Mystery Plant 685: Nopal, Prickly Pear

What you are looking at is my lunch from the other day, and so this Mystery Plant is for the foodies who read this column. I know you are out there.

The other day I was at my favorite local Mexican restaurant, just down the street about 3 blocks away. The name of the restaurant is “Moctezumas”, and yes, that’s how it’s spelled. (You’ve heard, surely, of “Montezuma”, who was the first Aztec emperor to meet up directly with visiting Europeans, and we all know how that went. It turns out that “Montezuma” is the English spelling of the name: “Moctezuma” is the Spanish version.)

The menu included something called huarache, which is not a word that I learned in Spanish class. It is called that because, with its flat, oblong shape, it resembles the sole of a handmade sandal, which has the same name. Huaraches, made of corn meal dough, are topped with mashed beans, and plenty of cheese, and whichever of a list of extras to go on top. I chose onions, and something called nopales, and in the picture, they appear as the slivered green things.

Nopales come from a cactus, specifically, the large, flat pads of a species probably originally native to Mexico, and now widely distributed in the warmer parts of the world. To use as a vegetable in this way, the fresh pads are commonly scraped (wearing gloves, unless you’re really good at this) with a sharp knife to remove the bristly little bumps or nodes all over the surface, as well as whatever spines may be present. Once unarmed and thus ready to cook, the nopal is usually peeled and then sliced into thin strips, and then fried or steamed and used as a cooked vegetable, in this case as a topping. They are in fact quite tasty, with a sort of green-bean flavor, soft and chewy. I have to admit that I was unable to gobble down the whole huarache (“¡No más, gracias!”), but I did get all the tasty nopales bits. You can purchase fresh nopales, already scraped and ready for your kitchen, at well-stocked supermarkets, or your local tienda.

By the way, all cacti are flowering plants, and as such, produce flowers. The flowers of our Mystery Plant are extremely showy and yellow, featuring plenty of petals. The flowers are followed by massive green fruits (they are technically berries) which generally turn red or purple, and which have historically been called “tunas.” These berries are filled with deep red pulp, and a considerable number of seeds. The juice is highly prized as a healthful beverage. Of course, if you are going to try juicing the berries at home, be prepared for some work. Evidence suggests that it was used as an economic crop both for its fruits and its pads well before Columbus showed up in the New World, and it is likely that he (or one of his pals) was the one who introduced it to Europe.