Spiny Dining

Last weekend I traveled to Stockton via the delta, wetlands that years ago were fashioned into a maze of sloughs and islands. These islands, rich with peat from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, provide some of the most fertile farmland in California, producing huge quantities of asparagus, strawberries, and other crops.

Naturally, we had to stop at a roadside farm stand, where we purchased some of that asparagus and strawberries, as well as pads of the prickly pear cactus, or nopales. These fall into the “whatever made people try to eat this vegetable?” category, along with thistle and fungi.

But as Mexican cooks well know, nopales, once rid of their spines, are hardly famine-only fare. They have a slightly tart flavor reminiscent of green beans and a pleasantly firm texture.

I’ve eaten nopales before, but had never prepared them. Scraping off the needles seemed easy enough, except that I didn’t think to wear gloves, and the spines have a way of leaping off the pads and stabbing you in the finger. Once they were tamed, julienned, and boiled, I tossed the nopales strips into a salad with roasted red pepper, tomatoes, avocado, pickled jalapeños, and feta, loving their firm-but-squishy texture.

Alex, who woke up to find nopales in the kitchen and ask, “Cactus for breakfast?” had me thinking they’d make a fine omelet.