Avocado toast even dreamier

The sky is ­the limit in potential toppings and embellishments with avocado. Try these recipes.

Poached eggs, smoked salmon and even sliced radishes are a common topper for avocado toast.

It is hard to avoid avocado toast. It is listed on breakfast menus, clogs up Instagram feeds and peeks out from the pages of best-selling clean-diet cookbooks — a glimmering heap of mashed avocado, flecked with salt and spices, atop a plank of rustic bread.

Avocado toast is everywhere you turn, and I don’t think it’s an overstatement to call it the emblematic food of our times: snacky and casual, all “good” fats and whole grains. And, it has to be said, absurdly delicious.

So vegan and virtuous — not to mention photogenic — is avocado toast that you might think the dish sprang, fully formed, from the forehead of Gwyneth Paltrow (the actor-turned-lifestyle guru does have a recipe for it in her 2013 cookbook, It’s All Good).

Many consider the dish to have origins here in Australia. Over the past 15 years, the “avo smash” has proliferated as a menu staple of our flourishing cafe culture. Today, Melbourne and Sydney are lousy with effortlessly chic little cafes serving excellent coffee and food that manages to be healthy, approachable and elevated all at the same time.

“You have to remember that Australia was founded as a nation by convicts, so we have this great tradition of simply claiming things as our own,” says chef and television personality Curtis Stone. “I’m not sure whether avocado toast is actually ours to stake claim to, but we really take it on.”

Stone’s favourite version tops pumpernickel or seven-grain bread with chunky mashed avocado mixed up with citrus juice or Sherry vinegar and avocado oil, sprinkled with sea salt and chilli flakes or dukkah — a spice blend that’s Egyptian in origin. He buys his avocados firm and unripe, ­before they’ve been squeezed to smithereens by fellow shoppers, and ­allows them to ripen on his countertop.

Once you’ve mastered the basic avocado toast formulation — which requires little more than ­locating a good source of avocados and a nice, hefty artisan bread — the sky is the limit in terms of ­potential toppings and embellishments. Poached eggs, smoked salmon and even sliced radishes are a common topper. Crushed chilli flakes can be downgraded to freshly ground black pepper for the heat-averse, or traded up for harissa or sriracha for those craving extra punch.

Personally, if I’m going to deviate from the no-frills classic, I’ll gravitate to the quirkier version made by Franklin Becker, executive chef and partner at the Little Beet in New York City. Becker tops his avocado with mango and toasted coconut — bedfellows not as unlikely as they may sound. “Mango, coconut and avocado are all tropical fruit and they all grow in a similar climate,” says Becker. If it grows together, it goes together, as the saying goes, and the acidity and the brightness of mango and the nutty, crisp coconut certainly balance out avocado’s unctuousness in a glorious way. Then, of course, there’s always Instagram to consider as it all makes for a pretty picture.

CLASSIC AVOCADO TOAST

3 ripe Haas avocados

Juice of ½ lemon

1 tablespoon avocado oil

4 large slices wholegrain toast

Crushed red pepper flakes

Maldon sea salt flakes

Freshly ground black pepper

1. Use a fork to coarsely smash avocado so larger chunks remain. Mix with lemon juice and avocado oil.

2. Liberally spread avocado mash over toast. Sprinkle with red pepper flakes, salt and pepper to taste.

MANGO COCONUT AVOCADO TOAST

2 ripe Haas avocados, pitted

Juice of ½ lemon

1 teaspoon finely chopped coriander

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

¼ cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1 small mango, peeled, pitted and diced

1 tablespoon chopped mint

4 large slices 7-grain whole-wheat toast

1. In a bowl, smash one avocado to a chunky paste, then mix with juice of ½ lemon, coriander, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Dice remaining avocado and fold it into avocado-olive oil mixture.

2. In a small skillet over low heat, toast coconut flakes until golden brown, 2-3 minutes. Combine with mango, mint, a squeeze of lemon juice and salt to taste.

3. Distribute avocado over toast and top with mango-coconut mixture. Cut in half and serve.

Adapted from Franklin Becker of the Little Beet, New York