Avocados DON'T belong on toast! Mary Berry rejects 'gimmicky' food fads and calls for return of retro favourites such as stew with dumplings and prawn cocktail
- Mary Berry says avocado's better in prawn cocktail or with salmon than on toast
- She said she didn't 'used to have' the trendy green fruit at all just a few years ago
- She also complained that dietary requirements make dinner parties trickier
Veteran TV cook Mary Berry has insisted that avocado does not belong on toast and lamented the fact dinner party menus today are now dictated by people’s allergies.
The Ex-Bake Off judge has risked finding herself on the wrong side of millennials after arguing that the trendy fruit would be better in a prawn cocktail.
The 82-year-old told Radio Times magazine: 'It's very fashionable now to prepare avocado on toast. I can remember when we didn't have them at all - now they're everywhere.
Mary Berry has said rise in dietary requirements has made a 'big difference' to hosting dinner parties now as you can no longer cook whatever you want
'But this isn't one of the nicest things to do with them. Better to add them to a prawn cocktail or to a little plate of smoked salmon or shrimps. And I love prawn cocktail - it's so retro!
'Do it in a glass, with a little gem lettuce leaf. People used to laugh at prawn cocktail because it felt dated, but it's coming back.'
Mary Berry also said the rise in dietary requirements made a 'big difference' to hosting dinner parties as you can no longer cook whatever you want.
She told Radio Times: ‘The big difference today is that we have to ask about allergies. That never used to happen. You just cooked whatever you wanted to. You have to respect that people need different meals now.’
Miss Berry’s comments come after chef Raymond Blanc has blasted the ‘fashionable’ obsession with having a food intolerance. He told The Mail last year that up to 50 customers claim to have issues every night at his Oxfordshire restaurant, which has two Michelin stars.
He said: ‘In my restaurant Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, I look at my board when I look at the order and it’s horrifying – you have about 50 people who have an allergy or a food intolerance and we take each of them seriously.’
French-born Blanc, who moved to Britain 45 years ago and opened his Oxfordshire restaurant more than three decades ago, added: ‘We are a kitchen not a hospital. Of course, now, if you don’t have an allergy, you’re nobody.’
In the UK, it is estimated 1-2 per cent of adults suffer from food allergies, but more than half of British households bought a product which was marketed as ‘free from’ a certain foodstuff in the first three months of last year.
There has been a surge in popularity of ‘clean-eating’ – a diet which involves eating only unprocessed foods – in recent years following celebrities who claim to have restrictive eating plans.
TV chef Raymond Blanc has also blasted the ‘fashionable’ obsession with having a food intolerance
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