An Avocado is a Fruit

Avocados may be the most utensil intensive fruit on the face of the Earth.  Compare it to an apple.  You don’t need anything to eat it, but if you’re really fussy, they make a neat little coring tool to cut it into convenient, bite sized slices.  One utensil, max.  What about oranges?  All you need to enjoy one of them is an orange peeler or some long finger nails and a little determination.  How about a pomegranate?  It needs a knife to cut it and a bowl of water to work in, along with fingers and way more patience than should be required to eat a fruit.  And only one of those is a utensil.

But the avocado.  The avocado first requires a knife.  But no ordinary butter knife will do; a steak knife is needed to slice its leathery peel.  Once split, you need a spoon.  This tool works amazingly well separating the peel from the inner fruit.  You could try using a fork here, but the spoon fits the curve of the peel so well.  As an added bonus, it is quite effective at scooping out any unwanted brown spots that may be marring your otherwise beautiful fruit.  A fork would butcher this job.

Now I know it’s completely possible to stop at two utensils, reusing the knife to slice the avocado.  But I’ve found the best uses of an avocado require a fork.  An avocado slice on a salad pales in comparison to a chip dipped in fresh guacamole or avocado spread across toast.  Both are utterly divine.  While I admit I’ve never tried mashing an avocado using a knife and/or spoon, the fork does the job wonderfully well.  Smashing, mixing, spreading, the fork does it all, except of course for the above mentioned cutting and scooping.

Avocado toast is worthy of some additional details, as its rather bland moniker doesn’t do it justice.  I’m talking about ripe avocado mashed with a dash of lime juice, spread thick on toast, then lightly dusted with cayenne and a crackling of sea salt.  Absolutely amazing!  I was first introduced to avocado toast in Hawaii.  Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to go to Hawaii.  It was all sunshine, beaches, waterfalls, volcanos, pineapple, and, of course, avocado toast.

But then, avocado toast wasn’t the most memorable food I was introduced to on the Big Island.  We asked about local cuisine and were directed down a road South of Captain Cook to a small establishment that could best be described as half food place, half house and garage.  Following our directions to a T, we walked up and ordered Lau Lau.

Lau Lau is pork and butterfish wrapped in lu’au leaves and inedible ti leaves.  This particular establishment, I had heard, steams the wrapped delicacy for multiple days before serving it.  I’ve tried other Lau Lau, but nothing else has come close.  Amazing doesn’t begin to describe it.  Avocado toast can be accurately summed up as amazing, but avocado toast is not a reason I would willingly fly back to Hawaii for a single meal (not that I can afford that).

And of course, Lau Lau only requires one utensil to eat.  Unless, of course, you count the airplane and multiple cars needed to get there.