Hearts of Palm & Avocado: A Light Salad

We had a birthday-lunch potluck at work! People brought delicious stuff. The theme was Slow Food from Costa Rica. I haven't been to Costa Rica, but I did some mad Googling and discovered that hearts of palm might be an authentic offering. With inspiration from Kalyn's Kitchen: Vegan Heart of Palm & Avocado Salad with Lime, Green Onion, and Cilantro, here's my version of a simple, light mix of hearts of palm with avocado.

Ingredients:

• 2 cans hearts of palm
• 3 ripe avocados
• 1 lemon
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• pinch smoked paprika
• pinch smoked serrano chile powder
• large pinch of salt

Assembly:

Please note that this salad starts to deliquesce if not eaten within about 4 hours, though it's nice to marinate it a little bit. I'd say make it 1-2 hours before serving.

First, cut hearts of palm into generous disks. Next, cut avocados into chunks. Below is my lemon juicer apparatus (blue item) and the lemon that I ROLLED vigorously into the board before cutting... to theoretically make it juicier.



Squeeze the lemon--this one yielded about 1/4 cup of juice. Add an equal amount of olive oil. Because it seemed too simple not to, I added pinches of paprika and smoked serrano chile powder. Also add salt. Then, WHISK.



Dress the hearts of palm. Because they're sturdier, I recommend stirring them around (or close container and gently shake) to get everything dressed before adding the delicate avocado.



Add the avocado chunks and gently fold in so everything is well dressed.



Here's my first plate of potluck food! My salad is lower left at 8 o'clock. I need to get the recipe for the amazing coconut-chicken stew seen at about 4 o'clock. Getting more of that was my second plate. It was SO GOOD.


Happy birthday JH and iP@!!! Thanks to everybody for the inspiring lunch!