#52NewFoods: Avocados

For this week’s #52NewFoods Les Petits Chefs worked with  avocados. To be honest, I thought this would be an easy sell – I mean, I guessed many of them loved guacamole so it wouldn’t be too hard to convince them to work with it.

At the beginning of the session, we asked the boys who liked avocado and only about 1/3 of them raised their hands. When I asked who liked guacamole, only a few more raised theirs. I was surprised but then I remembered that when I was their age I don’t think I liked avocado either. When asked to tell me what avocado felt like, we got: soft, slimy, smooth, creamy, squishable, mashable. Right then.

We asked the boys if they could think of recipes using avocados and they came up with guacamole, salads and sushi. Ok, so that’s a great start. But then they got to looking at the stations I had set up for them and spied the station with the cocoa, sugar, milk etc… and wondered aloud if I might be mistaken. Avocados in a dessert? I must be kidding, right? But the presence of sugar and cocoa powder was enough to sway 5 of the littlest guys that this might be “the” recipe to work on so they bravely manned the dessert station awaiting further instructions.

They worked with me to remove the flesh from the avocados…

carefully measure cocoa powder…

and milk….

[no photos of the blending part of the recipe – I was recovering from a bad reaction to antibiotics and had three stations of boys working at the same time on different dishes so any photos I have this week is a bonus!]

Our ingredients ended up looking “just like chocolate pudding” and the boys portioned it out into Dixie cups (I didn’t want to make too much in case they didn’t like it!).

Meanwhile over on Team Guac, the boys worked with some not-quite-ripe-enough avocados to mash them up…

And we chopped some onions finely (and juiced limes and minced garlic)…

And finally resorted to the food processor. One of the boys asked me why we were “bothering” chopping all the ingredients finely when we were going to use the food processor. I only ended up using the machine right at the end when I realised that they were not going to get finished – and I explained this to them. Also told them that with very very ripe avocados, they don’t need a machine – a fork will do just fine! I think it’s important for the boys to see how to make things without the aid of fancy kitchen equipment. they might have access to them now but what about when they are on their own in college?

In any case, our guacamole turned out great!

A third group (I know, what was I thinking?) worked to make brown rice sushi rolls with avocado. They were by far the quietest group as they had a lot to concentrate on! We’ve made sushi before in club (though not this with group of boys) so Miss Carter and I have a rudimentary idea of how to do it. The boys did a wonderful job with the “wouldn’t stay put” brown rice!

As other stations of boys finished up and cleaned up, they wandered over so a few of them got in on the rolling action too…

Result?

Appetiser (guac), main (sushi) and dessert (pudding) – all in just over an hour!

The boys took home a little sampling of each:

Pretty pleased with the boys (and Miss Carter) for pulling this off in the time we did. And I’m even more proud of the boys for working with something many of them claimed not to like. Although in the words of one “I’m going to try guacamole this week because last week I said I didn’t like kale chips and then I tried the ones we made and I loved them so maybe I will like this guacamole too.”.

Enough said. That’s a #win in my book!

Read about the Chocolate-Avocado rocket on the 52 new Foods website.

Get the recipe for James’ guacamole from the 52 New Foods cookbook here.

Get the recipe for Avocado and Brown rice Rolls from the 52 New Foods cookbook here.

Want to see 52 New Foods in action? Check out the 52 New Foods Junior Chef Classes at your local Williams Sonoma (call your local store for details!)

 

Buy The 52 New Foods Challenge at your local Williams Sonoma store or on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository. What new food will YOU try this week?

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Please note: The product links from Amazon, Amazon.ca and The Book Depository are affiliate links meaning if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price which goes towards maintaining eat. live. travel. write. Thank you in advance!

 

Read my review of The 52 New Foods Challenge on RecipeGeek.Com (and enter to win a copy!). Details here.

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Disclosure: I received a copy of the 52 New Foods Challenge cookbook for the purposes of taking part in the #52NewFoods Challenge through Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Ambassador Community. I was asked to create one original recipe for the challenge. I did not receive any further compensation for writing this post nor any other promotion of the book I might be involved with.