I have always loved avocado cold in salads or sandwiches and I wasn’t sure how I felt about baked avocado – but I loved it. As a diabetic, I have to try and adapt recipes to become low fat so that’s what I have done with this recipe: you may prefer to add back cream and butter where I have left them out.
Ingredients
- 25g (1oz) low fat olive oil spread
- 40g onion, peeled and diced
- 40g celery diced
- 2 level tablespoons flour
- 200ml skimmed milk
- salt and pepper to taste
- 100g (4oz) prawns
- 2 large or several small avocados
- lemon juice
- fresh breadcrumbs made from 1 slice of whole grain bread
Making the Sauce
Place the olive oil spread in a saucepan, melt and add the diced onion and celery. Cook for a few minutes to soften them. Remove from heat and gradually stir in the flour. Mix thoroughly and then pour in the milk slowly, stirring all the time. Return to the heat and slowly bring to the boil, stirring constantly – this is the bit where it can go lumpy if you’re not careful. If the mixture begins to look lumpy, remove the pan from the heat and stir vigorously. This usually gets rid of the lumps. Continue cooking for a couple of minutes after the mixture comes to the boil, then remove from the heat.
Preparing the Avocados
While the sauce is cooling, cut the avocados in half: push your knife in as far as the stone and then run your knife all round the avocado. If it is ripe, you should then be able to pull the two halves apart. Discard the stone and brush the avocado with lemon juice. This stops it discolouring.
Finishing the Sauce
Stir the prawns into the sauce, which should have cooled a little by now. Spoon the sauce onto the avocados. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs over the top. Place on a tray in the oven (set at 200 C or 400 F) and cook for about 10 minutes until the breadcrumbs are brown. The amount of sauce that you use varies because avocados vary so much in size. I had some sauce left over and I ate it on its own while I waited for the avocados to cook.
