Preparing Prickly Pear & Tuna, Fruit of the Cactus

[Gabriel Lewis]

I have been cooking nothing but mexican fare for a while now and have now turned my attention to tuna. Suprisingly enough, tunas are readily available right now in Montreal, the only trouble is I really have no idea as to how to go about preparing them. Anyone have any information or recipes they are willing to share?

[Jaymes]

There's some information about cacti here

[Ruth in Condechi]

Tunas are the fruit of the cactus. As with the cactus there are many varieties from the "blanca" (white fleshed, green skin) to the "rojo" (red) and "morada"(deep purple flesh). These sweet fruit varieties are delicious raw or prepared as "aguas", fresh fruit with sugar and water. The seeds are eaten, not spat out! Do be careful since the outer flesh is covered with small spines that can cause PAINFUL stings and burns. Wash and use small brush or peel entire skin off carefully.

Besides the sweet variety there is also the sour tuna fruit known as xoconostle which is used in cooking, most famously for the "mole de olla". In the state of Hidaldo, Mexico a young couple have turned their family home into a xoconostle enterprise with dried fruits, jams, jellies and even a dessert wine. Lucious, check out www.xoxoc.com, in spanish only for now. They wil be part of the Mexican contingent to the Slow Food- Terra Madre initiative this October in Turin Italy.

[Gabriel Lewis]

Great! Thanks a lot for sharing ruth.

When prepared as an Agua are the tunas usually pureed with the sugar and water and the seeds strained? Or if not, how are they prepared? I am thinking of making a nice breakfast drink with them, also wanting to try the combination of orange juice and nopales which I hear is quite common.

[gfron1]

We're having a pretty good monsoon season which means that our prickly pears are getting very plump. Has anyone processed these before? When are they "ripe"? Can you do anything besides jelly with them? Tips for dethorning?

[gfron1]

From www.desertusa.com

The prickly pear fruit normally ripens and is ready for harvest during the late summer and early fall months. When gathering the fruit, wear leather or rubber gloves to avoid contact with the cactus needles. They are a nuisance, especially the tiny soft-appearing barbs of glochids on the fruit itself. The glochids are very difficult to remove if you get them in your skin. A long-handled tong can also be used to pick the fruit from the cactus. Once you have harvested the fruit, you will need to remove the glochids by passing the fruit through an open flame or shaking the fruit in a bag of hot coals. The glochids can also be removed by cutting them away with a knife or peeling off the skin. Once the fruit is removed from the cactus, it will rapidly lose nutritional value and may ferment, so try to consume or process soon after harvesting.

The fruit in my area are still green, so I'll be patient for now. All of the recipes I'm finding are focused on the juice. I'll try some, but I wonder if I can cook/fry/dry the fruit and pipe a filling into the center. We'll see.

[rlibkind]

I've made sorbet out of the juice (as well as using it for margaritas and gin-based cocktails). I would think it would make a nice uncooked chutney with some chili pepper, onion, other seasonal fruits etc., accompanying game or poultry, maybe even more strongly flavored fish like mackerel, bluefish, etc.

[gfron1]

I've been having the urge to say glochid again, so I thought I would update my progress. Last night I had dinner with my friend Carlos, who is from the Yucatan region of Mexico. I was telling him all about my idea, and he called his brother Josua (hoe-sway - the pronunciation threw me for a long time) to ask him about prickly pears. His brother still lives on the peninsula. Josua said that they really only use it for the juice to make jams, and sometimes in drinks.

He explained that they prepare them by removing the thorns, then lying it on its side, cutting the top and bottom off, followed by a slit down the middle of the top. They then pull it open and scoop out the inside.

I asked if he thought I could braise or poach it in champagne, and he said he had never heard of that but if I insisted... I do, so I will. I'm also still stuck on the idea of filling it with a blue cheese and pan searing or baking. Either way, I have a month or so of waiting to go.

While we were on the phone we looked up recipes in a Bayless book and my favorite - Mexico the Beautiful. Neither had anything using the fruit.

[andiesenji]

I have cooked and frozen the pulp for later use.

If they are very ripe - here they are best after an early frost as they get sweeter - I burn off the spines, peel, split, seed and cut into chunks to add to fruit salads raw.

I have made pickles - using the same recipe as for sweet pickled watermelon rind, adding some spicy peppers for a bit of "bite."

I rarely strain the pulp to make jelly, my favorite sweet treatment is to cook the pulp, put it through the food mill to get rid of the residual fibers, then return it to the stove and continue cooking until it is like pear or apricot butter.

I have substituted this "butter" for the banana, the eggs and the oil in a banana bread recipe. It performs exactly like the commercial substitutes, in fact, the result is a little lighter than the recipe made with oil or butter.

prickly pear recipes

You can also substitute the cooked pulp for the applesauce in this PIE!

Amish applesauce pie.

And you can use it for the filling in a "stack" cake - it combines nicely with spice cake.

[danf]

These are also called tuna, right? I just got some red ones from the market near me and, not really knowing any better, I've been peeling and eating them plain. I've found that they have tons of seeds though, I end up spitting a lot of pulp and large seeds into the sink. I've tried to cut them up to get around the seeds but it seems like they are everywhere in my fruit. Are these usually used more for juicing or preserves, which would deal with the seeds, or did I pick up a bad lot to eat?

Edited August 8, 2007 by danf (log)

[andiesenji]

They are called tuna - for Opuntia the genus of cacti to which prickly pear belongs.

They do have a lot of seeds, which is why I use a food mill. Some varieties have fewer seeds - I find that the ones with the largest "crown" have fewer seeds and the ones with a smaller crown (the blossom end) usually have the seeds concentrated in the center.. I have no idea why, this is just my observations over thirty-some years.

The produce man at the Mexican market will cut one in half for me so I can see the inside.

[rancho_gordo]

My cactus had a lot last year and I started burning them on the stove but I ended up buying a Burnzalot flame on a can. It also works on finishing poblano peppers. I now also finish them in a sand bucket if I'm going to sell them because some little ones seem to survive the flame.

I eat the seeds if I'm eating them like fruit.

I used them last Christmas to make a a great flavored tequila.

I just finished planting 20 more paddles. I think it's an amazing plant and food source.

[sparrowgrass]

We have them here in Missouri.

I am wondering about eating the pads--any recipes?

[gfron1]

The pads are nopalitos - and recipes are all over the internet...still lots of work.

[Kouign Aman]

Google 'nopales' or 'nopalitos' for recipes using the leaves.

I dont like 'em. They're slimier than okra and the flavor doesnt do it for me, but lots of people like them scrambled in eggs, etc.

When I was a kid, we harvested them once. We used leather gloves to prep the fruit: topped it, tailed it and then used a knife to skin it and remove the thorns. My dad just chopped it up and added it to fruit salad. We also made jam. Eh. The end result did not thrill us back then.

[sparrowgrass]

Maybe I will just buy a jar of nopalitos at the grocery store, instead.

[rancho_gordo]

The first time I ate cactus, I thought it was just ok but I've come to love it as a vegetable.

FWIW, the pads are nopales (or nopal, singular), the cleaned cut up pieces are nopalitos.

There are many ways to cook them and the slime dries up by the time they hit your mouth. They still are succulent but not slimy.

Once you've cleaned them a few times, it's not much bother. The first few times is like swimming with sharks but I do it all the time with a kitchen towel and bare hands now.

You can boil them, pan fry them or grill them. I suppose raw, but I've never done it.

Rubbing a paddle with olive oil, grilling it and them melting good cheese on top and the smothering it in salsa is a great, great dish. Also think of them in chiles and stews, especially with buffalo.

I think it would be nice to give them another try if you think you don't like them. Purslane, too! These are "free" gifts that grow almost anywhere, plus they're healthy and taste great if made properly. And talk about green- compare this to what it takes to get a lot of non-native vegetables to your supermarket and it's worth seeing if you can fit them in to your diet.

[Kouign Aman]

Purslane appears to be the one weed my garden is free from. Go figure.

[sparrowgrass]

Come to my house--all the purslane you want, absolutely free.

RG, I might just try the pads. Can you use them any time of year? Are the old ones tougher than the new ones?

(I just had a run-in with a domesticated prickly pear type cactus. It was in the living room, in front of a window, and growing crooked. I rotated the pot, but as I turned away, the pot began to fall towards me.

I saw, as if from a great distance, my left hand going up to catch the plant--I shouted, "NO, NO" at my hand, but it did not listen.

Took me the better part of an hour to get all the spines out of my palm, included one that had gone clear thru the web between my little finger and my ring finger.

So I am a little gunshy.)

[Domestic Goddess]

Sparrowgrass - OUCH! I can almost feel your pain. OW!

[Jaymes]

I just got back from a visit to Mexico where I stayed with a Mexican family. We had a nopal salad at least once a week. The nopalitos were just tossed with tomatoes, onions and some cilantro.

[gfron1]

It was experiment day at the gfron household. I found a fairly ripe small tuna, and an unripened large tuna.

First, here's the small ripe one:

Let's open her up and see what's inside:

I love the alien-like gooey strings inside.

Then here's the young big mama:

So, the seed warnings are clearly heard. But my stubbornnes prevails. I'm thinking now that I flatten the bottom, remove the top, remove the seeds, fill with blue cheese and bake. I still like the idea of poaching (using the same processing) in champagne. I did take a bite of the insides of the small tuna (tunita?). Mildly sweet, very slimy (in a thick kind of way). Definitely needs more time ripening.

[gfron1]

A few previous topics on the subject in the Mexico forum

#1

#2

#3

[Jaymes]

A few previous topics on the subject in the Mexico forum

#1

#2

#3

←

And another:

Tuna - fruit of the cactus which, although very short, does have some good info.

[Jaymes]

Great! Thanks a lot for sharing ruth.

When prepared as an Agua are the tunas usually pureed with the sugar and water and the seeds strained? Or if not, how are they prepared? I am thinking of making a nice breakfast drink with them, also wanting to try the combination of orange juice and nopales which I hear is quite common.

Better late than never, I guess. And I don't know the definitive answer to this, but the cook of the Mexican family with whom I recently stayed peeled the tunas, sometimes removed a very few of the largest seeds, but sometimes didn't bother, dropped the peeled tunas into the blender with some sugar and a little water and made a runny slush, then strained it into a pitcher and added additional water and sugar to taste. Sometimes, she also squirted in a little juice from a few of the small Mexican limes.

She made a different "water" each day. Those aquas frescas were a favorite thing about my stay. They are thinner and more lightly-flavored than what we think of as juice, and very refreshing.