Avocado Toast with Red Pepper and Cumin Drizzle

April 27, 2020

|By LM

Yes, this is yet another avocado toast post (say that five times fast)! At the risk of sounding like a boilerplate millennial, I have a special place in my heart for avocado toast. I discovered it at about the same time everyone else did, and thought it was a pretty clever idea.

From a cooking and nutrition standpoint, you can do pretty much anything with avocado toast. We’ve tried a bunch of our own variations over the years, and this particular one has been a consistent feature on our breakfast menu. It utilizes wonderfully sweet roasted red peppers, a dash of zesty lime, nutty cumin, smooth and savory dill, and an over-easy fried egg to create a well-balanced flavor that isn’t overly heavy. This is the kind of breakfast that you’ll want to eat after a long, weekend morning run. It’s satisfying enough to fill you up, has omega-3s to keep your metabolism working and your neurons firing, and it tastes delicious! It’s also really quick and easy to make.

Hitting the trails on a beautiful Maine morning!

Let’s talk about tools, techniques, and variations!

For you vegans out there, be aware that this recipe uses a fried egg and a little sprinkle of grated parmesan. However, you can omit these components and just make the toast with the dill, red pepper sauce, and a drizzle of good olive oil. I love pairing mashed avocado with hummus as well, so you can always add a dab of hummus in place of the egg. It’s all equally delicious.

To make this quick and gluten-free, I used Canyon Bakehouse whole grain bread. It has that nice yeasty nuttiness that you want in a good piece of toast. It also toasts well without drying out like many other gluten-free bread options.

Now, on to the avocado! Avocados have appeared on toast in various forms, but I’ve always preferred them mashed. Mashed avocados help to bind all the ingredients together so that your carefully-constructed toast toppings don’t end up going splat! on your plate as you eat. And being the food nerd that I am, I think mashing the avocado helps distribute it over the toast evenly so that you get the full flavor experience with each bite. Can you tell I love food and daydream about these details?!

About two years ago, I invested in a mortar and pestle because we wanted to start making our own curry pastes, but we also use it for avocados all the time. I would highly recommend investing in one if you are interested in making your own spicing pastes and guacamole. It’s been a lifesaver and I love it. However, if you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can simply use a large bowl and mash the avocado with a fork or even a potato masher.

Finally, I used my food processor to make the red pepper sauce for this recipe. No worries, though. If you don’t have a food processor, you’ll be totally fine. Roasted red peppers are very soft already, so I recommend slicing them finely, tossing them in a bowl with your cumin seeds (believe it or not, the roughness of the cumin seeds will help break apart the red peppers) and mash them with a fork or the bowl of a spoon.

Now, let’s get started!

The first thing you’ll want to do is mash your avocados. Pop the meat out of the avocado. Trick: I like using a grapefruit spoon to do this. It makes quick work of dissecting that avocado!

Adding in some lime during mashing helps counter the partial heaviness of the avocado’s flavor. I also add in my salt and pepper and olive oil before I begin to mash so that these ingredients can meld together with the avocado and make it extra tasty.

Once you’re finished working, your mixture should be well-combined, but not pulverized so much that you lose all that good texture of the fruit.

Set that aside for now. The lime juice you added will keep it from turning brown while you make the rest of the recipe.

Let’s sauce it up now! I came up with this red pepper cumin sauce several years ago to serve as a topping for a baked tofu recipe. It was so good that we started making as a condiment for a variety of different dishes, and it fits so well with the other ingredients of our avocado toast. It’s also super easy to make.

Toss three lovely roasted red peppers into the bowl of your food processor. Top that with whole cumin seeds and a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil (yes, I’m an olive oil fan).

Then, zoom it in the food processor until you’ve got a smooth sauce!

Look at that pepper explosion!

As for the egg, you can cook it any way you like. We’re fans of over-easy eggs here in the Savor + Harvest kitchen, so that’s what we’ve used for the purposes of this recipe. There’s nothing better than a jammy, slightly runny yolk hidden in an envelope of tender egg white.

Here’s a little aside about making the eggs for these recipe photos: our local grocery store carries amazing Nelly’s eggs, which are humanely raised and absolutely delicious. They’re also usually enormous. We must have gotten a particularly healthy batch of eggs this week, because when I cracked them and started cooking them, they were so large that one egg took up more than half of my skillet. I ended up having to fold the cooked egg in half for the final recipe photo so that you all could see other ingredients on the toast. TL;DR: Nelly’s eggs are delicious, but not ideal for food photography. 😉

So, fry up your egg however you like and get ready to assemble!

Spread the avocado over your toast in an even layer. Slide your fried egg on top of that. Decorate that with a schmeer of the red pepper sauce. Sprinkle some lovely grated parmesan on next, and then add either finely chopped fresh or dried dill.

Fair warning: this dish is messy to eat, but in my opinion, the messiness makes it even more delicious!

I hope you liked this recipe, friends. Let me know how it turns out for you if you decide to make it!

Avocado Toast with Red Pepper and Cumin Drizzle

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes

Serves: 2

Difficulty Level: Easy

Ingredients:

For the avocado mash:

1 large Hass avocado, meat removed from the shell
Juice of one lime
1 tbsp. olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

For the red pepper cumin drizzle:

3 large roasted red peppers
1 tbsp. whole cumin seeds
1/2 tbsp. olive oil
Small pinch salt

For the remaining components:

2 large fried eggs
Fresh or dried dill, finely minced
Grated parmesan cheese

To assemble: Combine all avocado mash ingredients into a mortar or large mixing bowl. Mash with a pestle or fork until all ingredients are fully incorporated and the texture of the mixture is chunky and evenly broken down. Set aside.

Make the red pepper sauce by combining all sauce ingredients into a food processor. Process until sauce is smooth and velvety. Set aside.

Cook eggs and toast bread as desired. Assemble avocado toast by spreading avocado mash in an even layer over the toast. Top with fried egg. Spread about a tablespoon of the red pepper cumin sauce over the egg. Garnish with parmesan and dill as desired.