How To Make Delicious Muffins That Are Actually Good For You

However healthy it may seem, the presence of shredded zucchini in a quick bread or muffin doesn’t make it good for you. Most are still essentially forms of cake, held up with lots of butter, refined flour and sugar.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing once in a while, but for everyday breakfast and snacking you probably want something more nutritious and less dessert-like. The problem is that truly healthy muffins and quick breads — with or without zucchini — are often disappointing: dry, leaden and rubbery. Not so with these. They are the best of both worlds, genuinely good for you but also desirably moist, tender and fragrant. Lightly sweetened, flecked with zucchini, and made with healthy oil, whole grain flour and rolled oats, they have a wholesome sensibility and hearty texture that pulls them away from the dessert realm into the daily sustenance category, in a good way.

Not only do they taste good, you’ll feel good eating one of these zucchini muffins to start your day or fuel you midafternoon.

They get most of their sweetness from dried dates, which also provide a deep flavor, valuable nutrients and fiber. The dates are soaked in water, then pureed until they form a smooth paste. Just a little white sugar — a quarter of what is in a typical recipe — is needed to round out the muffin’s flavor. Soft whole-grain pastry flour keeps the crumb tender, while rolled oats add a rustic texture and walnuts an element of crunch.

The zucchini (which needs to be drained of most of its water), eggs, oil, and date paste together provide enough liquid so that no milk or other fluid is needed. The tasty, cinnamon-scented muffins make for an energizing on-the-go treat, so do yourself a favor and make an extra batch. Wrap them individually in plastic wrap and freeze so you have one to grab when you need it.

Zucchini Oat Muffins

12 servings

These tender, fragrant muffins are sweetened primarily with dates, which, besides sweetness, provide deep flavor and valuable nutrients. Made with whole grains and healthful oil, the muffins have a wholesome sensibility and hearty texture that steps away from the dessert realm into the daily sustenance category, in a good way. They not only taste good, they are a nourishing and energizing way to start your day or fuel your afternoon.

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed pitted dates
• Boiling water
• 1 1/4 cups coarsely grated zucchini (1 medium zucchini)
• 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup neutral-tasting oil, such as light olive oil or canola oil
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts

Steps

Place the dates in a medium bowl. Pour enough boiling water over them to cover and let soak for 1 hour. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the soaking liquid, then drain the dates well.

Combine the dates and the reserved liquid in a food processor (mini, preferably) and puree to form a smooth paste, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides, as needed.

Place the grated zucchini in a colander in the sink; let drain for 20 minutes, then gather it up in your hands to extract as much moisture as possible.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Have a standard-size, 12-well muffin pan at hand. Lightly grease the wells with cooking oil spray or line them with baking paper cups.

Stir together the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a medium bowl.

Stir together all the date paste, eggs and oil in a mixing bowl until incorporated, then stir in the grated, drained zucchini. Add the flour mixture and stir until no trace of it remains, then stir in the walnuts.

Divide the batter evenly among the wells. Bake (middle rack) for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Serve warm, or at room temperature.

Is Ordering Meat Well-done A Misteak

Somewhere, a chef is crying.

Many chefs feel a sort of kinship with the foods they cook. They lovingly season it with salt and pepper, they cook it to perfection, they take the time and effort to make it just right.

And then someone goes ahead and orders his steak well-done.

Actually, it’s a lot of someones.

LongHorn Steakhouse recently shared the details of all of its steak orders for an entire year with the data geeks at FiveThirtyEight. That’s a ton of information — LongHorn boasts 491 locations around the country, including seven in the St. Louis area.

The results were shocking, or at least sad. Sad to chefs.

It turns out that 77 percent of LongHorn patrons who order steak order it cooked to medium or beyond.

Many chefs will tell you that the only way to order beef is to ask for it rare or medium-rare. That way you can taste the juice; it’s tender and delicious. The more a steak is cooked — and there has to be some scientific way of demonstrating this — the more it loses its flavor. And it indisputably becomes tougher.

And yet, according to the survey, a plurality of 37.5 percent of LongHorn patrons order their steaks medium, 25.8 percent order it medium-well and 11.7 percent like their steaks well-done.

With all due respect to my friends (and readers) who like their steak well-done, you’d get the same flavor profile out of a microwaved bomber jacket.

Lindsey Curtit, managing partner of the LongHorn Steakhouse in O’Fallon, Mo., is happy to have her customers ordering their steak any way they like it.

“There really is no wrong way to cook a steak. It’s really just the guest’s preference,” she said.

Curtit, who likes her steaks cooked medium, said that, based on her casual observation, her customers at the O’Fallon location order their steaks in about the same proportion as the national numbers.

Curtit also pointed out that not all steak is the same. The different types of fiber in different cuts of meat mean that some cuts can stand up to more cooking than others. The ribeye, for instance, can take the heat better than other cuts because of all of its marbled fat. The same is true of the porterhouse and its cousin, the T-bone.

The pertinent question is: Why do people like their steaks the way they like them?

I find I get maximum beefy flavor, without the meat being too chewy, out of steaks cooked on the rare side of medium rare. Though I have no evidence to back it up, my guess is that people who like their steaks medium-well or well done prefer them that way because they are (or were, as children) a little grossed out at seeing juice run out of their meat.

The numbers in the latest data seem to contradict the information gathered just three years ago by FiveThirtyEight. At that time, a survey of 432 steak-eating Americans indicated that 43 percent of us like our steaks cooked to rare or medium-rare.

The plurality of that group, 38 percent, said they like steak cooked medium-rare. A significant number behind, 31 percent, said they like it cooked medium.

The folks at FiveThirtyEight looked at the disparity between these two studies and suggested that people have heard they are supposed to like their steaks rare or medium rare, so that’s what they say when they are asked how they like it. But in reality — when they order at a restaurant — they ask for it medium or above.

But I have a different possibility. LongHorn is a national chain, with locations often (though by no means always) on expressway interchanges. It caters to travelers and families. With a ribeye going for $20.49 and a porterhouse topping out at $28.49, it is a solid and popular restaurant.

But maybe travelers and families are more likely to want their meat cooked longer than couples, singles or people staying closer to home.

Curtit doesn’t think so. “Our vision is to become America’s favorite steakhouse, so America is our target market,” she said. “I would say our guests do represent the country as a whole.”

Oh, Snap! Scientists Are Turning People's Food Photos Into Recipes

When someone posts a photo of food on social media, do you get cranky? Is it because you just don't care what other people are eating? Or is it because they're enjoying an herb-and-garlic crusted halibut at a seaside restaurant while you sit at your computer with a slice of two-day-old pizza?

Maybe you'd like to have what they're having, but don't know how to make it. If only there were a way to get their recipe without commenting on the photo.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) would like that for you, too. That's why they're creating an artificial neural network — a computer system modeled after the human brain — to examine those photos and break them down into recipes.

The growth of the Internet has supported the ability to collect and publish several large-scale datasets, allowing for great advances in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), says Javier Marin, a postdoctoral research associate at CSAIL and co-author of a paper published this July at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in Honolulu.

"However, when it comes to food, there was not any large-scale dataset available in the research community until now," Marin says. "There was a clear need to better understand people's eating habits and dietary preferences."

To do this, researchers have been feeding the computer pairs of photos and their corresponding recipes — about 800,000 of them. The AI network, called Recipe 1M, chews on all of that for a while, learning patterns and connections between the ingredients in the recipes and the photos of food.

"What we've developed is a novel machine learning model that powers an app. The demo that you see is just a pretty interface to that model," says Nicholas Hynes, an MIT graduate student at CSAIL who also co-authored the paper.

You, too, can try out this interface, called Pic2Recipe. To use it, just upload your food photo. The computer will analyze it and retrieve a recipe from a collection of test recipes that best matches your image.

It usually works pretty well, although it can miss an ingredient or two sometimes. Take for example, this video, in which the MIT team uploads a photo of sugar cookies.

"The app took the image, figured out what was in it and how it was prepared, and gave us the recipe that it thinks was most likely to have produced the image," says Hynes.

Pic2Recipe did correctly identify eight out of the 11 ingredients. And it did accurately find a recipe for sugar cookies. Alas, it missed the icing.

But the program doesn't need to visually recognize every ingredient in the photo to find an accurate recipe.

"Just like a human, it can infer the presence of invisible, homogenized or obscured ingredients using context. For instance, if I see a green colored soup, it probably contains peas — and most definitely salt!" says Hynes. "When the model finds the best match, it's really taking a holistic view of the entire image or the entire recipe. That's part of why the model is interesting: It learns a lot about recipes in a very unstructured way."

But as with every new technology, there are some kinks to work out.

The current model sometimes has trouble making fine distinctions between similar recipes, Hynes says. "For instance, it may detect a ham sandwich as pastrami or not recognize that brioche contains milk and egg. We're still actively improving the vision portion of the model."

Another issue, Hynes says, is that the current model has no explicit knowledge of basic concepts like flavor and texture. "Without this, it might replace one ingredient with another because they're used in similar contexts, but, doing so would significantly alter this dish," Hynes says. "For example, there are two very similar Korean fermented ingredients called gochujang and doenjang, but the former is spicy and sweet while the latter is savory and salty."

There are other refinements to be made, such as how to recognize an ingredient as diced, chopped or sliced. Or how to tell the difference between different types of mushrooms or tomatoes.

And when a reporter at The Verge tried the demo, photos of ramen and potato chips turned up no matches. How could the program miss such basics?

"This is simply explained by not having recipes for those foods in the dataset," Hynes says. "For things like ramen and potato chips, people generally don't post recipes for things that come out of a bag."

In the future, the MIT researchers want to do more than just let you have what they're having. They are seeking insight into health and eating habits.

"Determining the ingredients — and therefore how healthy they are — of images posted in a specific region, we could see how health habits change through time," says Marin.

Hynes would like to take the technology a step farther, and is working on a way to automatically link from an image or ingredient list to nutrition information.

"Using it to improve peoples' health is definitely big; when I go to community/potluck dinners, it always astonishes me how people don't pay attention to preparation and how it relates to plausible serving sizes," he says.

Hynes also can see how aspiring cooks might appreciate a system that takes a restaurant item and tells them how to make it. "Even everyday people with dietary restrictions — gluten free, vegan, sparse pantry — would appreciate a tool that could minimally modify a complicated dish like Beef Wellington so that it fits the constraints."

And why stop there? These are MIT scientists, after all, collaborating with researchers from the Qatar Computing Research Institute and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in Spain.

"In the far future, one might envision a robo-chef that fully understands food and does the cooking for you!" Hynes says.

Healthy Cooking: Pair salmon with lentils for a hearty summer supper

Sometimes, it’s just too hot to turn on the stove. The key is to stock up your kitchen with “healthy convenience food” that doesn’t require any heat, such as fresh produce, canned beans, canned fish and small boxes of pre-cooked legumes found in the prepared produce section.

You can throw together a hearty meal in minutes without breaking a sweat. Sure, you will pay an extra dollar or two for steamed lentils, for instance, but if having a well-stocked fridge keeps you from hitting the drive-thru even once, then you’ll come ahead financially (and nutritionally).

Canned salmon is one of my favorite healthy fast foods. When it goes on sale, you can stock up the pantry with a few cans of it, making wild salmon downright inexpensive.

Not only is canned salmon full of omega-3 fatty acids and protein (12 g grams of protein in 2 ounces of fish), but it actually has more calcium than its fresh counterpart, because the small bones stay in the meat (and go unnoticed; remove any large bones, though).

Pair the salmon with beans or legumes plus some chopped fresh vegetables and vinaigrette, and you’ve got a dish hearty enough for a summertime supper. And it will keep nicely in the fridge, so you can graze on this fiber and protein filled salad for a day or two no problem.

Today’s recipe, a lentil and salmon salad with smoky mustard dressing, was inspired by my favorite bagel toppings — red onion, tomato, capers, salmon and a hint of smokiness in the vinaigrette, which elevates the canned salmon into a little wink at lox. The flavors marry into a surprisingly complex dish, never hinting at the fact that this recipe is of the 5-minute-dump-stir-and-serve variety.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes for an outdoor summer feast

There’s something delightfully bonkers about having a full-on outdoor feast. The set-up is impractical, the weather unpredictable and the logistics of keeping the food warm and the drinks cold unworkable. The only option, when the chance to eat under the open sky presents itself, is to go all-out Mad Hatter’s tea party.

One such opportunity presented itself a couple of years ago, when I was invited to the Glyndebourne opera festival. I knew the evening involved singing, picnics and polished shoes, but the reality was even more eccentric than I imagined. This was a full-scale white dinner jacket, black bow tie, wicker hampers and straw hats affair. Tables were set with silver cutlery, porcelain plates, butter dishes and candlesticks. Butter and wine were kept chilled thanks to buckets of ice. This was different-league outdoor eating. So I pulled my tie straight, picked a handful of wild flowers to dress our slightly wobbly table and embraced the scotch egg moment.

In three weeks, I’ll be serving up an outdoor feast of my own with a Long Table Banquet at the Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire. There will be fewer bow ties, but the set-up is equally crazy, not least because we’ll be feeding about 700 people over two sittings. Our menu, naturally enough, is equally impractical: burrata with chargrilled grapes, confit squid and a host of salads as a meze course, slow-roast lamb with apricots and figs, baked minty rice and rolled pavlova. The logistics involved are epic, but that moment when the sun sets, and all you can hear is the sound of friends sharing a meal outdoors, is special enough to make it all worthwhile.

Polenta with summer greens and lime

Getting flavour into polenta usually requires a tonne of butter and cheese. Here, I’ve done so with a teaspoon of onion granules (OK, and a good chunk of butter). Serves four.

65g unsalted butter
4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp onion granules
Salt and black pepper
1 litre vegetable stock
160g quick-cook polenta
2 limes – 1 finely zested, to get 1 tsp, then juiced, to get 1 tbsp, the other cut into four wedges, to serve
¾ tsp ground cumin
1 green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
100g spring onions (ie, about 10), cut thinly on a diagonal
1 hispi cabbage (aka pointed cabbage), quartered, cored and cut into 1cm-wide slices
150g baby spinach
5g mint leaves, roughly chopped
150g soured cream

Melt 50g butter in a medium saucepan on a medium-high heat. Add half the garlic, half a teaspoon of ground coriander, the onion granules, three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of pepper. Fry for about two minutes, until the butter is foaming and the garlic starting to brown, then add the stock and bring to a simmer. Turn down the heat to medium, then slowly pour in the polenta, whisking continuously, until the mix is smooth and starting to thicken. Turn the heat to low and cook for eight to 10 minutes, stirring often, until it is the consistency of thick porridge, then take off the heat and stir in the lime zest.

Melt the remaining butter in a large saute pan on a high heat. Once it’s foaming, add the remaining garlic and coriander, with the cumin, chilli, three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper, and fry for a minute, until the garlic starts to brown. Add the spring onions and cabbage, and cook for a minute more, stirring continuously. Add the spinach in two batches and cook, stirring, for two minutes, until it has just wilted and the cabbage is starting to soften but still remains a vibrant green. Take off the heat, squeeze over a tablespoon of lime juice and stir in the mint.

As soon as the greens are ready, return the polenta to a medium heat to warm through; if it has thickened too much, thin it down with a few tablespoons of water. Divide between four shallow bowls, top with the greens and finish with a generous spoon of soured cream. Serve with a wedge of lime.

Beef shin cooked in pomegranate and beetroot juice

Buy the shin in one large piece, rather than pre-cut, and cut it to the right size and shape at home, because pre-cut beef shin will be too thin and fatty here. The better the ingredients you use, as always, the better the results will be, so your oil should be extra-virgin, your pomegranate juice should not be diluted, and your salt should be sea salt flakes. Serves two as a main course alongside some bread and a peppery rocket salad.

500-600g piece boneless beef shin, cut into three 10cm x 4cm pieces
80ml extra-virgin olive oil
Flaked sea salt and pepper
8 garlic cloves, peeled
550ml 100% pomegranate juice
550ml beetroot juice (most beetroot juice is sweetened with a bit of apple juice, which is fine)
20g pistachio kernels, roughly chopped
2 tbsp pomegranate seeds, to serve

Season the beef shin with three tablespoons of oil, a teaspoon of salt and a generous grind of pepper.

Heat a deep, heavy-based, 28cm-diameter pan for which you have a lid on a high flame. Lay in the beef pieces – space them well apart – and fry for seven minutes, turning regularly, until seared and well browned all over. Transfer the meat to a bowl, leaving any juices in the pan, then add the garlic cloves to the pan and fry for a minute, until golden. Return the beef and any resting juices to the pan, turn down the heat to low, and add the pomegranate and beetroot juices. Cover and leave to bubble gently for an hour and a quarter, turning the beef every 15 minutes or so, until it’s tender and the sauce is the consistency of thin gravy and reduced to about 170ml (you may need to remove the meat and reduce the sauce for an extra 10-15 minutes to get it to this state).

Turn off the heat and leave to rest, still covered, for 15 minutes before serving. Using a very sharp knife, cut each piece of meat widthways into 0.5cm-thick slices. Divide between two plates and spoon four tablespoons of sauce, including some of the softened garlic cloves, over each portion, pouring half over the meat and letting the rest pool around it. Drizzle two teaspoons of oil over each plate of meat and sauce: if you do this slowly, this will add a beautiful marbling effect to the sauce. Finish with a sprinkle of pistachios, pomegranate seeds and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt.

Roast peaches with kaffir lime, sabayon and raspberries

If possible, use perfectly ripe peaches for this; if you can’t get any, add a few tablespoons of water to the pan when roasting the fruit. If you can’t get fresh kaffir lime leaves, don’t substitute them with freeze-dried ones: the finely shaved skin of one lime (about six strips) is a much better alternative. Serves six.

3 egg yolks
70g caster sugar
65ml sauternes (or another sweet dessert wine)
6 ripe peaches, pitted and quartered
8 fresh kaffir lime leaves, roughly torn
2 limes – zest finely grated, to get 2 tsp, then juiced, to get 3-4 tbsp
120g raspberries, crushed
100ml double cream

Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Whisk the egg yolks, two tablespoons of sugar and the wine in a medium heatproof bowl, then set the bowl over a saucepan of gently simmering water (make sure the base of the bowl is not in contact with the water). Whisk for four or five minutes, until it looks like a thick, foamy cream, then take the bowl off the pan and leave to cool, whisking once or twice as it does so.

While the sabayon is cooling, put the peaches, kaffir lime leaves, lime juice, a teaspoon of lime zest and two tablespoons of sugar in a 20cm x 20cm high-sided baking dish. Stir everything together to combine, then roast for 15-25 minutes, until the peaches are soft but still hold their shape (the timing will depend on how ripe they are), then leave to cool.

While the peaches are cooking, mix the raspberries with the remaining teaspoon of lime zest and two teaspoons of sugar.

Put the cream in a medium bowl, whisk to soft peaks, then, using a spatula, fold into the cooled sabayon. If you’re not dishing up straight away, put it in the fridge and take out 15 minutes before serving. Spoon the peaches and any juices into four bowls, and serve with a generous spoonful each of sabayon and raspberries on the side.

Nigel Slater’s strawberry recipes

Years after removing the strawberry bed, the occasional, persistent plant appears through a crack in the path, as if to tease me about my decision. I admire their resilience and leave them be, wolfing the cheeky little intruders if I can get to them before the blackbirds.

All too often strawberries deceive us by smelling better than they taste. I find it helps to introduce another element that will bring a bit of life to the berries – a squeeze of orange juice perhaps, the merest dash of balsamic vinegar or the subtlest grinding of pepper. The most successful additions I have found to date are passionfruit and raspberries. You need to get the balance right, but either will make the berries sing that bit louder once you involve cream, crème fraîche or sweet, soft cheese.

This week I made a vast trifle, a massive crowd-pleaser, baking my own sponge, crunchy with poppy seeds and flecked with orange zest. And then a couple of days later, strawberries appeared again, this time marinated in passionfruit juice and mint.

Strawberry and poppy seed trifle

Serves 8
For the cake:
butter 225g
golden caster sugar 225g
orange grated zest of 1
lemon grated zest of 1
plain flour 110g
baking powder generous ½ tsp
ground almonds 115g
eggs 4
poppy seeds 20g

For the syrup:
water 250ml
caster sugar 50g
ginger 40g, fresh
lemon juice of ½
strawberries and raspberries 250g, mixed

For the cream:
mascarpone 500g
eggs 3, separated
caster sugar 3 tbsp
vanilla extract a few drops

For decoration:
mixed berries 500g
double cream 250ml

You will need a deep-sided cake tin, 22cm x 12cm x 7cm deep, lined with baking parchment.

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Using a food mixer, cream the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy, then add the citrus zests. Sieve together the flour and baking powder, then stir in the almonds.

Break the eggs into a bowl and beat lightly with a fork. With the beater at a moderate speed, add the egg, a little at a time, to the butter and sugar. If the mixture appears to curdle slightly, then introduce a spoonful of the flour and almond mixture. Continue adding the flour until the batter is thick and creamy. Mix in the poppy seeds.

Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin, gently smoothing the surface. Bake for 45-50 minutes until a skewer, inserted into the cake, comes out without any raw mixture attached. Leave the cake to cool.

Make the syrup: put the water and sugar into a saucepan and warm over a moderate heat until the sugar has dissolved. Cut the ginger into thin coins and drop into the syrup. Pour the lemon juice into the syrup and set aside to infuse.

When the cake is cool, cut into 1cm thick slices and place in the base of a serving bowl. Pour the syrup over the cake, holding back the ginger, and let it soak in. Slice the strawberries, mix them with the raspberries and scatter over the layer of sponge.

Put the mascarpone, egg yolks and sugar into a mixing bowl and beat until thoroughly combined. Stir in the vanilla extract. In a clean bowl whisk the egg whites until almost stiff then fold in. Spoon over the strawberries then cover the dish in kitchen film and refrigerate for an hour.

Decorate the trifle: process half the berries to a purée in a blender, sieving out the seeds if you wish. Whip the cream until thick, then smooth it over the surface of the trifle, leaving peaks and hollows where the purée can sit. Pour the purée over the surface, then decorate with the remaining fruits. Chill for a good hour before serving.

Vanilla cream with passionfruit and strawberries

Serves 6
crème fraîche 250g
fromage frais or natural yogurt 250g
vanilla pod 1
passionfruit 8
orange 1, small
mint leaves 10
strawberries 400g

Place a fine sieve over a mixing bowl and line it with a piece of muslin. Spoon the crème fraîche into a bowl then add the fromage frais. Split the vanilla pod in half lengthways with a sharp knife, then open it flat and scrape out the dark, sticky seeds within. Fold the seeds through the crème fraîche then transfer to the lined sieve. Leave in the fridge overnight, during which time the vanilla cream will thicken to cheesecake-like texture.

Cut the passionfruit in half and squeeze them into a sieve or tea strainer set over a bowl. Let the juice run through, then press the pulp and seeds with the back of a teaspoon, until you have more or less only dry seeds remaining. Discard the seeds. (I return a pinch of them to the juice for their crunchy contrast.) Halve and squeeze the orange then add the juice to the bowl together with the mint. Halve the berries then stir them into the passionfruit and orange juice, cover and chill in the fridge for an hour.

To serve, upturn the sieve on to a plate and let the muslin and cream slide out. Carefully peel away the muslin. Serve the vanilla cream with the marinated strawberries, and with a spoonful of the gorgeous juice trickled over its pure white dome.

Yotam Ottolenghi’s avocado recipes

My uncle used to have an avocado tree in his garden, and my hazy childhood memories are of an ever-fruiting tree, stooped in the middle of the lawn, with clusters of hefty fruit permanently threatening to bring it down. The bunches lay so low that, even as small children, we could reach them pretty easily. I am not sure why we bothered, though: avocados don’t really ripen on the tree, and the fruit was so bitter that any we tasted were instantly spat out; the edges of my uncle’s garden were dotted with damaged avocados, hidden from our parents’ watchful eyes.

With age, though, came a certain degree of wisdom, and with it an understanding that the avocado is the most marvellous thing, so long as you eat it when it is ready. I always have at least a couple in my fruit bowl, waiting patiently for that moment when a gentle squeeze just yields to my thumb’s pressure. The attraction of a ripe avocado, for me, lies both in its wonderfully grassy taste and velvety texture, but perhaps even more so in the fact that you don’t need to cook avocado to transform it into a wholesome dish. It can be turned into a salsa, spread, soup or dressing with hardly any trouble at all, as long as you get the timing right.

Avocado butter on toast with tomato salsa

The butter needs to be very soft, so it blends properly with the avocado. Don’t melt it, though, because that will cause it to separate; instead, leave it at room temperature for a few hours. Serves two generously, or four as a snack.

2-3 very ripe avocados, flesh scooped out (you need about 250g in total)
80g unsalted butter, softened and cut into 2cm cubes
3 limes – finely grate the zest, then juice, to get 1½ tbsp of each
Salt and black pepper
10g tarragon leaves, finely chopped
10g dill, finely chopped
200g cherry tomatoes, cut into halves or quarters
2 tsp capers, rinsed and finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra to serve
4 slices sourdough bread
½ small garlic clove, peeled
¼ tsp cumin seeds, toasted and crushed

Put the avocado and butter in the small bowl of a food processor with half the lime zest, half the lime juice and half a teaspoon of salt (or use a stick blender). Blitz smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl if need be, then transfer to a small bowl with two-thirds of the herbs. Fold in, then refrigerate for 10 minutes.

In a small bowl, mix the tomatoes, capers, remaining lime zest and juice, oil and a good grind of pepper, and set aside until needed.

Grill or toast the bread, then rub one side of each piece with the cut side of the half garlic clove. Leave the toast to cool down a little, then spread each slice with the avocado butter and top with salsa. Sprinkle on the cumin and remaining herbs, add a final grind of pepper and a drizzle of oil, and serve.

Avocado soup with garlic oil

This refreshing summer soup will keep in the fridge for up to a day. The garlic oil can also be made ahead of time, and will keep for about two days in a sealed jar, so make extra for drizzling on toast, salads or noodles. Serves four as a first course.

60ml olive oil
½ tsp cumin seeds, lightly crushed
½ tsp coriander seeds, lightly crushed
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
Salt
180g frozen peas, defrosted
2 very ripe avocados, flesh scooped out
½ cucumber, peeled (about 160g net weight): 120g cut into rough chunks, the rest finely diced
1 lemon, zested and juiced to get 1½ tsp zest and 1½ tbsp juice
1 small green chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
80g soured cream
1 tbsp chopped dill

Put two tablespoons of oil in a small saucepan with the cumin and coriander seeds, the garlic and a good pinch of salt. Cook gently on a low heat for eight minutes, stirring often, until the garlic softens when mashed with the back of a spoon. Take care that the oil doesn’t get too hot or the garlic will burn (if it does start to bubble, just take off the heat until it’s cooled down a bit).

Put the peas in a blender with the avocado, cucumber chunks, lemon zest, remaining two tablespoons of oil, three-quarters of a teaspoon of salt and 400ml cold water. Blitz until very smooth, then chill.

In a small bowl, mix the diced cucumber with the lemon juice, chilli and a pinch of salt.

Divide the chilled soup between four bowls, top with a spoonful each of soured cream and salsa. Drizzle generously with garlic oil and scatter over the dill, and serve.

Gem lettuce with fridge-raid dressing

This dressing came about when I had a load of herbs in the fridge that needed using up. Don’t be too precious about the weight of individual herbs: so long as the total net weight is about the same, you’ll be fine. It’s worth making extra, because it keeps for a day in the fridge and is lovely spooned over all sorts of things, from chicken salad and tuna niçoise to roast root vegetables and tomato and feta salad. Serves four as a side dish.

½ very ripe avocado, flesh scooped out (90g net weight)
3cm piece ginger, peeled and roughly chopped (20g net weight)
1 small garlic clove, peeled and crushed
2 lemons: finely grate the zest of 1 to get 1 tsp, then juice both to get 3 tbsp
1 green chilli, roughly chopped (deseeded if you don’t like much heat)
1 tbsp tahini
85ml olive oil
Salt
10g basil leaves
10g tarragon leaves
10g dill
10g parsley
10g coriander
4 gem lettuces, trimmed and cut lengthways into eighths
2 tsp black sesame seeds, lightly toasted

Put the avocado, ginger, garlic, lemon zest and juice, chilli, tahini and five tablespoons of oil in the small bowl of a food processor. Add a third of a teaspoon of salt, blitz to a smooth paste, then add the herbs. Blitz again and, with the motor running, slowly add 60ml water until smooth.

Mix the lettuce with two teaspoons of oil and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt, then transfer to a platter. Spoon over the dressing, scatter on the sesame seeds and serve at once.

Avocado with curried prawns and lime

Retro, yes, but no less delicious for that. Serve with toasted sourdough to make a starter or a snack. Serves four.

100ml groundnut oil
1 banana shallot, peeled and halved lengthways, then each half cut lengthways into quarters
1 red chilli, deseeded and thinly sliced
20 fresh curry leaves
2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp black mustard seeds
2 limes, 1 finely shaved and juiced, the other cut into four wedges, to serve
Salt
300g sustainably sourced raw king prawns, peeled and deveined (cooked peeled prawns are a perfectly acceptable shortcut)
20g mayonnaise
80g Greek-style yoghurt
1½ tsp mild curry powder
1 tsp honey
2 ripe avocados, cut in half lengthways and stoned

Heat 85ml of oil in a small saute pan on a medium-high heat, then fry the shallot and chilli for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the shallot is golden and fragrant. Add the curry leaves, fry for 20 seconds, until crisp, then take off the heat and stir in the coriander and black mustard seeds, lime skin and a pinch of salt. Set aside for 20 minutes, to cool and infuse, then discard the lime skin.

Put the remaining tablespoon of oil in a medium sauté pan on a high heat, then fry the prawns and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt for a minute or two, stirring, until the prawns are cooked through and fragrant. Transfer to a plate to cool.

Mix the mayonnaise, yoghurt, curry powder, honey, two teaspoons of lime juice and an eighth of a teaspoon of salt in a small bowl. Finely chop half the prawns and stir into the sauce; toss the remaining prawns in the infused oil.

To serve, put an avocado half on each of four small plates and sprinkle with a small pinch of salt. Spoon in the creamy sauce, then top with the whole prawns, allowing some to fall off around the avocado. Drizzle each portion with a tablespoon of infused oil and sprinkle with the crisp aromatics. Serve with a lime wedge.