grilled avocado w melted cheese & hot sauce

Snacks are wonderful. Even better when they’re quick and easy to make.

This is my lazy fall back dinner. It’s made from four ingredients and couldn’t be easier to throw together.

Assemble, grill, eat.

After a long day at work, when all you want to do is crash on the sofa and watch TV, this is the kind of comfort food I turn to: quick and delicious.

Grilled Avocado w Melted Cheese & Hot Sauce

Anna's very own recipe. Serves 1 as a snack.

Ingredients:
1 avocado
1 tablespoon chipotle sauce (Tabasco or Louisiana)
1 tablespoon lime juice
¼ cup parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Slice the avocado in half and remove the stone. Prick all over with a fork, or cut criss-cross patterns with a knife. This allows the sauce to penetrate the flesh.

2. Pour the sauce over each half, then top with lime juice and salt and pepper.

3. In the cavity where the stone has been, put ¼ of the cheese on each avocado half. Place under the hot grill for 2 minutes.

4. Top with remaining cheese and grill (broil for Americans!) for another 2 minutes until completely melted and avocado warmed through.

Eat hot with a wedge of lime and chipotle sauce on the side!

Avocadoes are wonderful fruits, which is why I've chosen them as my theme ingredient for WHB in 2007 (cold avocado soup from the Ivory Coast), 2008 (avocado shake from Vietnam) and 2009 (prawn salad from Mexico).

The word avocado comes from the Aztec (Nahuatl) word ahuacatl, via Spanish aguacate and means “testicle”. Perhaps because of its appearance, the Aztecs believed avocadoes were an aphrodisiac and called it "the fertility fruit". Apparently during avocado harvesting, virgins were kept indoors to prevent any promiscuity taking place.

This reputation stuck with the avocado for such a long time and many people in South America wouldn’t eat it because they wanted to appear wholesome. Companies had to undertake serious PR campaigns to dispel the myths and get the fruit out to the public.

The Nahuatl word ahuacatl makes up other words like ahuacamolli, meaning "avocado soup/sauce” which the Spanish transformed into guacamole.

Propagation by seed takes around 5 years to produce fruit and the quality is never as good as the parent tree. Commercial plantations therefore graft new seedlings.

Avocadoes mature on the tree but ripen once harvested. The fruit is high monounsaturated fat contents and contains 60% more potassium than bananas, vitamin Bs, vitamin E, vitamin K and folate.

It is also interesting to note that avocado foliage, skin and pits are said to poison animals such as birds, cats, dogs, cattle, goats, rabbits and fish.

Good for us, bad for Fido.

This WHB is hosted by Graziana from Erbe in Cucina (Cooking with Herbs).