Thread: "Cactus Fig"
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krusty kritter
 
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>From: "Gareth Evans"

>I just bought four of these things in my local supemarket. Label says Cactus

Fig grown in Mexico."(snip description)

"Cactus figs" are an example of a truly authentic Mexican food, but the Moors
of North Africa were probably eating them (or letting their goats eat them)
thousands of years ago...

I don't think you could get any more "authentic" in Mexican cooking than to
prepare and eat something that grows wild in Mexico and which was eaten by the
Mexican Indians, for the last 500 years, at least...

Many other traditional "Mexican" dishes are actually attempts by the criollos
to reproduce *Spanish cuisine* while lacking many of the spices and ingredients
that would have been available in Spain, but which couldn't be obtained in
Mexico...

Prickly pear is a native of north Africa which may have been brought to Spain
by the Moors and then imported into the New World by the Spanish colonists...

It spreads over southern California hillsides, pushing out the native
vegetation, like the other plant pests from Europe and Asia which most
Californians ignore or simply assume are native plants...

>What do I do with them?

Any suggestions?

Depends upon how adventurous you are. Do you have a burro or a goat to feed
them to? Animals don't mind a few thorns in the tongue...

If eaten raw while ripe, they are reasonably sweet and have seeds to spit
out...

And, you might look up recipes for "nopalitos" or even "tuna" which is a
Spanish word for cactus...

I remember seeing a Mexican-American family in Griffith Park, throwing rocks at
something on a cliff above them.
I stopped to see if they were throwing rocks at a rattlesnake and asked what
they were doing. One of the rock throwers said that they were just "trying to
get the tuna..."

I once stopped alongside the highway with a bunch of fellow bikers and picked a
prickly pear, peeled it, and ate it like you would any fruit picked off a tree
to prove how macho I was...

But I failed to remove every single one of the thorns and got one stuck in my
lip...








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