Favourite Recipes from Andalucia Life
Avocado Facts and Recipes

Avocado

Seafood and avocado, mangoes, limes and lemons are classic taste combinations that we are fortunate to be able to enjoy throughout the summer. The sea bass can be cooked over the barbeque or under the grill.

Prawn and Avocado Salad with Piquant Dressing

Ingredients (Serves 4 as a starter)

For the Dressing

Method:

Juice half the lemon and cut the other half into wedges.

Slice the avocados into wedges, coat in the lemon juice to prevent discolouration.

Thoroughly mix the dressing ingredients together.

Arrange the prawns, salad leaves, avocados, lemon wedges and dressing and serve with crusty bread.

Chargrilled Sea Bass (Lubina) with Mango, Prawn and Chilli Salsa

Ingredients (Serves 4)

For the Salsa

Method:

Mix all the ingredients for the salsa together and chill.

Cut the fillets into two or three pieces. Brush the fillets both sides with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook over a hot barbeque skin side down or under a hot grill skin side up on an oiled baking sheet for 3 to 4 minutes.

Arrange the salsa on the plates with the fillets on top. Garnish with the coriander and a drizzle of olive oil.

Avocado Facts

Avocados do not ripen on the tree. They are hand picked in a hard green state when they reach a mature size. They are then stored for a few days to ripen. Some supermarkets sell pre-softened avocados that have been treated with synthetic ethylene. The best tasting avocados however are those that are left on the tree as long as possible and then picked just a couple of days before being eaten.

The avocado originated in central Mexico sometime between 7000 and 5000 BC. Several centuries later, around 750 BC, it was cultivated by the Incas and by the Aztecs around 500 BC.

Colour alone will not tell you if an avocado is ripe. Some varieties are black when ripe, some paler green. Take the avocado in the palm of your hand and squeeze gently. There should be just a touch of give.

To ripen avocados put them in a brown paper bag at room temperature. To hasten the ripening put an apple in the bag. The ethylene this fruit emits helps the avocado ripen.

Finally do not store ripe avocados in the fridge for more than two days.

Avocado’s arrived in Europe courtesy of the conquistadors. They could not pronounce the Aztec word, ahuacatl (which means testicle), so called the fruit aguacate, this became avocado in English where the first mention of the fruit was by Sir Henry Sloane in 1696.

It was not until 1871 that the first avocado trees were taken to the United States from Mexico and their commercial potential was not realised until the early 1900s. There are now 100’s of different varieties of avocado, the most popular is the Hass. The mother tree of all Hass avocados still lived in a backyard in La Habra Heights, California until 2002.