hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with avocado ricotta crostini
that's right I enjoy avocado toast just as much as the next millennial trapped
in a baby boomers body but nevertheless I'm always looking for variations on my
favorite things to eat so when I saw avvocato and her coda being combined on
a menu recently I was intrigued I mean not enough to order it but intrigued
enough to go out and buy the stuff the next day to give it a try and I'm so
happy I did because it was amazing so with that let's go ahead and get started
by prepping the basis for this delicious bite and what I'm gonna be going with is
some 1/2 inch slices that I cut diagonally from a baguette that I'll be
drizzling very generously with olive oil and by the way if you put enough on you
don't have to do both sides since that will soak through Izzy's big speaking of
which once those are set we'll go ahead and pop those into the center of a 375
degree oven for about 25 minutes or so or until they are golden brown and
crispy and while I'm not gonna prove that with a fork this time I will give
one the whole tappet abba so you can hear you really do want to cook these
until they're crunchy then once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and set
those aside until they cool completely at which point we can move on to our
extremely easy to make avocado spread and we'll begin that with a review on
how exactly to cut and pit in an avocado and first up we're going to remove that
little stem thing and then we will start our cut right in the center of that all
the way until our knife hits the pit at which point we will simply cut that all
the way around and by the way if you're not a highly trained professional please
put a towel in your hand first just in case and then simply by twisting the two
halves if our avocados right Bish's separate cleanly leaving us with the pit
in one side that will remove by firmly but not too forcefully tapping the blade
of our knife right in the center and then all we need to do is twist and pull
and it should come out beautifully and then if there's only one thing you
remember from this video let it be this never ever pull an avocado pit off the
knife okay instead put your fingers behind it and gently push and pinch it
off this way and there'll be zero chance you cut yourself as opposed to pulling
it off the knife where you have like a 90% chance of cutting yourself so that's
the best-case scenario here is the worst-case let's say for the sake of
argument you have terrible luck and you did everything exactly as described but
when you want to twist this happened the pit splits in half and sure you could
just throw this way and try another one or grab a spoon and try to dig it out
but don't do either of those things okay if that happens all we need to do is
stab straight down into the center of the pit and then twist and it should
come out so anyway just a little bonus video in case that happens you all right
as you know we never let the food win but regardless once our avocado is
halved and pitted we will go ahead and scoop that into a bowl which should be
very easy if the avocados ripe okay really the only way to screw up this
recipe besides plunging a knife into your palm would be to use an under ripe
too hard avocado which not only won't have a great texture but the taste won't
be as good either so we want to use something nice and ripe and buttery and
then what we'll do once that's been scooped into a bowl is add some
beautiful fresh ricotta cheese which is normally made from cows milk but if
you're one of the fancy stores and they have a sheep smell variety definitely
give that a try since that's my fave and then what we'll do once that's been
added is grab a potato masher and mash this as smooth or as chunky as we want
okay a fork will also work and as you can see I mash this pretty smooth and
then what we'll do once all that's been mashed together its squeezing the juice
of half a lemon and by the way the reason I'm adding this after mashing is
because avocados are pretty high fat and they get really slippery when you try to
mash them with a liquid and you'll have chunks trying to fly out of the bowl so
I generally like to mash first and then add the flavorings and then besides the
lemon juice I'm also going to add a little bit of fresh basil as well as a
nice big generous pinch of kosher salt okay avocados always needs a good amount
of salt and then we'll finish this up with a little shake of cayenne
and then we'll go ahead and mix all that together and of course give it the
mandatory taste for seasoning and do not be surprised if you need another little
pinch of salt okay and under salted avocado spread is a mediocre avocado
spread and then what we'll do once as tasting exactly how we want is go ahead
and apply it to our now cooled crostini spreading out a little or a lot alright
never forget you have been are and always will be the chef John of how much
to put on but my personal philosophy is pile up as much as you can so that's
what I did and once those have been spread we can move on to probably the
most fun part of the operation the garnishing and the accessorizing of the
top and since I had some beautiful and very sweet cherry tomatoes around I
decided to do some slices of those and then besides the tomatoes I also decided
to add some thin slices of breakfast radish a name that I've always been
amused by since who the heck are these people eating radishes for breakfast I
mean I'm not saying I wouldn't I'm just saying we'd have to be out of all the
other breakfast foods first but anyway we'll go ahead and garnish shows up with
the seasonal vegetables of our choice at which point I decided to shine up the
tops a little bit of olive oil preferably something on the bold and
peppery side and then because under salted tomatoes are almost as bad as
under salted avocado I sprinkled some beautifully flaky sea salt over the top
and then for a final touch I finishes up a little bit of snip chive and that's it
I don't think that plate of avocado or Kota crostini could look any better or
more enticing except maybe if I remove that one rogue chive there we go
I feel better now and that my friends really did taste every bit as amazing as
it looked alright the combination of that olive
oil soaked crispy crostini with our relatively light and healthy yes still
rich and satisfying avocado spread topped with our beautiful fresh veggies
is just an incredibly great combination of tastes and textures and it's funny
until I had seen it written on that menu it really had never occurred to me to
combine avocado and ricotta cheese I mean why would it but they really did
work wonderfully together and as far as presentation goes this size works
perfectly for like a breakfast or a lunch or a brunch but if you cut your
bread into smaller rounds they would be perfect as a passed hors d'oeuvre or if
you're serving a larger group in a more informal setting just do your spread in
a bowl and then just surround it with your crostini and let people serve
themselves that should also work beautifully but no matter how you decide
to serve these I really do hope you give them a try soon so head over to food
wishes comm for all the ingredient amounts of more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you