"avocado" news and stories

Tonnato sauce with veggies. Photo: YumSugar

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

Serving up fresh market veggies alongside a rustic Tonnato Sauce.

SF Chefs. Food. Wine. event dished delicious samples.

In tough times, shoppers are reaching out for the dented cans and crushed boxes of no-frill grocery stores.

Avocado doesn't only slip itself into guacamole. It can also, believe it or not, make for a tasty popsicle.

A photo gallery of seven standout recipes from Julia Child.

Five-spice powder merges the primary flavors of Chinese cuisine: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and pungent.

What did you serve at your last dinner party?

Grilled chicken sandwich. Photo: Sarah LeTrent

Few of us want to make a complicated lasagna for solo dining -- by day six, you'll never want to see lasagna again! In this series, AOL Food intern Sarah LeTrent taste-tests simple recipes suitable for a "table for one."

For singletons, it's pretty easy to throw together a sandwich at home. Simply consider the bread a canvas and whatever's on hand the paint. Nearly any combo could end up delicious in the hands of the trial and error gods.

As any good sandwich should, this one starts with quality bread (in this case a crusty Kaiser roll bought at the local market for a mere 79 cents.) The motivation behind the toppings were not only the existing contents of the fridge, but a recent trip to Mexico packed with plantains and pollo (chicken). If only we had a paleta around for dessert!

Recipe after the jump.

Now that cookout season has kicked off, my healthy makeovers of traditional summer classics -- like creamy guacamole dip -- are in high demand.

It's true that avocados are high in fat, prompting people to call it the "butter pear." While a medium-sized avocado contains about 30 grams of fat, most of it is mono-unsaturated fat that actually helps to lower cholesterol levels. Diet experts have long steered consumers away from avocados, though the U.S. government revised its official nutrition guidelines a few years ago to encourage Americans to eat more of them.

Some people say it's impossible to mess up a guacamole recipe, but I beg to differ. In my book, there's no place for garlic. Yes, you heard right. Plum tomatoes are a must, with the seeds removed to keep from watering down the dip's velvety texture. I also think lime juice and cilantro are central to kicking up the flavor a notch, adding a nice contrast to the creamy texture of the avocados. I top the whole thing off with a pinch of heat from cayenne or other hot, ground dried chilies.

Get Jennifer's guacamole tips and Creamy Guacamole Dip recipe after the jump.

Venerable food mag Gourmet has been keeping it (un)real lately, from editor Ruth Reichl's bizarro star turn as Amy Winehouse and Kiss' Gene Simmons to today's "Iron Chef"-style smackdown between two test kitchen toques.

Today the steely, dry-humored Maggie Ruggiero (the woman behind an astounding fried cubano) faces off against bald-pated Ian Knauer, who pulls the cross-armed, stern smackdown stance off rather better. The ingredient du jour? Avocado, sweet and savory. The savory dishes both have a certain Asian flair and the sweet (shown above) basically blew our minds and made us want to go use a blowtorch on everything in our kitchen cabinets. Avocado marshmallow on a stick?! Maggie, let's be friends. Ian, not to be outdone, turns out a gorgeous avocado creme brulée.

The two share a window through which they taunt one another, like a modern day Statler and Waldorf. Maggie on Ian: "Razzle dazzle; flash in the pan ... [I'm] someone who enjoys eating food and not just playing with it." Ian on Maggie: "We were born on the same day. She's a little older than I am. She's got experience on her side. I have youth." Oh, snap! Check the video, vote and let us know who you think owned it.

An avocado scandal erupted in California. While avocado farmers are experiencing one of their worst years in avocado production, their advocates are celebrating, so it seems. Last week, Marisa McClellan wrote a post that foresees the scarcity of avocados in the coming year. Following the sad news, the New York Times printed an article revealing the decadent lifestyle of the California Avocado Commission "as a kind of free-spending, avocado-gone-wild farm party."

The California Department of Food and Agriculture just released a report explaining that commission employee benefits included: season tickets for the Los Angeles Angels and hockey's Mighty Ducks, paid gym memberships, stipends for vitamins, and even workout clothes. To think that I thought health insurance was an important benefit...As one would imagine avocado farmers are outraged. Rick Shade, an unpaid chairman of the board and third-generation avocado farmer, states that they uncovered about $300,000 in dubious expenses - $39,000 spent by commission employees at upscale clothing stores, like Ann Taylor and Nordstrom.

With such outrageous spending, how could it have taken this long for avocado farmers to take notice? Shade explains that they turned a blind-eye since most farmers were making more and more money from the commission's succuss at popularizing the fruit.