Small Win #5: The avocado crema that you'll be putting on all of your tacos
The most popular recipe from my cookbook Bitter + where to buy your avocados
Hello and welcome to Small Wins!
In life, it’s the small steps that often lead to the BIG wins — so every other week I share a small win that has the power to enhance your cooking, your home, your life.
I don’t know why anyone would make a taco without avocado. I’m not saying that tacos without avocado are bad per se — it’s just that they have the potential to be better. The meat or fish element of a taco will typically feature a degree of spice and/or deep savouriness, and there is no better counterpart to this than the silky richness of an avocado crema. And whilst you may feel that you don’t need a recipe for such a simple thing, stick with me here.
When you write a cookbook, you never know which recipes are going to be the most popular, and which ones will pass people by (looking at you, tiramisu tres leches cake). I suspected the charred salmon tacos in Bitter would go down well, but I didn’t realise that everyone would become obsessed with the supporting act: the avocado crema!
Many have told me that they will never again use another avocado crema recipe — that this has become their go-to recipe. So perhaps, inadvertently, I’ve created the final word on avocado crema??
Either way, I’m sharing the recipe here today because I believe it would be a worthwhile addition to your repertoire. There’s a lot to like: it’s bright with lime and punchy with coriander, ginger and garlic, yet the flavour is rounded and balanced. It’s also silky smooth and a gorgeous vivid green colour. The secret? A store cupboard ingredient that more of us ought to know about. Plus, in this post I share the best place to buy your avocados!
Love,
Alexina
Coming up in the next few weeks - the final(ish) word on tomato sauce, how to cut an onion (really!) + what no one tells you about cooking rice
For my Small Wins+ Community - Last month it was all about kitchen organisation but tomorrow we’re back to food, and we’re diving into pasta! Both the dried and the fresh stuff. Important questions will be answered, such as should your pasta water really be as salty as the sea? And which pasta should you buy in the supermarket? I will share the single formula you need to make any kind of fresh pasta, along with step-by-step videos of the process. There’ll be links to all the best classic pasta recipes (cacio e pepe, carbonara, bolognese etc.) in one place. It’s basically everything you would ever need to know about pasta. (Small Wins+ is the supercharged version of this newsletter for paid subscribers — find out more here.)
IN PRAISE OF CREAMED COCONUT
I have some questions for you:
Are you cooking for one or two and don’t always need a full can of coconut milk?
Do you have limited space in your cupboards?
Are you looking to reduce your intake of foods containing emulsifiers and preservatives?
Are you open to small ways to save money on your food bill?
If your answer to any of those questions is yes, then I think it’s time we talked about creamed coconut.
Creamed coconut is an ingredient that I am familiar with because it features in a lot of Caribbean cooking. It’s essentially a block of coconut that you excavate as needed, chiselling off a chunk to add straight to a pan, or combining it with boiling water to create a substitute for coconut milk (see the footnotes for how to do this), or grating it to use in place of desiccated coconut.
Flavour-wise, it’s mellow and subtly sweet, delivering pure coconut flavour. Texture-wise the fat content ensures that it adds richness and body to whatever you’re cooking. Naturally, it’s a fantastic ingredient to have on hand for curries and rice, but its uses stretch beyond that to items like dressings, soups and even cakes.
Here are all the reasons to love it:
It gives you a form of coconut milk on demand, as rich or light as you want it, in the quantity that you need it, thereby minimising food waste
It will save you money
The block of Tropical Sun Creamed Coconut in the picture above would enable me to make 400ml of light coconut milk (the equivalent of a can) for around 41p. I’ve not seen a can of coconut milk for less than £1 for quite some time — and many are closer to £2.
It takes up far less space than multiple cans of coconut milk
It contains no added ingredients — which means no emulsifiers, no additives, no preservatives (unlike most canned coconut milks)
In short, it’s the ultimate cupboard standby.
PERFECT AVOCADO CREMA
From my cookbook Bitter
In this avocado crema, the creamed coconut is doing a number of important jobs. The subtle sweetness helps to balance out the bolder, more bullying flavours of the lime, coriander, garlic and ginger. Meanwhile, its richness bolsters the body and silkiness of the whole thing, working in harmony with the avocado.
The full recipe for the salmon tacos can be found here, should you want to try them.
Avocado Crema
Makes enough to serve with 6 to 8 tacos
Ingredients
Juice of 1 lime, or to taste
¼ tsp fine sea salt
30g (1oz/2 tbsp) creamed coconut
1 tbsp freshly boiled water
Flesh of 1 avocado
20g (¾oz) fresh coriander, leaves and stalks
1 green chilli, deseeded (or 1/2, if you aren’t a fan of spice)
1cm (½in) piece of fresh root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
½ small garlic clove, grated
½ tsp maple syrup
Equipment
Stick blender (the one I’ve had for many years is a Kenwood) or small blender (e.g. a Nutribullet). If you only have a food processor, see the note below for instructions.
Method
Combine the ingredients in a tall plastic container or jug and blend until thick and creamy (for a silky smooth crema you’ll need to blend for longer than you might expect). Add more lime juice or salt, to taste, and as much water as is needed to get it to your preferred consistency.
If you want to mellow out the flavour further, simply add more creamed coconut.
Note: If using a food processor, use the small bowl. Combine the lime juice, salt, coconut and boiled water and blend until smooth, then add the rest of the ingredients and blend thoroughly.
FURTHER READING + RESOURCES
Once opened, store your creamed coconut in the fridge — it’ll keep for as long as it takes you to use it up (i.e. months).
How to make coconut milk from creamed coconut:
Dissolve the creamed coconut (roughly chopped) into 400ml freshly boiled water, stirring until smooth. Strain through a sieve to get rid of the coconut fibres, if preferred.
For light coconut milk: 75g creamed coconut
For standard coconut milk: 150g creamed coconut
For richer coconut milk: 200g creamed coconut
Creamed coconut has no emulsifiers so the resulting milk will not have the same silkiness that you can find with the canned stuff — but in most cases this won’t affect the final outcome of a dish
For extra flavour, combine the creamed coconut with hot chicken stock instead of boiled water
The best value avocados are the net of 5 that M&S sell for £2.50! You have to wait for them to ripen but they are a good size (not too big) and ripen perfectly every time. I don’t know what kind of magic this is, but I’m happy to share it with you.
Avocado crema feels adjacent to avocado toast so I feel duty-bound to tell you that the final word on avocado toast is Nigella’s from back in 2015. At the time she was mocked heavily, with many insisting that offering a recipe for avocado toast was ridiculous. But they missed the point entirely: Nigella’s avocado toast recipe isn’t about need, it’s about want — i.e. do you want to eat the best avocado toast? If your answer to that question is yes, then you know what to do. The recipe is available in Simply Nigella but you can also view it through the preview function on Google Books.
SHARING IS CARING
If you think someone else would benefit from this post, go ahead and share the knowledge!
BITTER — MY COOKBOOK!
If you’ve read this far you’ll know by now that I wrote a cookbook called BITTER which:
Explains why bitterness is the missing ingredient in your cooking
Teaches you how to work with bitter flavours
Shares over 80 delicious recipes
Head this way if that sounds like a bit of you 🖤
DISCLOSURES
This post may contain affiliate links. I only link to items that I have paid for in full and have used extensively.
I don't even like avacado but actually I might now try the recipe from the book...
Good heavens, that looks and sounds amazing