I ♥ Avocado

If wishes were horses, I would own a farm full of Avocado trees. I've planted two and wish they would start bearing me the damn avocados. I'm so obsessed with them that I once went six straight months in three different countries eating them at least twice a week. So it's not a surprise that this post is dedicated to my favourite fruit and I'm so going to want to eat one after writing this!

About 12 feet tall now!

Avocados are almost tasteless. I know what you're thinking, 'what an anti-climax!', right? All this for a tasteless fruit. But it's buttery like no other butter, juicy and succulent like nothing else in this world and it takes on the flavour of anything you add to it so beautifully. There are no tiny pits or seeds that you need to spit out while eating it, there is nothing in between you and that fresh, green bite of heaven.

Not many people in India know how to deal with this big green 'dinasour egg' looking fruit. Most of the people I have spoken to have said they don't like the taste of it. (But it is tasteless!) You probably just don't know when or how to eat it. I have done a post earlier about guacamole where I also go on to digress about sprouting the seed into a plant. But what do you do with the ripe light green almost-goo thats inside? How do you know when it is right? Do you know how to buy it?

Fear not, because in all my avocado (read guacamole) experiences I have some knowlegde about buying this fruit and using it effectively. Here is what you need to look out for:

1. A Dark Green (Not black) clear skin with minimum or no blemishes

2. Should be hard to slightly hard when you touch

3. Should not have fungus or damaged skin (on the top of the fruit) near where it joins the tree

4. Could be any shape or size, but is usually round like an orange or pear shaped

Where to buy it?

In Bombay, you can get it now in almost any suburban vegetable market. Usually the guys with the "fancy vegetables" like broccoli, zucchini, celery, etc. have it. But I prefer to buy it from Crawford Market.

When to buy?

Avocados are now available almost all year round. But I have heard that the ones after summer are the best. All (or most) of the avocados come from Karnataka to Bombay. Sometimes if you are lucky you will get the Pondicherry ones but I like to believe that the people in Auroville eat it all up, because that is what I did in the two months I spent there.

What to do with them?

Wait till they ripen! It is a very important phase of the fruit. So many ways to hasten the process, but the avocado will take it's own sweet time. Sometimes it can take upto two weeks, so be very patient. Let me tell you it all pays off in the end. If you cut into an unripe avocado be ready for some bitter experiences which will put you off the fruit forever. The best way to know if it is ripe is to press the fruit with a finger. If the skin gives in without too much pressure and you have made an indentation on the fruit, it is ready. You will learn from your mistakes. I have been so eager sometimes to eat the fruit that I cut it open too early and end up with a bitter taste. Sometimes the fruit is not bitter even when it is slightly unripe.

This time I was in for a surprise when I went to pick avocados from my usual vendor. The avocados were bigger than I have ever seen, even bigger than the ones in Mexico! They were literally the size of musk melons, each weighing a kilo! I was jumping inside at the thought of having a HUMONGOUS portion of Guacamole which is exactly what I did for breakfast. This fruit was so big, it made me easily one and a half kilos of guacamole which K and I polished off for breakfast one morning with some toasted bread. We were so full after that we couldn't eat lunch.

The Avocado is as big as my face!

Orange v/s Avocado

Ready for the Guac!

Everytime I buy avocados I decide I am going to try something different with at least one of them. Almost all the time they end up as guacamole because I just cannot resist temptation to eat it immediately. This time I held back and made some avocado ice cream (Yes I made something sweet again, I have cavaties remember). Depending on how big the avocado is, you blend the ripe avocado and add a sweetener with some flavouring. I made some chocolate icecream with it and served it up with some chocolate cake and chocolate ganache since the ice cream was not sweet enough. There is a lot more you could do with it also like put it in raw salads, put it inside sandwiches, burgers or tacos and even puree it to make a raw pasta sauce or mousse.

I don't know why but only when it comes to the avocado, I have no patience to try anything else with it. It's only if I have had two ripe avocados waiting to be opened on the same day will I try anything else with it. I know, I'm crazy.

All hail the Avocado.

Chocolate Avocado Ice cream with Dark Chocolate Cake

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For the ♥ of Artichoke

Where do I begin? If you haven't had an Artichoke, you're missing something BIG. Of course it's

not available fresh in India, but go and get that can of tender, sweet love and you'll know what I'm talking about.

I am always very excited to get myself a can of Artichoke hearts. I absolutely love Artichoke hearts and crave for it every so often, much to my chagrin (you'll know why by the time I end this post).

Artichoke is very versatile. It has no particular taste of it's own but also reminds me somewhat of an asparagus. It melts in your mouth as the layers unfold and goes well with or on top of almost anything.

This time I decided to punctuate the mild sweetness of the Artichoke with Fire Roasted Peppers and drizzled it with a sour Greek Style Olive Oil Dressing and it was heaven. K and I ended up eating the entire bowl of salad meant for five and even added more artichokes in towards the end.

Artichokes, according to a Wikipedia entry, have the highest reported total antioxidant capacity amongst vegetables. It is also known to aid digestion, strengthen the liver and gall bladder functions and raide the HDL/LDL ratios.

A warning though, about an hour after we ate our meal, we couldn't stop our bowels clearing themselves out! After about 4 such trips, I searched for 'artichoke diuretic' and there it was. We found the culprit! It's a good cleanse, though we ended up feeling hungry for a midnight snack. Lesson learnt - Go slow on the Artichoke.

Anything for the ♥ of Artichoke!

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Vegan Caesar Salad

The usual recipe for a Caesar Salad contains, besides the lettuce and croutons, some egg, some fish and of course some Parmesan Cheese. In India, the fish and eggs are usually replaced by Mayonnaise for the vegetarians, so that still leaves us non dairy eating folk out of this salad since we still don't get Vegenaise or any vegan cheese alternative in India. I used a simple replacement for the mayonnaise leaving the basic ingredients the same.

This replacement is an adaptation of my friend T's invention that I have also used to add some 'cheese' to the Eggplant Lasagne. I love her for making this and I know I am going to add it to many more recipes.

For the Salad:

Lettuce Leaves (you can use as many kinds of lettuce you find!)

A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved (I like some colour in my salad)

Pepper

Salt

A dash of Worcestershire Sauce (always placed right next to Soy sauce!)

Croutons (I cut up bread into small cubes, drizzle some oil and herbs and bake it till it's crunchy)

Lemon Juice

For the cheese/mayo replacement:

1 block of firm tofu (200gms)

Olive Oil

2 cloves of Garlic

Squeeze out the water from the tofu by pressing it between your hands. Break it up and put it into a blender/ chopper. Let it get mushy and look almost like spoilt curd (you can grate it alternatively, but I find the blender easier). Heat one teaspoon oil in a pan, add some garlic, and add in this tofu puree. Cook it well while stirring at intervals till the tofu softens, which will happen in about 5 minutes or more. Add some salt.

In a large salad bowl, add in the lettuce, tomatoes, pepper, garlic, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce salt and mix well. When the tofu-cheese has cooled down add it in. Refrigerate before serving and don't forget the croutons.

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Shredded Carrot Salad

This is one of my favourite salads. I can eat just this for lunch everyday! It has a wonderful mix of the sourness of lime, spice of chilli and my favourite spice for indian foods - asafoetida.

You need:

2 Shredded carrots- shred/grate them to any size, I prefer the large hole grater for this salad

Juice of 1 lime

1 spicy Green Chilli

1/2 teaspoon asafoetida powder

Salt

Mix all the ingredients and chill it in the refrigerator if you like. Eat!

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Salad Series: Easy Guacamole

Vegan cooking is not so different from cooking non vegan except that you omit a few ingredients (those that come from animals). Indian cooking is easily vegan when you avoid the ghee, paneer, milk, curd and so on.

These are a series of non-fattening, gluten (wheat) free, soy free - vegan recipes many of which will be non-sweet also. (specially for my friend Divya)

I shall begin with a Salad Series with Guacamole (gwahk-ah-mol-lee) my most favourite salad. It is originally a Mexican recipe used as a dip or on top of tacos or even inside tortillas in many different dishes. I like it so much that I have had it at least once a week for 15 weeks in a row last year.

It's addictive and the problem is the avocado is not as nice in Bombay as it is in the south of India where it is grown. It's easier and cheaper to find in say Bangalore, Chennai or Pondicherry.

For the Guacamole you need:

1 Ripe Avocado

1/2 a red or white onion

1 small tomato

1 green chilli (the spicy variety if you like)

salt

1 small lime

Coriander to garnish

Start with the onion, tomato and chilly. Chop everything fine and cut the lime in half. Then move on to the avocado.

The avocado has to be ripe. The way to know is if you press it slightly it gives in. and usually it starts showing dark brown patches and can be fully brown sometimes. If it is still very green and very hard do not cut it. Just wrap it in some newspaper with some bananas and keep checking it everyday.

To cut the avocado, hold it length wise -the place where it would usually be attached to the plant up and the bottom of the fruit should be below. Cut it all the way round starting from the middle of the fruit and keep going down till you come a full circle. The knife should get through the skin with some difficulty and then easily go in until it reaches a seed in the middle of the fruit. Don't try cutting the seed. Just go all the way round the fruit. Now you have two halves of the fruit stuck together. Gently twist the halves and pull them apart. You will have something that looks like this picture below.

Remove the pit with a spoon and then using a knife cut length wise and then breadth wise of the light green flesh of the avocado without cutting the skin. Do this for the other half also and scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Sometimes the avocados have parts that have become over ripe and are blackish almost. I usually don't mind using them unless they look really bad.

Once you have it all scooped out, mash it with a fork till it is less chunky. Add in the chopped onion, tomato, chilli, salt, lime juice and coriander. Mix it well and eat it immediately - for two reasons one is that it's so good (!) and two is that avocado is best eaten when it is fresh. It can't really be stored once it is cut because it tends to become black quickly. It will look like a green mash with bursts of red and green.

The avocado has no particular taste when it is ripe, it takes on the flavour of whatever you add in. When unripe it is bitter. You can modify this recipe to your taste and add red chilli flakes or powder instead of the green or add half a clove of garlic even. The original recipe of guacamole also calls for sour cream which is totally unnecessary I think. Why spoil a perfectly natural food with sour cream?!

You could have it as it is or use it as a dip with khakra, roasted rotis, chips, carrots, cucumbers...

Bonus: How to grow your own avocado!

If you are as enthusiastic as me, save the seed and try growing it. I tried with four and now I have four plants growing and I can't wait for them to bear fruit. Takes at least 4 years I hear. Sigh!

So this is how you sprout the seed. First you have to figure out which side will sprout. If you feel the seed you will see that it is two halves under the brown skin. On one side there will be a slight discolouration and thats where it will sprout. That part had to be slightly immersed in water not drowned.

Take four toothpicks and put it into the seed on four sides with the discoloured side down. Place it on top of a small bowl so that the toothpicks hold the seed up. Put water into it and only cover half an inch of the bottom of the seed like this picture below.

This will take at least two weeks to sprout. Keep it in a warm dark place and let it do it's thing. I changed the water everyday. Slowly the seed will begin to split from below and a small root will emerge.

Keep changing the water and eventually you will need to change the bowl to accommodate the growing root and stem which springs upwards eventually. The picture on the right has the root jutting out and the stem coming out of the left of the seed.

This sprouting doesn't work all the time. I think I got lucky but I also had some seeds which didn't do anything. Keep trying and don't give up on the seed.

Let it keep sprouting till it looks like what it is below.

This is when it is ready to plant. Avocado is a tree so make sure you have enough place to let it grow.

Ok I digressed, this was supposed to be about the guacamole but when you are so addicted to it (as I am) the next best thing is to grow your own avacados!

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