Articles of Mastication

Smoked Avocado

A few weeks ago I saw a recipe for guacamole at 101 Cookbooks that called for “perfectly ripe avocados.” I was compelled to comment that there’s so much joy to be gotten from unripe and over-ripe fruits and vegetables, even avocados. More than a few cultures are known to make use of unripened fruits as if they were vegetables. Green mango is pickled in India and made into salads in Thailand, for instance. I enjoy thin slices of green mango with a dash of salt, cayenne powder and lime juice; the bright, malic pucker gradually gives way to suggestions of aroma the fruit would have in full ripeness, and the yet-unformed sugars add a starchy dimension of texture to the mouthfeel. Green tomatoes are breaded and fried in the Southern U.S., and they’re pickled in Slavic countries. The list goes on, but let’s get back to avocados.

In my comment, I spieled on the “levels of texture and flavor” riff, even going so far as to suggest dicing and pickling some unripe avocado in lime juice and salt, then incorporating it into the guacamole with the perfectly ripe ones. Then the chef side of my brain began extrapolating possibilities for the fibrous green goblins, and I went all free-association on the high fat content of avocados. Fat. Lipids. Many of my readers probably already know that one of the things fat does really well is absorb aromatic compounds, which is why it conducts flavor so well. And now my story must now take a brief detour…

Back in midwinter there was a freezing rain storm in the Midwest that caused tree branches to sag and snap under the weight of heavy ice. The effects of the storm were gorgeous to behold. Grass, branch and foliage were soundly glazed over with ice.

I had my eye on a drooping, three-trunked birch tree in the neighborhood. One of the trunks was in serious peril of breaking off, and after two days of struggling against gravity and the weight of the ice, it finally snapped. Now, birch is traditionally the wood of preference for smoking meat and fish in Scandinavia, but I’d never used it in anything I’d smoked. This was my opportunity to give it a shot.

Once all of the devastation was sliced up and lain out in neat little piles for emergency workers to cart off, I approached the neighbor with the birch and asked if I could have the wood. One minute later I whisked the bundles of wood away. And then I allowed them to dry for a week.

Once the wood was ready, I cold-smoke some sliced, under-ripe avocado for about three hours. The effects were pretty incredible. They looked like avocado slices that had been left out to brown, but the brown was smoke residue. The bonus here was that the phenolic compounds in wood smoke prevent oxidization, so it didn’t brown any further as avocado is known to do. I heaped the slices along with a julienne of smoked bacon onto this salad of  radicchio, Romaine lettuce, red and yellow pepper, red and white onion and a pickled key lime and chili vinaigrette.

It was a tasty enough salad, but I think there was a bit too much going on. The greens and vinaigrette drew attention away from what I really wanted to taste: smoked avocado. Next time I’ll focus a salad on sliced, smoked avocado with… Gorgonzola and perhaps just a line or two of reduced balsamic vinegar? We will see.

I wondered, of course, if anyone else had ever thought to smoke avocado. I had a feeling it was a first – and wanted it to be – but a thorough search revealed that Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit in New York has featured smoked avocado with salmon roe on one of the cafe’s past menus. So, smoked avocado wasn’t a first, but it’s nice to know that my instincts keep good company.