Who would imagine a few days on the Dutch coast could provide the inspiration for a couple of neat avocado recipes? Life is full of little surprises. Sveta and were in the Netherlands during a particularly hot summer when the temperature was soaring into the thirties every day. We fled to the sea for some respite and found it in Katwijk aan Zee, a pleasant holiday town, busy with Dutch tourists. We spent the days on the beach enjoying the cool breeze, just walking along the shore or occasionally swimming. One day we hired bicycles and cycled amongst the dunes. The Dutch have got their transport priorities sorted. There are cycle tracks all over the country, through the prettiest landscapes, and cars are not allowed. Brilliant. That was Sveta's first time on a bike. She fell off outside the bike-hire shop, but after that she was fine while she was moving.
All the walking, swimming and cycling in the fresh air gave us very hearty appetites. In the evenings we would wander around town a bit, visit the supermarket on the way and then go back to our wee flat and cook something nice. I bought a kilo of avocados on the first evening so most of the nice things we cooked involved avocados. This is one of the recipes. If you like it, why not try avocado and spinach pasta, too. It's similar, but served hot.
The quantities here are enough for two people. Scale up accordingly if you're feeding more.
Ingredients
1 firm, ripe avocado
2 tomatoes
100g of cooked pasta
A couple of handfuls of mixed salad leaves (e.g. lettuce, spinach, rocket,
etc.)
A pinch of black pepper
Olive oil
Salt
Wash and roughly chop the salad leaves and tomatoes. Peel and chop the avocado as detailed in the avocado and spinach pasta recipe and mix all the veg together with the pasta, a generous glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper. It's ready to serve. This dish goes well with garlic bread and a large bottle of wine.