Did you ever look at a persimmon tree? This article has absolutely nothing to do with persimmons, incidentally, but the persimmon to me is the best example of one of those trees that produce huge numbers of ostensibly edible fruits for which there seems to be little use. Every persimmon tree I've ever seen is filthy with rotting persimmons, and I can understand this. I mean what do you do with persimmons? I've had persimmon cookies, and yeah, they're okay, but it only takes two persimmons to make a whole batch of cookies, and even if you really like persimmon cookies, I don't think you want to eat the five hundred or so batches you could make off of the harvest of your one persimmon tree. But that's okay, because you can always learn to make all those delicious persimmon dishes that you can get at McDonald's, right? Oh yeah, that's right, I don't think there are any persimmon dishes you can get in any restaurant. Fortunately, I do not have a persimmon tree.
I do have a lemon tree however, and while there are, I believe, far more culinary uses for the lemon than the persimmon, the reality that soon confronts the lemon tree owner is that lemons are prolific fruiters. Unless you have a highly successful lemonade stand, I guarantee you that you will have more lemons than you will use in a year. I mean I love lemonade, I make excellent lemon pies, and use lemons liberally in the making of salsas and sauces, but there is no way I can keep up with the production of our one small lemon tree.
I also have an avocado tree, and avocados, as it turns out, are also on the list of "OMG, what do I do with all this fruit?" trees. There is of course guacamole, and my wife makes an absolutely fine guacamole, but kind of like persimmon cookies, there is only so much guacamole that one can consume. You can add sliced avocado to salads and sandwiches, but at the end of the day, like your lemons, you just end up with more fruit than you can use. It is for this very reason that I was so delighted to run across a recipe for avocado pie. One normally thinks of avocado as a more savory ingredient, but this was obviously a sweet application. And it is sooooo simple.
Get yourself a baked nine inch pie crust -- you can make your own or use one you get at the grocery store. This pie has a cream pie kind of consistency, and I tend to like graham cracker crusts with cream pies, but a pastry shell works just fine. Once you've got that, you simply peel, pit and smash two avocados in a mixing bowl, add 1/4 cup of lemon juice and one can of sweetened condensed milk. Mix that up -- using an electric mixer to give it about a minute of whipping -- and pour it in the prepared shell. Refrigerate for at least thirty minutes and boom, avocado pie. That's it -- peel, pit, smash, mix and pour. What you end up with is a smooth, creamy pie that tastes very much like a key lime pie.
Thus I now have at least a partial answer to the question of what to do when the world gives you lemons: grab some avocados!
04/29/2019
03:29:29 PM