Nigella: ‘Bye avo, hello pandan’

Avocado: you either love it or hate the fatty green stone fruit by now, thanks to hordes of uncritical Instagramming devotees who have praised it right down to its deepest fibres. If you fall into the latter category: good news. Nigella Lawson herself is putting an end to the hype. Welcome to the new hype: pandan.

The avocado news of late has made us so numb that, after the avolatte, we didn’t even bat an eyelid at the news that a light version of the fatty stone fruit is now also on the market. Even though removing the fruit’s most characteristic feature amounts to nothing less than character assassination.

Avo scandal
Nigella Lawon herself was responsible for quite a few avocado recipes and even caused a minor scandal when, long before the avo hype, she spread a thick layer of mashed avocado on toast and dared to call it a recipe. But now she is the one who has announced the end of the avocado era.

Bye avolatte, hello… pandan latte

According to the British newspaper The Independent, Nigella has noticed a shift in America towards another green ingredient: the fragrant, vanilla-like-tasting pandan leaf from Southeast Asia. How can a leaf whose extract is mainly used in smoothies, cakes and ice cream replace such a photogenic specimen as the round-pitted avocado?

The New Matcha?
Unfortunately, Nigella offers no answer to that, apart from describing pandan elsewhere as ‘the New Matcha’. In other words, that Japanese green tea in powdered form which, indeed, mainly ends up in smoothies, ice cream, (pan)cakes and lattes. But it is also used in savoury dishes or to perfume rice, just like the pandan leaf.

Bye avo roses
And with that, although in derivative form, all the ingredients for an Instagram hit are indeed present: plant-based, green, smooth, cakey, soft and therefore extremely comforting. So we can imagine all sorts of things for ‘the New Matcha’, although we already miss the avo roses.