Because a bare cupboard and an empty fridge are sad sights to behold, the Urban Forager hunts through food & wine shops bringing home tasty morsels that make your kitchen table the best place to eat in town.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Prickly Pear

Ever since I saw the movie Leaving Las Vegas (in which Nicholas Cage gets shards of glass stuck in his hand and yells as only a frantic Nicholas Cage can, “I’m like a prickly pear!”) I have been curious about the Prickly Pear. Sadly, ten long years passed between Nicholas Cage yelling, “I’m a prickly pear!” and me actually buying one, but why dwell on that? The important thing is that I have now come to know the Prickly Pear, specifically in the form of an open-faced peanut butter and cactus jelly sandwich. For the record, I am a peanut butter purist. That’s right, I don’t particularly like the jelly part of a PB&J. But I found this cactus jelly to be quite nice. The flavor is mild; slightly floral with a peach/watermelon flavor. I bought the cactus jelly at a Spanish store that imports it from the Canary Islands, but the prickly pear fruit itself can be found fairly easily in markets and grocery stores (or growing on the side of the road in hot climates). To cook with the prickly pear fruit just peel it and mash or cut the red, seedy inside and throw it into pies, ice-cream, fruit salad or your blender (prickly pear margarita anyone?)

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