Radiant Roots Recipe: Avocado Bake

20 to 30 minutes

Some of the many tasty ways this can be enjoyed include being eaten directly out of the skin boat, spread for toast, as a topper or “sauce” for noodles or zoodle (just add a little extra lemon + EVOO to warm noodles), a topper for salad or as a dip.

Variations can include melting cheese on top with the nut crust for dairy consumers, using other nuts, leaving out the tomatoes or adding rosemary.

3 large avocadoes

2 lemons

1 cup cherry tomatoes

¾ cup Brazil nuts

1 tsp salt

1 tsp crushed black pepper corn

2 cloves garlic or powdered garlic

Slice the avocados in half along the long side, try to keep in the skins intact as much as possible, remove the pit and scoop the flesh out into a bowl, also set aside the skins to use again later.

Preheat the oven to 425° F. Mince the garlic cloves finely. Squeeze the juice of one lemon into the bowl, add salt, pepper and garlic then mash the avocado; it can be pretty chucky to maintain texture.

Chop the tomatoes into quadrants and add to avocado mixture. Place the Brazil nuts into a sandwich bag or fine mesh bag, close it and use the butt end of a butter knife to smack the nuts until they are roughly crushed up, then add approximately ⅔ of the crushed nuts to the avocado mixture. Set the rest of the nuts aside in a bowl.

Taste the mixture to make sure if seasoning needs to be adjusted. Scoop the mixture back into the skins (there’s often a couple skins leftover). Take the filled skins and dip them into the bowl of remaining crushed nuts to top the filled skins. (If this causes nervousness, just spoon the left- over nuts on top.)

Place the filled skins on a cookie sheet and bake or air fry, suggested on the top rack of the warmed-up oven for 10 to 15 minutes depending on the oven being used; just keep an eye on them as when the nuts are nicely toasted, they are done cooking.

Slice up the second lemon into wedges. When they’ve cooled to edible temperature, squeeze a wedge of lemon on top and enjoy.

Recipe courtesy of Amrit Leilani of Radiant Roots. For more info, email [email protected] or on Instagram @radiantroots.life.