The avocado

As I mentioned earlier I never knew there were some many types and potential uses for the avocado. After staring in bewilderment at the bins of avocados today at the grocery store, today's research project was to learn about the avocado in Chile. Here are some of the facts that I learned:

The word 'avocado' comes from the Spanish 'aguacate' which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word ahuácatl (testicle, a reference to the shape of the fruit). Avocados were known by the Aztecs as 'the fertility fruit'. [I promise to minimize Rob's consumption - that's all we need now ;-) ]

Instead it is called "palta" here and in Argentina which is from one of the native indian languages in South America, Quechua. It looks like there are five main varieties here but I think that many more are produced. 67% produced are Haas (the one we most often see in the US), 8% Fuerte, 7% Negra la Cruz, 4% Bacon, 3% Edranol and then a bunch of others (this is actual old data but I couldn't find more recent data). The supermarkets have both domestic and imported bins of avocados. The obvious question is why do they have both at the same time. Now that I have identified them I will have to go back and taste them and write about the differences but I might wait until they are all in season here.

Bacon

Fuerte

Negro la cruz (apparently very mild)

Edranol

Haas

So - as I mentioned Chileans do everything with their avocados. They eat them mushed and spread on bread for breakfast or snack, slipped into almost every type of sandwich, mashed up and used as a topping on hot dogs to make a "completo" with mayo and tomatoes as well, stuffed with different things but most often a kind of chicken salad (palta reina) and many, many other uses.

palta reina

Completo

Chileans reading this - anything to add on palta??