Adventuring with Avocados
Yes, JKATH, your attribution of happiness to enjoying avocados is very much understood! And I must soon freeze a batch of avocado ice cream. (It will be my first taste of that confection.)
I distinctly remember having seen this Avocado Muffin recipe in the MasterCook database. Although I am a dedicated consumer of avocados (I eat, on average, 5 per week, year-round!), I think the fruit has a rather narrow range of baking usage. Avocados have an inevitable flavor affinity for egg dishes, crab imperial, poached & roast salmon, shrimp cocktail, most everything done with chicken, and even pork roast. The fruit has such an enigmatic harmony with certain foods.
Approaching my buckling bookshelves, I shortlisted titles I presumed would have the most promise of containing avocado dessert recommendations. Hmmm, I didn’t manage to ace the score:
Cat Cora’s Kitchen (Salsa & some conception of a "sandwich" with crabmeat).
Mark Miller’s Red Sage: Contemporary Western Cuisine (None!)
Jacques Pépin’s Fast Food My Way (The one recipe using avocado doesn’t look sweet to me!)
The Tex-Mex Cookbook by Bob Walsh (I checked his Web site, too…Sorry, amigo!)
The Café Pongo Cookbook (Well, there is a recipe, but it ain’t for dessert.)
Desserts with a Difference (Surprisingly, there isn’t a single itty-bitty one.)
Zarela’s Veracruz (Zip, zero, nada!)
Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book (She reiterates a recipe for Avocado with Strawberry Sauce by Prue Leith, the latter’s words quoted as follows: "I know it seems bizarre and looks too pretty to be good, but try it." Perhaps next year, when strawberries are in season locally.)
Chez Panisse Fruit (Salads: 2; Desserts: 0)
The Fruit Book by Elizabeth Riely (Again, none for the honey jar!)
Nicole Routhier’s Fruit Cookbook (Guess what?!)
I located a recipe in one of my file binders for ‘Avocado Mousse with Lychee Sorbet & Raspberry Sauce’ which I had copied from the Los Angeles Times last January. An esoteric blend called "Avocado Ice" is found in Pippa Cuthbert’s 2004 book, Juice! – iceberg lettuce, 1 lime, ¼ cucumber, ½ avocado, 1 tsp wasabi, and of course, ice cubes. Liquefied guacamole is the puréed result.
"What peaches and what penumbras! Whole
families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands!
Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! —
Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California" (1956)
To my knowledge, one of the best online resources for avocados used in desserts is sectioned on the California Avocado Commission’s pages.
Recently, I read an article posted on a British news portal about a most-welcome horticultural achievement: namely, the pit-free avocado. A prayer has been answered.
Lawrence