Prickly Pears: Adventures with Nopales

For my first culinary experience with nopales I wanted something simple, so I made salsa. My meal was not entirely faithful to Mexican tradition because I served it with salmon and opa, yet it was a perfect combination! Everyone really enjoyed it!


You can see the salsa on the left.

The ingredients are shown on the right. For this recipe you will need:


1 1/2 cup cooked nopales
6 tomatillos diced
1 cup cooked white corn kernels
2 reconstituted dried chipolte peppers slivered
4 teaspoons orange juice
3 teaspoons lime juice
2 teaspoons chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon chopped mint

• First I grilled the whole nopales paddles for a few minutes per side to make them tender.
• Then I used a vegetable peeler to "rub" over the surface and remove the eyes. The eyes were attachment spots for thorns. I did not really try to remove all of the skin.
• Then I diced the nopales.
• I mixed all of the ingredients in a non-reactive bowl, then placed the bowl in the refrigerator so the flavors could mingle for at least 30 minutes.

While the salsa was "mingling," I worked on the other parts of the meal.  I used a recipe from epicurious at http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Grilled-Salmon-with-Lime-Butter-Sauce-1222181 for the salmon. I kept the lime butter sauce separated from the salmon so that people could use the salsa or the sauce as they desired. The lime butter sauce was the perfect accompaniment to the salmon and the opa. 

I had the opa squash, shown on the left, that I needed to use, not thinking of the fact that it is also called Asian squash. I just associated squash with Mexico and Latin America and thought it would go with the salsa. Then I found out that it was mostly used in Asian cuisine. 

This made me think of the wonderful world we live in these days! We can readily find many ingredients and mix aspects of different cuisines from all parts of the globe. I found the opa at the farmer's market, but later also saw them in the grocery store. 

So in this meal I am mixing Salmon, which I associate with the Pacific Northwest of the United States, with a Mexican Nopales Salsa, with a squash that is commonly used in Asian cuisine! This probably could not have been done easily in North America one hundred years ago. I feel so lucky!!!  

The picture on the right shows the inside of the opa. I diced the opa and steamed it. We smothered it with the lime butter sauce, and it was delightful!

The picture to the left shows the opa as it was served in the bowl.

The picture on the right shows the tuna or fruit of the prickly pear. Since we had never eaten it before, I wanted to eat it plain, so I just peeled it and cut the pulp into pieces. You can see the skin below the plate of fruit. The fruit has a lovely mild "watermelon" taste. It also has many seeds woven into the fibrous pulp. We just had to eat the pulp and spit out the seeds.


Prickly pear tunas make great jams and juices, and the seeds can be strained away from the pulp. That might be a better way to eat them.