Kim Knight goes behind the scenes of the avocado on toast origin story.
This story first appeared on viva.co.nz as a Viva Premium article.
Crimes against avocado peaked in 1989.
That was the year a Christchurch chef took the delicate pale green fruit and turned it into a deep-fried croquette.
Served on a bed of rice and smothered in sesame sauce, the dish was called “jade balls”. Restaurant critic Thelma Strongman, dining at the all-vegetarian Dux de Lux restaurant, wrote: “Sadly the subtlety of the avocado was lost … but it was beautifully presented with interesting garnishes of tamarillo, lime and lemon.”
The 1980s were packed with problematic trends. Sparkly leg warmers. Ankle-zipped jeans. Alaskan crab crepes served with hot avocado sauce. Consider a 1984 recipe for lime cream sherbet with avocado topping and wonder: how did the avocado transition from nouvelle cuisine to supermarket staple? When did we stop putting it on camembert and cranberry pizza and start smashing it on our toast?
In 2020, avocados were New Zealand’s fifth most valuable horticultural export group. Last year, fortunes fell. Export values dipped a massive 61 per cent thanks to a wet harvest, weakening Australian demand and shipping issues. The industry is wooing new Asian markets but it also has high hopes on the home front. At the World Avocado Congress, hosted here earlier this year, it announced an aim to increase New Zealand’s annual per capita avocado consumption from 16 to 40.
Who eats 40 avocados a year? And where will all those avocados come from?
There are roughly 1800 avocado growers in New Zealand, mostly situated in the Bay of Plenty and north of Auckland. The vast majority operate on smallish, two-4ha blocks. Less than five are on the scale of Harbour Edge Avocados, a 400ha property close to the Kaipara Harbour that Viva has been invited to visit. This avocado toast origin story starts with a road trip.
Leave the tarseal and it’s like driving through wet concrete. Weeks of rain have turned the road to Tapora into a gravel slurry. Everything that is not muddy grey is a different shade of green. Silage wrap, cabbage trees, rows and rows of windbreak pine — and even more of avocado.
The sign says “slow for bittern” and, seconds later, the distinctively stocky silhouette of a matuku-hūrepo flies directly in front of us. There are fewer than 1000 of these birds in Aotearoa. “We see quite a few of them around here,” says Nick Common, orchard manager.
This used to be a dairy farm. Now its sandy hillocks have been flattened and the land has been planted in 40,000 (and counting) hass avocado trees. In 2017, the Northern Advocate reported Harbour Edge’s plans to become the biggest operation of its kind in the country. It was an $8m purchase that required Overseas Investment Office approval and its directors included a founding member of the Warehouse Group.
The grass is wet and swishy. A small tractor rumbles by and Rocky, the resident two-a-day avocado-eating blue heeler, runs ahead. In a good year, avocados are green gold, but we’re a long way from the boardroom now.
A team of seven Recognised Seasonal Employer workers from Vanuatu have been picking all morning. They’ll live on site for seven months, working four days a week, filling around 30 bins a day. The fruit goes to a coolstore in Warkworth before being transported to a Countdown warehouse for distribution into supermarkets.
“With other crops, you’ve got a really small window to get all your fruit off and into the market. But avocados will actually hang on the tree for months and months,” says Common.
The fruit can be picked as soon as it achieves “dry matter clearance” (a technical term that basically means oil levels are high enough to ensure good flavour and texture) but an avocado will keep maturing on the tree for many more months.
In New Zealand, the season can extend from July to May, but it’s a risk-and-reward equation. The longer they’re on the tree, the better the flavour. On the flipside, once they are picked, they’ll ripen faster. Holding the fruit on the tree could have unforeseen implications for a tree that might be trying to grow new wood or set next year’s crop; avocados that are picked early (or late) run the risk of “vascular browning” — those streaky black-brown lines you sometimes find when you cut the fruit open.
Common estimates 95 per cent of all local plantings are hass avocados.
“It’s the variety that consumers know how to deal with. It changes colour when it’s ripe. Overseas, there are a lot of green skins — they can be ripe, but the skin stays green.”
What does a baby avocado look like? Common describes the growth stages. From something that looks like a ball-headed dressmaking pin, to a marble, to the pear-shaped full-sized fruit.
A century ago, newspapers described the avocado as an “alligator pear”, reporting that it tasted “like the marrow of beef” (1909) and was “as nourishing as a beefsteak” (1912).
In 1913, the Temuka Leader proclaimed the avocado as a possible solution to a cost of living crisis:
“Meat is still going up in price, but this fact need not worry housewives much longer, for a new food product has been discovered by some agricultural experts … the fruit of the tree is pear-shaped but the queer part about it, is that it is composed of the substances which are to be found in meat … The natives of Mexico live almost entirely on the avocado and it is hoped that with a sufficient supply of the trees, the world could do away with meat entirely.”
New Zealand sheep and beef farmers continued to conduct business as usual, but the archives show that avocados were successfully planted in West Auckland and Gisborne from the early 1920s and, by 1925, “specimen trees were doing well in North Auckland, Tauranga and Whangārei”.
Smashed avocado (and taco Tuesdays) were a long time coming but, in 1938, lady readers of the Te Awamutu Chronicle were advised “if you have even the faintest tendency to lines or crows feet, you should certainly try the new avocado oil”. By the 1970s “avocado” was just as likely to be the colour of your bathroom cabinet as the basis of a prawn cocktail.
A kilometre from the salty, sandy edge of the Kaipara Harbour and the trees we are passing are in just their second year of production. They can grow up to 10m high, but these stand at around 2m — low enough that pickers don’t need ladders. Fruit is snipped so the avocado “button” remains intact. Retaining that tiny piece of stem slows the ripening process. It’s also the best way for consumers to test if their fruit is ready — give it a tiny wiggle and, if it yields, you’re good to go.
Nick Common relocated from Australia to run this orchard. He can’t recall the very first time he tasted avocado but he remembers them from his Hastings childhood. As a 12-year-old, he worked in his parents’ gate sale shop.
“There was all this fruit and vege and then, at the counter, just this little cane basket of avocado and they were always super overripe and soft. That was my first experience of them. And my mum always used them to make a prawn cocktail at Christmas.”
Today? “We eat them every day, when they’re in season. We’re always about 10 days ahead, with a new batch coming through in the fruit bowl.”
Harbour Edge is a member of the New Zealand Avocado Collective, an operation that brings together three of the country’s biggest growers. Jarrod Redwood, general manager, says avocado consumption really started to lift around seven years ago. (Countdown supermarket told Viva consumer demand had doubled in the past five years and was continuing to increase — sales were up, growers were responding with increased planting, and stores had more produce available.)
“They really started to build momentum, not just in New Zealand, but globally,” says Redwood. “A big part of it has been people recognising their nutritional values but also, it’s one of the few produce lines for which there is no obvious replacement.
“If you want citrus and there’s no mandarins, you can get oranges. There are multiple different varieties of apples. But if there are no avocados in store … “
Redwood says because harvest occurs over many months, consumers forget they are seasonal.
“It can tend to feel like they’re in season all year long. But the reality is the size of the total crop dictates how long you’ve got to hang that fruit on the tree. Last year, we finished about probably a month or two earlier than we would have liked and there was a gap in the market.”
Volume, says Redwood, is only just starting to match local demand.
“And now we need to hit really attractive price points that work for both the consumer and the farms and have them available for longer periods of time so that we don’t have these windows when avocados are $5 or $6 each, because that turns people off.”
On the counter at Tacoteca, a basket of avocados are ripe and ready. In its first week of operation, this newly opened Auckland taqueria, cantina and tortilleria blitzed 200 avocados – but chef Jean Brito remembers the exact moment he thought he would never open a Mexican restaurant in New Zealand.
It was 6.5 years ago, and the Mexican-born chef had just landed in the country.
“I unfortunately arrived when avocados were $6 each. I was like, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’”
Brito and fellow Mexican Edmundo Farrera have sat down with Viva ahead of their second week of service at the CityWorks Depot-based restaurant to talk all things avocado. Ferarra explains that in the ancient language of their country, this fruit was called “āhuacatl”. He keeps a straight face as he offers a translation: “Scrotum.”
“Mexico is the birthplace of avocado, but also so many delicious things. Chocolate, tomato, vanilla … “
The entire French and Italian cooking canon? “They got inspired in Mexico,” says Brito.
Both men grew up eating avocado daily (on toast? “On tortilla!”) but the fruit they describe is not what most New Zealanders would recognise.
Farrera: “In Merida, it is super dry and very hot. It is a concrete, hot city but you get one of the biggest avocados from there. Super creamy and super juicy … “
Brito: “They look like a melon. And in the centre of Mexico, you get avocados with soft skin, that you can eat as an apple. The skin has just a little bit of bitterness which is another layer of flavour. That’s one of my childhood memories, eating those avocados.”
Farrera: “In the state of Morelos, also in the centre of the country, there is the tiniest one you have ever seen. This one doesn’t even have a seed. You literally bite into it, they are very tiny and very soft.”
What do New Zealanders most misunderstand about avocados?
“For me, it’s that it goes a little bit deeper than just the fruit,” says Farrera. “Where I come from, you can go to the markets and buy avocado dust. A powder that comes from an avocado with edible leaves. If you go to a house where the grandmother or the aunties really know how to cook, their refried beans are going to have avocado dust. It just adds this wonderful vegetable character to the beans and when you eat the beans with tortilla, you want nothing else. So simple, so basic.”
Brito likens its aromatic properties to a bay leaf and says that, in Mexico, civilisations have long used every part of the avocado — leaves, fruit, stones and skin — for both food and medicine. One thing you should not do to an avocado?
“You cannot cook avocado. I learnt that the hard way. I was still not at chef’s school and I wanted to surprise my parents with an anniversary dinner. I’m going to make them a pasta with an avocado sauce. Guess what … ?”
Farrera: “Surprise!”
The 1980s avocado: Fried, frozen and frequently served with fish
National Library’s PapersPast is a vast online repository of local newspapers. Most records stop around 1950 but a recent Christchurch Press digitisation project provides a glimpse of how we lived right through to 1989. We trawled the archives for a glimpse of how chefs back then treated avocados — and what the critics thought.
“I began with Avocat ‘Elizabeth’ — avocado pear (both halves I was glad to see) with prawns, mushrooms, and capsicums. Unlike the last avocado I had elsewhere, this one was soft, ripe and delicious. The hors d’oeuvre cost $3.75.” — The Galleon, reviewed August, 1977
“For entree, my friend first ordered avocado pear served with young scallops marinated in lime juice and fresh ginger ($7), to be told by the waitress on her return from the kitchen that the chef had only just taken the avocados out of the refrigerator and they were still frozen solid.” — Gainsborough Motor Lodge’s The Gallery, reviewed August, 1985
“Pat ordered the chilled spinach parcels filled with young corn, avocado, smoked ham and asparagus, with blue-cheese dressing ($6.75).” — Maddisons Brasserie, reviewed November 1988
“For entree, I had the ‘Avocado Chandler’. At $8.50, it seemed expensive, but the ripe avocado stuffed with both cray and marinated fishes was well worth the extravagance.” — Chandler House, Ashburton, reviewed January, 1985
“The avocado flesh was creamed and blended with a generous serving of shrimps, the whole being accompanied by a king prawn, spring onions, stuffed olives, sliced kiwi fruit and alfalfa sprouts topped with vinaigrette dressing.” — Leinster Restaurant, Christchurch, reviewed December, 1987
“Martin was understandably reluctant to demolish the work of art that was his avocado, camembert and strawberry filo parcel, but he soon made short work of the dish with its gentle taste and smooth consistency.” — No Red Jacket, reviewed March, 1989
“The two women in the party ordered supreme of chicken with avocado and coulis ($18.95). It was a disappointment, the chicken being dry and tasteless and giving the impression of being reheated, while the delicate flavour of the avocado was completely overpowered by a strong tomato-flavoured sauce.” — Chellos, reviewed October, 1986
“The fish of the day is something special: plaited gurnard on an avocado and watercress sauce ($18). That someone should go to the trouble of plaiting pieces of fish says a lot about the restaurant.” — Forget-Me-Not Cafe, reviewed August, 1989
This story first appeared on viva.co.nz as a Viva Premium article.