When I was a kid, my pals and I used to steal strawberries from a farm on the banks of a tributary of the River Clyde. I'm being no more specific than that in identifying the location, in case the farmer is still looking for the wee toe rags that nicked his fruit every summer. We would usually steal far more fruit than we could eat, then on the way back through the town we would throw strawberries at each other, at windows (especially the school windows), at phone boxes, at cars and at anything else which took our fancy. In autumn we would do the same with apples and pears. We never did it with avocados, although for a while I thought we might have. I saw my first avocado when I was ten or eleven, I guess. In those days they were called avocado pears. I never got to taste one. They were far too expensive and I doubt anyone in our family would have known what to do with it (I'd have suggested throwing it at the school bus). They were called avocado pears for very good reason: they looked like pears. After I saw my first avocado pear in the fruit shop, I began to imagine that any dark green pear I nicked from a garden might possibly be an avocado pear. I now know better.
This is a fairly unusual dish, probably best served as a starter. At it's simplest, it is very quick and easy to prepare. Here I suggest a more complicated and slightly fiddly method of preparing the avocados which results in attractive little fans, but if the avocados are too soft, or you just can't be bothered, it's okay simply to cut them in half and remove the stone, without peeling them. The amount of avocados you use will depend on how many people you want to feed. If you count on half an avocado for each portion, the quantities below will do four people.
2 ripe avocados
100g of strawberries
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon of olive oil
A few crushed black peppercorns
A pinch of salt
Some lettuce or other salad leaves
Wash the strawberries and cut off the green stalky bits. Mash with a fork and add the vinegar, oil, pepper and salt and mix well.
Prepare the avocados by slicing through the skin from end to end in four or five places around the fruit, then pulling the skin off in strips. Next, slice the fruit from end to end all the way into the stone and continue all the way round until the fruit is cut in half. Gently twist the two halves in opposite directions to separate them and remove the stone.
Lay an avocado half, cut side down, on a chopping board. Starting from the thick end, make cuts, at 5mm intervals, two thirds of the length of the fruit segment. Carefully lift the avocado half and spread it into a fan. Lay it on a small plate with a few salad leaves and top with some strawberry sauce.