Nopalitos

Cactus paddles diced, salted to draw the slime out, rinsed and then griddled dry — three separate goes at the same problem.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 800 g nopal paddles, young and firm
• 2 tablespoons coarse salt, for drawing
• 1 small white onion, in thick slices
• 2 cloves garlic, unpeeled
• 1 tablespoon oil
• ½ teaspoon salt, to season

Method

1. THE SLIME IS DRAWN OUT BY SALTING AND THEN RINSED AWAY, and that is the whole problem with cooking cactus. Cut paddles leak a clear viscous liquid -- the same substance that makes okra ropy -- and left in it they boil into a slippery mess that coats the mouth. Tossed with coarse salt and left half an hour in a colander, they weep most of it out and it runs away. Rinsed and drained, there is very little left. Cooked straight from the board with no salting, no amount of boiling or rinsing afterwards gets rid of it.
2. THEN THEY ARE GRIDDLED DRY, WHICH IS THE SECOND GO AT THE SAME THING. A dry pan over a high heat drives off what the salting missed: the pieces squeak, release liquid, and then the pan goes quiet as it evaporates. Boiled in water instead, the slime has nowhere to go and simply thickens the water, which is why boiled nopales are so often disappointing.
3. THE SPINES COME OFF WITH A KNIFE HELD ALMOST FLAT, scraping away from the hand, and the little raised bumps they grow from come off with them. Gloves for holding the paddle. Peeling the whole green skin off instead is unnecessary and wasteful -- the skin is the best of it -- and missing a bump leaves a mouthful of fine hairs that nothing will fix.
4. THEY ARE CUT TO AN EVEN SMALL DICE, about a centimetre. Big pieces hold liquid in the middle and stay slippery however long they are griddled. Uneven ones cook at different rates and the small ones go tough while the large ones are still wet.
5. THE SIGN THAT THEY ARE DONE IS THE COLOUR AND THE SOUND. Bright green turns to a duller olive, and the squeaking and spitting stops. That takes ten to twelve minutes on a hot dry pan, and the pan should be properly dry when they come off it.
6. Wearing gloves, each paddle scraped on both sides with a knife held almost FLAT to take off the spines and the bumps they grow from. The thick base trimmed off.
7. Cut into an even 1 cm DICE.
8. Tossed with the 2 tablespoons of coarse salt in a colander set over a bowl, and left to DRAIN 30 MINUTES. A surprising amount of clear liquid will come out.
9. RINSED thoroughly under running water and drained well, then patted dry on a cloth.
10. A dry frying pan or griddle set over a high heat, with the onion and unpeeled garlic.
11. The diced nopales added DRY, with no oil, and cooked 10 to 12 MINUTES, stirred often. They will squeak and spit.
12. Cooked on until the SPITTING STOPS, the pan is dry and the colour has gone from bright green to OLIVE.
13. The garlic squeezed from its skins and chopped, and returned to the pan with the oil and the ½ teaspoon of salt. Tossed 1 minute.
14. Served warm or cold. Keeps 3 days and goes on tlacoyos, into eggs, or in a salad with tomato and coriander.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes