Recipes with avocado

The avocado is a fatty fruit, and that is what sets it apart: where other fruit brings sugar or acidity, this one brings fat and the texture of cream. It ripens after picking, never on the tree, which is why you almost always buy it hard. And the flesh darkens as soon as it is cut and meets the air — not because it has spoiled, but through simple surface oxidation.

Two uses stand clearly opposed. On one side, mashed avocado that becomes the substance of the dish: Mexican guacamole, where it carries the salt, lime and chilli, and Peruvian causa limeña, where it sits as a layer between two floors of potato. On the other, sliced or diced avocado laid raw on something hot to cool it: sopa azteca and refried bean tacos add it at the last moment, and Colombian patacones use it to soften a salty fried plantain. Avocado toast belongs to both camps: roughly mashed, it keeps its lumps.

Ripeness is judged by feel, not by colour: cradle the fruit in your palm and press with the whole hand rather than a fingertip — it should give slightly and evenly. A single soft spot means a bruise. To slow the darkening, work an acid into the flesh — lime, lemon, vinegar — rather than simply pouring it over the top. The stone left in the bowl protects only what it covers.