Avocado Toast

We’re quite alright with Avocado Toast being so trendy. This simple dish can be amped up in a variety of ways so much that we don’t ever seem to tire of it whether its breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack on the go. Avocado Toast is sure to fit into your budget and that most places charge $9 or more its totally to your advantage to recreate this at home. The biggest constraint we’ve found is devouring our avocados at peak ripeness, after all you want that vibrant green color, smooth texture, and rich flavor. An avocado’s exterior can tell a lot about what’s happening inside, and if you pay attention to the clues its color, texture, and firmness provide, you will select a perfectly ripe avocado each time. Here are four methods you can use to tell if an avocado is ripe.

• Skin color– an avocado with a darker skin is usually riper than one with a lighter skin.
• Skin texture– skin texture can help you decide , check the outer skin of the avocado for any large indentations or softness. An avocado with dented skin may be bruised and not ideal for eating.
• Firmness– a ripe avocado is relatively firm, but will yield to gentle pressure when squeezed gently. Place the avocado in the palm of your hand. Gently squeeze the avocado without applying pressure from your fingertips, if the avocado yields to firm, gentle pressure, it is ripe and ready to eat. If the avocado feels mushy or very soft to the touch, it may be very ripe to overripe.
• Stem– a simple way to determine the ripeness of an avocado is to flick off the stem and look underneath (recommended after you have purchased the avocado. Removing the stem compromises the ripening process of the avocado.) Pull on the stem. If the stem does not pull off, the avocado is not ready. If the stem comes off easily, look at the color underneath. If the color underneath the stem is brown, the avocado is overripe and its flesh will most likely be brown, bruised, rotten, and/or mushy. If the color underneath is a bright, yellow-green color, it is ripe and ready to be eaten.

“Think about what’s on every kitchen table. Salt? Check. Pepper? Check. But that’s getting boring — and that’s not everything,” says Pereg CEO Gil Schneider.

Coming to the rescue is Pereg’s Everything But The Bagel Spice Mix. Put it next to the salt and pepper and you’ve got, well, everything you need to add big, delicious flavor to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

A special mix of natural flavors including onion, garlic, poppy, salt, and three kinds of sesame seeds, you can jazz up practically everything with it. One of our favorite things to do is top our avocado toast.  It’s fresh, 100% natural, gluten-free, vegan, and kosher-certified, with no MSG, additives or preservatives.

Ingredients:

• 2 ripe Avocados
• 3/4 cup Tahini
• Pereg’s Everything But The Bagel Spice Mix
• 2 large slices rustic multigrain or gluten-free bread, toasted
• 1 small to medium garlic clove, minced
• Handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley
• Baby Arugula
• 6-10 cherry tomatoes, halved
• Crumbled feta or goat cheese
• 2 poached/sunny-side up eggs (optional)
• Salt & Pepper
• Red pepper flakes
• E.V.O.O.

Directions:

1. To make the tahini sauce, in a food processor or a blender, combine the tahini, lemon juice and garlic and process briefly. With the motor running, slowly drizzle in the water, checking the consistency occasionally, until the sauce is just thin enough to drizzle off a spoon.
2. Transfer the tahini sauce to a bowl, season with salt and stir in the parsley.
3. Scoop the avocado flesh into a bowl. Add the lemon juice, lime juice, salt and black pepper. Smash with a large spoon, keeping the mixture quite chunky but incorporating all of the ingredients.
4. Drizzle each slice of toast with about 1 1/2 Tbs. of the tahini sauce and a generous sprinkle of Pereg Everything But The Bagel Spice Mix
5. Scoop the avocado mixture on top, sprinkle with red pepper flakes and drizzle with olive oil.
6. Top each slice with cherry tomatoes, feta, and arugula to garnish and an optional poached or sunny-side up egg for protein! (Serves 2)

Recipe and cover photo from William Sonoma