Avocados - one of my favourite fruits - are expensive, even during summer when they are in season, but their current price makes me wish I had packed a couple kilos of them into my suitcase when I visited the United States last month. It would have been difficult to find the room because my luggage was stuffed with at least 20kg of food, much of it Mexican products I can't find here - frozen tamales, chorizo (the Mexican version is softer and fattier than the Spanish type), canned sauces (very heavy), hominy (dried corn), tomatillos (small, Mexican green tomatoes), dried chillies and fresh jalapeno and serrano chillies. I wanted to cook a Mexican dinner for friends, to utilise the fresh ingredients before they spoiled (I didn't succeed) so visited the wet market and local shops to buy tortillas, tomatoes, onions and avocados. Unfortunately, the avocados were shockingly expensive - $16.90 each at Great and about $12 at Oliver's. I was told they were expensive because they were hothouse avocados. I finally bought a few from Wellcome where they were $8 each (usually they are about $6). As usual, they took a few days to ripen. They were delicious made into guacamole and served with taquitos (deep-fried, stuffed corn tortillas). My other dishes included baked enchiladas (corn tortillas wrapped around a filling - in this case, chicken), for which I made a lovely sauce using the tomatillos and serranos; and fresh shrimp simmered with tomatoes, jalapenos, onion, garlic and fresh coriander.
If you're not in the mood to cook Mexican food, I recommend the reasonably priced tacos and burritos (my favourite is the carne asada burrito) from El Taco Loco (7 Staunton Street, Central, tel: 2522 1262) and the chalupas (fried masa boats filled with meat and vegetables) from Agave Tequila y Comida (33 D'Aguilar Street, Lan Kwai Fong, Central, tel: 2521 2010).