Avocado Strawberry Salad
This salad is so delicious. If you live in southern Ontario, spring is the perfect time to make it, with fresh greenhouse strawberries widely available and their field-grown counterparts soon to follow.
Avocado Strawberry Salad
The dressing in this salad combines fresh strawberries, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. It sounds unusual but it is really good, especially when paired with rich avocado. The original recipe serves 6 and uses 3 avocados. In case , like me, you prefer a smaller portion, I did the calculations for one avocado, below. For the full recipe, visit Food & Drink.
Servings: 2 servings
Equipment
- Blender
Ingredients
- heaping 1/3 cup hulled and diced strawberries
- 1 3/4 tsp olive oil
- 1 tsp vegetable oil I use canola.
- 1/4 tsp balsamic vinegar, or more, to taste
- salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
- 1 ripe avocado See Notes, below.
Instructions
- Put the strawberries, oils, and vinegar in a small food chopper or smoothie cup blender and blend until smooth. (See Notes, below.)
- Season dressing with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Thinly slice avocado and arrange on a plate. Drizzle dressing on top of avocado slices.
Notes
- Most avocados in stores are either very ripe or very green. A green avocado will be very hard. You will know it is ripe when its skin starts to turn to a dark brown and there is a little give to the avocado when you squeeze it. Don’t let it get too soft though—it may not be usable and may even be turning brown inside. A ripe avocado should be green on the inside with a buttery texture. To ripen green avocados, put them in a paper bag with a banana. Close the bag but don’t fasten it; you need some air in there. One night is probably long enough, but it can take a couple of days for them to ripen.
- When you make this small amount of dressing, it’s not enough for a full-size food processor, as was used in the original recipe. If you have a small food chopper or blender with a smoothie cup, that would work better. You can use an immersion blender but you need a narrow vessel to create enough depth for actual immersion of the blender into the ingredients. It’s tricky. I found a coffee mug worked, but the process wasn’t without its challenges. This is why I suggest you dice the strawberries; the smaller the pieces, the more easily they’ll blend.
Image of avocado by Mariia Sultanova | Dreamstime.com