JULIE WELLS: Keep fried avocado recipe for Cinco de Mayo

This week’s featured recipe, fried avocados, is brought to you by a different Wells, Kevin Wells, my husband.

My husband has long loved avocados, but it is because of him that I’ve grown to really have a liking for them. One thing I learned is that avocados are classified as a fruit — I always thought it was a vegetable.

My husband derived the idea for this recipe from a friend of ours, Sara Richardson. Kevin noticed that Sara had posted up a picture of some fried avocados on her Facebook wall and he asked her how she made them.

In an effort to get the recipe just right, Kevin has fried up many an avocado in our home recently and he has definitely perfected it in my opinion.

What I love about this particular dish is that it doesn’t taste deep fried, and it doesn’t have a heavy batter on it. Sometimes when you order something fried it is coated in batter and you can’t taste the actual food that is encased in the batter. That isn’t the case with this recipe.

One little piece of advice. Allowing the avocados to get too soft before cooking them for this recipe doesn’t work well because when the soft fruit is dipped in the Parmesan cheese and egg batter, it all just seems to kind of fall apart.

Lastly, my favorite aspect of the recipe is that it doesn’t consume a lot of your time in the kitchen. From cutting to coating to frying, this dish is completed and ready to eat in 15 minutes or less. Be sure to keep this recipe for Cinco de Mayo, which is just around the corner.

Julie Wells writes the weekly food column The Recipe Box for the Rockdale Citizen.

FRIED AVOCADOS

What you need …

One firm, brown avocado

1/4 cup of olive oil

Two eggs

2 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese

Salt and pepper, to taste

What you do …

Slice, peel and pit avocado into eighths.

Thoroughly beat together eggs and Parmesan cheese in bowl.

Heat olive oil in pan on high on the stove top.

Dredge avocados in the egg-Parmesan batter.

When the pan is hot, using blunt tongs, put avocado slices in the pan one by one, flat cut side down, uniformly, around the curve of the pan, all facing the same way.

Set the timer for 90 seconds and flip the avocado to other flat side in the same order as initially placed.

Set the timer for 90 seconds again, remove the avocados from the pan and add salt and pepper to taste.