when paired with a little texture and crunch from toasted sunflower seeds.

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Avocado Tortilla Soup in the Vitamix

I’ve owned my Vitamix for a couple years now and have never regretted the purchase. Still, for all my fondness of the machine, I’ve never pushed its limits, particularly the claim that the motor is so powerful it can make hot soup. This week, spurred on by Helen‘s experiments, I decided to test it out with this Avocado Tortilla Soup from the Vitamix Cookbook.

The Vitamix cookbook isn’t the kind of cookbook that really inspires confidence. Mostly due to the pictures: it’s just so old school. But I was willing to give it a shot.

Here’s how it goes:

Avocado Tortilla Soup

Ingredients

2 cups vegetable broth
2 tomatoes, quartered
⅓ bunch cilantro (coriander)
1 garlic clove, peeled
½ teaspoon pepper
½ avocado, pitted and peeled
½ lime, peeled
½ cup black beans
½ cup corn
2 oz tortilla chips

Instructions

Place broth, tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, pepper, avocado and lime in Vitamix. Select Variable 1. Turn machine quickly to Variable 10 and then to High. Blend for 6-7 minutes. Reduce speed to Variable 2 and remove lid plug. Drop in corn, beans and chips and blend for 10 seconds.
Serve with lime, cilantro and avocado garnish.

I skipped the black beans and corn (pulverised corn just seemed wrong and I didn’t have black beans). Instead of tortilla chips, I sliced up strips of corn tortilla and pan-fried them with sweetcorn, a bit of salt and my sister’s kick-ass homemade taco seasoning mix.

Result: the Vitamix DOES indeed heat water to the point of near boiling. After six minutes of high-speed blending, the soup was done, and steaming HOT. Also surprising: the soup is pretty good. I can see why they add the corn – it adds necessary sweetness to offset the acidic lime and tomato. But I preferred the corn left as whole kernels. I can’t imagine adding black beans to this – it would rob the brilliant colour. Maybe red lentils or channa dal? Maybe.

The only downside is that the Vitamix is freakin’ LOUD. This may throw a snag in Helen’s and my brainstorm to do a Vitamix supperclub. A Vitamix on full throttle is very antisocial. But let me tell you, the soup that comes out the other end: smooth as silk.

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