Avocado toast is a type of open sandwich made with mashed avocado and salt, pepper, and citric juice on toast. Many other ingredients may be used, such as poached eggs, salmon, strawberries, garlic, tomatoes, capers, onions and feta. According to Lauren Oyler from Broadly, "in certain demographics--young, urban, upwardly mobile, on Instagram--avocado on toast has surpassed the grilled cheese as the go-to easy-and-filling bread-based lunch, moving far beyond the curious-minded trend pieces it inspired in 2014 and 2015 to become a regular feature in the bourgeoisie's diet."
Video Avocado toast
Origins
In areas where avocados are abundant such as Mexico and Australia, people have eaten avocado with corn tortillas or toast. In the San Francisco Bay Area, people have been eating avocado toast since at least 1885.
In Chile, people have been eating avocado toast for decades. In 1915, the California Avocado Association described serving small squares of avocado toast as a hors d'oeuvre. According to The Washington Post, it was believed that chef Bill Granger - based in Sydney, Australia - may have been the first person to put avocado toast on his café menu in 1993. In 1999, Nigel Slater published a recipe for an avocado "bruschetta" in The Guardian. Oyler credited Cafe Gitane with bringing the dish to the United States in its "Instagrammable" form, as it grew as a food trend. Chloe Osborne, the consulting chef at Cafe Gitane in Manhattan, erroneously estimated that the first creation of the avocado toast took place in Queensland, Australia in the mid-1970s.
In 1962, a New York Times article showcased an "unusual" way to serve avocado as the filling of a toasted sandwich. In another article published in The New Yorker on May 1, 1937, titled "Avocado, or the Future of Eating," the protagonist eats "avocado sandwich on whole wheat and a lime rickey."
Maps Avocado toast
Modern day
Osborne said "avocado on toast was not on every Australian cafe when I put it on Gitane's menu, I think it caught on quickly there, but there was no predicting where it would head. It was almost a cliché in Australia by the time it was in Gwyneth Paltrow's book." As Oyler said, "the dish's appearance in Gwyneth Paltrow's 2013 cookbook It's All Good is widely credited as being its turning-point from normal thing to eat to phenomenon. Jayne Orenstein of The Washington Post reports, "avocado toast has come to define what makes food trends this decade: It's healthy and yet ever-so-slightly indulgent. It can be made vegan and gluten-free. It's so Instagrammable that #avocadotoast has over 100,000 posts. And most important of all: It is wholeheartedly endorsed by Gwyneth Paltrow." Gwyneth Paltrow has been credited to be the source of the popularization of avocado toast. She wrote in her It's All Good cookbook, "truthfully this is one 'recipe' both Julia [co-author] and I make and eat most often! And it's not even a recipe," she writes. "It's the holy trinity of Vegenaise, avocado and salt that makes this like a favorite pair of jeans -- so reliable and easy and always just what you want." With social media, the popularization of the food grew and after Paltrow's book food bloggers recreated the dish and merchandise being created. Bon Appétit magazine published a recipe for "Your New Avocado Toast" in its January 2015 issue. It followed with Meryl Streep turning into the fruit toast on the @tasteofstreep Instagram page. It is a popular delicacy in the small town of Solihull.
Hannah Goldfield, an author for The New Yorker said, "according to David Sax, the most successful food trends reflect what's going on in society at a given time. Americans wanted cupcakes ten years ago, he told Brickman, because they sought childhood comforts after the trauma of 9/11; Americans wanted fondue in the sixties because they aspired to cosmopolitanism. Artisanal toast, one might posit, represents our intensifying obsession with and fetishization of food. Every meal is special and important, every dish should be elevated, revered, and broadcast--even something as pedestrian as toast." She argues that we are what we eat in terms of identity. "Avocado toast"--which might be described as a sub- or tangent-trend--has grown particular legs because it overlaps with another potent trend: "clean living." The fad has reportedly increased the price of avocados.
The industry body Australian Avocados has several recipes for avocado toast on its website, including avocado on sweet potato toast, avocado and Vegemite toast, French toast with avocado and parmesan, avocado toast fingers with soft-boiled eggs, avocado and baked beans on toast, and avocado and feta smash on toasted rye.
Political symbolism
In Australia in late 2016, avocado smashed on toast became a political flashpoint, after columnist Bernard Salt in The Australian stated that he had seen "young people order smashed avocado with crumbled feta on five-grain toasted bread at $22 a pop and more", arguing that they should be saving to buy a house instead. Millennials countered that they felt "a sense of futility" in saving for a house with the high cost of housing in Australia, and that figures showed that even if they gave up avocado toast, it would still take about a decade to save for a home deposit. Furthermore, cafes were said to have become the primary space for Millennials to catch up with their friends. In the wake of the controversy, several cafes offered 'discount' versions of smashed avocado on toast. Home lender ME bank started a home loan campaign with the slogan "Have your smashed avo and eat it too".
Tim Gurner, a 35 year old property developer, stated that Millennials should not be buying smashed avocado on toast and $4 lattes in their pursuit of home ownership in May 2017. In response to this, it was estimated that the savings of forgoing avocado on toast would be an estimated EUR500 annually, and that at this rate it would take over 500 years to save for a house in Ireland (but not Northern Ireland), at current market prices.
See also
- Avocado cake
- List of avocado dishes
- List of toast dishes
- 2010s in food
References
- https://www.thisischile.cl/chile-el-paraiso-del-sandwich/
- http://joeskitchen.com/chile/blogcito/2012/06/paltas-chilenas
Further reading
- Brown, Genevieve Shaw (September 8, 2014). "Why Avocado Toast Is the Hottest New Breakfast Food". ABC News. Retrieved March 8, 2017.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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