ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCK. PORTRAIT: IDIL SUKAN
One of my worst childhood food memories is being served half an avocado at a dinner party held by a friend of my parents. It was presented in the traditional 1970s way: with a spoon. No French dressing, no marie rose sauce and prawns. Just a spoon. I looked at it and gulped. What can you do if the entire plateful in front of you comprises a food you despise? I wasn’t brought up to say, “Sorry, I don’t like this. Can I go home now?” There wasn’t even anything else on the plate under which I could hide some of it. So eat that avocado half I did, with an expression of barely concealed panic.
Since that moment I’ve been blissfully able to avoid the Incredible Hulk of the salad aisle, give or take the odd blob of guacamole in a Mexican restaurant. Until now, that is. Suddenly and irrevocably, the avocado has taken over every meal, every snack, every new cookbook to hit the shelves. It’s even hogging the opening page of this magazine…
“In what universe can it possibly be okay to put avocado in cheesecake?”
I blame this takeover on the avocado’s elevation to ‘superfood’ status. What’s so super about it? When it’s not ripe it’s as enticing as a raw potato. When it’s overripe it turns to blackened mush. Granted there is a five-second window in between when it’s perfectly ripe, but even then it has a texture akin to raw liver. And even if it is in peak condition, once you’ve cut into it, you find that two thirds of its volume is taken up by the stone!