Smithy

That sounds like a great gift for the children! I have to ask what you do about writing down recipes when you tend not to do things the same way twice. When I make up something nice and my husband asks me whether I wrote down what I did, I (almost) always answer that I did ...but still, the next several iterations aren't quite the same! Are you better at reproducing results when you want to than I am?

My best friend reported making the NYT Citrus Salad with Peanuts and Avocado and liking it, but thinking the fish sauce was a bit overdone - and she used less than the recipe specified. The next day she finished the salad for lunch, with a little boosting of one or two ingredients - but no fish sauce.

I dusted the avocados with flour before they were stuck together, per instructions, so there was a bit of flour on the exterior. After that it was a triple coating of dipping in beaten egg then rolling in panko, repeat. I'd be afraid that the stuffing would fall out if I did cook the halves separately, since this was deep-frying. You're probably right about the avocado flesh being a good insulator!

Interesting! I've heard it referred to as "poor man's butter" from, I think, Mexican culture, but hadn't heard the butter fruit name. Can you give examples of or recipes for the desserts?

Did the person who got the King / Baby get out of doing the dishes?

Today I took another crack at Dutch Crunch bread rolls. The last batch was an interesting proof-of-concept test, but I suspected that the interesting crunchy coating would work as well with a known good roll recipe. I used Peter Reinhart's recipe for soft dinner rolls, from his Craftsy class. I used the coating instructions from the recipe to which I linked earlier. This batch of rolls was better than the last. I still need to sort out or even out the oven gradient so I can brown the roll tops without burning their bottoms. That said, these were good. I'll say it again, especially to @Shelby: the coating is special, but the rest of the bread-baking is not. Use that coating on your favorite bread! I bet it will work! We had deep-fried burgers, made from a mix of ground beef and hot Italian sausage, tonight. It's lovely to be able to fry outside!

I'm going to follow up on my own post from last night, with an update and a repeated question. My question of those who have had stuffed fried avocados was whether the interior (avocado and stuffing) is to be warm or cool when it's served. The second question was how to heat it without its falling apart, if it's to be warmed before frying. Last night I kept the stuffed avocados in the refrigerator, wrapped, until it was time to coat and fry them. I had the idea that they'd hold together better that way. Today, I ate the remaining avocado. The coating had gone soggy (no surprise), and heating the avocado in the microwave did not help the crust. A gentle heating, however, turned the stuffing soft and a bit gooey from the cheese and mayonnaise, and brought out flavors that weren't noticeable last night. I don't think the heat did any favors for the delicate avocado flesh, but I also don't think the gentle warming hurt it. I conclude from this that the avocados and their stuffing should be warm after frying. Does anyone have suggestions about how to accomplish that without overcooking it?

At the grocery store we're currently frequenting, medium-sized avocados run somewhere between $0.50 and $0.75 each. Large avocados (the size I showed in my previous post) were $0.99 each when we bought them. I haven't seen any roadside stands around here where they'd be cheaper - say, 10 for $1.00, a price we saw last year (somewhere). My best friends, in San Diego, seem to have relliable access to cheaper produce. I think they stop buying when the price gets much above $0.50 per avocado.

We've been set up for outdoor cooking, with little inclination to actually do it, since we landed in the desert. Oh, there have been a few campfires, with food cooked over them. However, it's been colder or windier than we would like. Compared to almost anywhere else in the country the "colder / windier" bit would be a laugh. We compare it to the comfort of cooking indoors, in the Princessmobile, where we can have a furnace running if need be. Earlier this week we decided it was time. I had some deep-frying to do, and the camp stove was the preferred source of heat. I went to fire it up...and discovered that it had quit working. I couldn't build pressure in the fuel container, because the pump didn't have a good seal. If anyone wants an explanation of how a Coleman camp stove (or lantern) pump works, feel free to ask. Suffice it to say that I know far more than I did, and we got it working without buying spare parts, but the outdoor cooking was put off for a few days. Today, we inaugurated the stove along with the wok I inherited from a dear friend last fall. Joan would have been proud. I wrote about the stuffed, deep-fried avocados in detail, in the eG Avocado Cook-off topic. I think it's worth doing again, with some possible revisions. My darling would always prefer something like the pork roast we've been feasting from for the past 2 weeks, with variations on what to do with the leftovers. But he's happy to see me having fun in the kitchen, and willing to put up with avocados for the cause.

OK, I have a report and questions on my first attempt at stuffed, deep-fried avocados! We had them tonight. Inefficient cooks like me will know, from @Dejah's recipe here, that it's best to allow time for the multiple steps in the process. I poached the chicken breast yesterday, and did it delicately enough that I have several fine slices of perfectly-done, not-dry chicken breast for sandwiches. I shredded and/or chopped roughly 1/3 of that breast for the avocado stuffing. The seasonings weren't quite the same as Dejah's. I used shredded cheese (Monterey Jack and San Joaquin Hanford Jack), a combination of oregano, smoked paprika and chili powder, a bit of pepper vinegar, and a touch of mayonnaise for binding. That was yesterday's project. It was difficult to keep my mitts off the stuffing; it would have made a great sandwich spread. Today came the slicing, scooping, peeling and stuffing. I had worried about losing a lot of avocado flesh during the peeling stage, but I'd worried for naught: these avocados were ripe enough to peel easily, but not so ripe that they were falling apart. They held together well. The filled avocados sat in the freezer until I was ready to fry them. This was for two reasons: first, I wanted to make sure they were really firm, lest they disintegrate in the hot oil; second, I had made the unwise decision to defrost the refrigerator during the heat of the day. Hours later, the freezer still isn't back down to freezing temperatures. I mentioned that this is a multi-stage process, but here's the payoff: once the oil is hot, cooking is a FAST process. These avocados browned quickly. Here's the frying process, and the finished product. Finally, the money shot, before we started adding chopped greens or salsas as we saw fit: Our opinion of the finished result was somewhat divided. I was delighted at the creamy texture of the avocado, contrasted with the crunchy texture of the fried outer shell. I loved the flavors. He was nonplussed by having a crisp fried coating that surrounded a cool interior. (Aside from that, he doesn't love avocados as much as I do, but he's a good sport about it.) We both found that a single stuffed avocado was more than enough for dinner, so there's a spare for tomorrow. We're going to try heating it gently to see what difference the internal temperature makes to our perceptions of its flavor. That leads me to ask, for those of you who have cooked or eaten stuffed fried avocados: how warm were the interiors? Were they warm all the way through? Hot? Or were they cool to cold? I was leery of overheating the flesh and having it disintegrate in the oil, but even I thought there was a bit of cognitive dissonance to having a hot fried exterior around a cool interior. This tasted good, but we weren't thinking along the lines of Baked Alaska or fried ice cream. What should I have done differently to produce a warm (hot?) stuffed fried avocado, or is this supposed to be cool? This is a showy dinner piece that I think would lend itself well to company, since all the prep work is done well in advance and the actual cooking is blindingly quick. I await information about the desired temperature of the interior, and how to achieve it.

@heidih, thank you for those links. I am illumminated... ...and actually, I was especially delighted by the story in the first link, which you seemed to indicate was a mistake. What delightful writing! I can tell I don't spend enough time perusing the back pages of the L.A. Times.

I do, except when I can get realio, trulio San Francisco sourdough bread as in the photo above. That bread outdoes anything else for avocado (or for a BLT, with or without avocado) in my book.

The list of allowable attachments is below, under the "Click to choose files" link.

Is there a reason it can't be done here, on eGullet? If not, one of you could start a topic titled "Preset files for Control Freak", or else simply include them in this topic.

I need to ask: is this what's meant by "avocado toast" in restaurants, or do they gussy it up somehow? This is my typical breakfast. The Spike seasoning to the side is my preferred seasoned salt for avocado, with a squeeze of lemon. Lately I've been cutting back on the salt and lemon, and enjoying the simple mellow goodness of the avocado on its own.

Thank you very much for bringing this topic back up. I've had the print book for years, and I recently purchased the Kindle version when it was on sale. I need to explore it all more. Her panade recipes were major revelations for me, and of course the roasted chicken is superb. There's a lot more that I need to explore, and you're giving me inspiration to do so.

Yesterday I went to lunch with some new friends at The Press Cafe & Bistro in Yuma, Arizona. The place has been around a while, but this was my first visit. I ordered one of their pressed sandwiches, "The Picacho": hummus, artichoke, avocado, feta, tomato, red onion and baby greens pressed between hot focaccia. It was delicious, and more than I could reasonably eat. I brought half the sandwich home. The remains begged to be reheated for breakfast. I got out my cast iron skillet, oiled and started heating it, and contemplated the sandwich. Most of the avocado had fallen out and been eaten during yesterday's lunch, so I added fresh slices to get the balance right. Breakfast was just as unwieldy and delicious as lunch was yesterday. The combination of ingredients was outstanding. I'm adding it to my list of sandwich variants.

Welcome, smithgirl! As Darienne says above, this is a great place to ask questions and get answers. There are also many topics in which questions have also been asked and answered...and sometimes debated. If you have any questions about where to find things in the forums, or how to use the forums, feel free to ask a host (I am one) privately, by Personal Messenger, or else ask in the Moderation and Policy Discussion forum, where software questions are asked and answered. What kind of food do you like to eat?

I love avocadoes! In salads, on toast, smeared on crackers, in guacamole or ceviche. None of those treatments requires cooking. However, I've seen some cooked applications that also look great and this will be a good incentive for me to try. Several years ago, member @Dejah posted about stuffed, fried avocados. Here is her original post with a picture of the results, and here are her instructions. I've had this bookmarked for an embarrassingly long time without trying it, but I'm in a good position to do so in the next few days. Beautiful Haas avocadoes have come available in the grocery store, and I have several ripening for the event. I've put the links here in case someone else (Dejah, perhaps?) wants to have a go at it too.

Can you post pictures of the bottom, or interior, or else give measurements? Does it have any markings? I agree with @lindag that it doesn't look like a deep-dish pie pan. It reminds me a bit of an aluminum bowl my grandmother used to use for her bean-snapping, although that was smaller than yours appears to be. It also reminds me of one half of the Wearever pan set she had, where one pan fit atop another to make a lid for a Dutch oven.

Some extra-wide extra-eggy noodles (an impulse purchase at World Market) and some New York Style TM Calabrese sausages from a favorite grocery store starred in last night's skillet dinner. Supporting characters were the last of last summer's roasted cherry tomatoes using @ElainaA's recipe, grated parmesan, garlic, asparagus and parsley, and a touch of cream. We are glad to have leftovers. I wish I could get this sausage at home.

I'm essentially in @cdh's boat. I'm such a tentative "maybe" that I haven't wanted to speak up to influence the vote. That said, the July dates are the best for me. If I can get there inexpensively enough, I'm there. Please keep us updated as to deadlines for registration at Bulrush, as well as reasonable lead times for finding a decent hotel.

@heidih, if you get a chance, could you please show what your mustard looks like in isolation? I can't make it out in your pictures and I'm curious as to how it looks compared to the desert mustard that's flourishing where we are. I've collected a few leaves here and there - the plant life is too sparse for me to want to take much - and it adds a nice rockety accent to my salads.

There have been a few discussions over the years about scaling recipes up, changing pan size, and so on. A careful search will turn them up, and you should feel free to follow up even on old topics. Here are two you may find useful: Scaling cake recipes. Any magic? Scaling from an 8 inch to a 9 inch pan

You are correct. I emailed myself a link to that post so I'd be able to find it later.