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RECIPES

Yes, you can eat cactus! There is a long history of firstly indigenous peoples, then colonial settlers, making use of the fruits and flesh of cacti and other succulent plants. In a number of areas in the world today, cactus food is still consumed by both humans and livestock.

The cactus pads (or 'leaves') of the Opuntia (or Prickly Pear) are a popular ingredient in Mexican dishes. They have a crisp, fresh flavour similar to green beans. They are a good source of vitamins A and C.

But be careful! Spines have to be carefully removed to avoid distress. If in doubt, don't swallow it! However, with suitable simple preparation, cacti and other succulents can provide a both nutritious and enjoyable eating experience.

Below are two introductory articles on cactus food. The article by Neil Barraclough gives both a historical background and practical information. (Further historical background is given on our Cactus Culture web page.) The article by Joylene Sutherland shows you how to prepare and process opuntia fruit and make some great little food treats.

If you also have a favourite cactus food recipe, please let us know!

RECIPES

Here is a sampling of tasty cactus delights to prepare in your home kitchen. All the below recipes use the Prickly Pear cactus – either its pads or fruits. The Spanish term, Nopalitos, refers to the cactus pads.

The recipes come from the Texas Cactus Council : www.texascactuscouncil.net who have kindly given permission to reproduce them here. The recipes are selected from their excellent cookbook, The Art of Cooking with Cactus. This book contains over 100 recipes and is available from the Council. To order, send US$15 + postage (US$3 in USA) to : Lydia O. Canales, PO Box 340, Benavides, TX 78341, USA.

PREPARATION TIPS

The Pads

● Wear heavy gloves and use metal tongs to handle.
● Generally choose small, young pads with a medium green colour and firm, crisp texture. Avoid dry, limp or soggy pads.
● Use a knife, or the tip of a parer or potato peeler, to remove ‘eyes’ or prickles. Scrape spines off away from you. Pull out large spines with tweezers or pincers. Pare the skin and trim any dry or fibrous areas.
● Rinse thoroughly to remove any stray prickles as well as the sticky fluid that the leaves exude.
● Boil or steam whole pads till tender, about 5 to 10 minutes.
● Or cut pads into bite-sized pieces and sauté in butter or oil, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes.

The Fruits

● For best flavour and colour, pick the fruit (with gloves and tongs) when it has attained maximum redness. (Slightly green fruits can be sour.)
● Prepare only small quantities at one time.
● Spines can be singed off by holding fruit with a long-handled fork over a flame or on the gas stove. Then wash fruit under running water.
● To prepare juice, cover fruit with water and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes to 1 hour. The fruit will cook down leaving about ⅔ juice. If necessary, mash the fruit with a potato masher. Strain through colander or strainer, then through cheese cloth (or nylon stocking!). This will remove the numerous seeds and pulp.
● To prepare juice plus pulp, remove the skins of the fruit, cut in halves and remove seeds. Then cover in water and simmer for 20+ minutes. Can be pureed in a blender.

ENTREES

Nopalitos and Bean Soup

2 Cups Pinto Beans – boiled
6 Cups of Water
2 Tablespoons Butter or Margarine
½ Purple Onion – chopped
5 Tender Cactus Pads – chopped
2 Tablespoons chopped Coriander
Salt and Pepper to Taste

Sauté pads and onion till tender and then add beans and water. Season with salt, pepper and chopped coriander.

10 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to cook.

Bill Brodnax (Riviera, Texas)

Cactus Salad

1 Onion
2 Tomatoes
½ Handful of Coriander
2 Cups Cactus
Salt to taste

Steam diced cactus and mix with tomato, onion and coriander. Serve cold.

Esther Quiroz (McAllen, Texas)

[A variation is to add Tuna to the salad.]

MAIN COURSES

Cactus – Rio Grande Style

2 Cups Cactus
1 lb [450 gms] Boneless Sirloin Steak
2 Tablespoons Oil
¼ Cup Fresh Onions – chopped
¼ Cup Fresh Bell Pepper – chopped
¼ Teaspoon Garlic Powder
¼ Teaspoon Ground Cumin
1 Tablespoon Chilli Powder
1 Cup Water
¼ Teaspoon Salt

Boil cactus for 20 minutes and drain. Place oil in pan and cut steak into small pieces. Brown and drain. Add onions, cactus, bell peppers, garlic, cumin, chilli powder, salt and water. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Serve with corn or flour tortillas.

Suelema Martinez (Weslaco, Texas)

Nopalitos con Puerco en Mole
[Cactus with Pork in Mexican Mole Sauce]

2 Cups Nopalitos [Cactus Pads]
1 Cup Cubed Pork
½ Cup Peanut Butter
½ Cup Water
1 Tablespoon Comino Powder [Cumin]
1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder
Salt to One’s Taste
Black Pepper to Taste

Boil nopalitos, strain, save. Brown pork; add water, peanut butter and spices and salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice.

Erika Y. Villegas (Riviera, Texas)

[For a variation, use Chicken instead of Pork.]

DESSERTS

Prickly Pear Fruit Sauce

¼ Cup Honey
1½ Tablespoons Cornstarch
Dash Salt
1 Cup Prepared Prickly Pear Fruit – pureed
Juice of 1 Lime
1 Tablespoon Butter

Combine first five ingredients in a sauce pan. Cook over medium heat until thickened. Stirring frequently. Add butter. Heat a few minutes longer. Serve over angel food or pound cake, ice cream or moulded pudding.

Maggie Staber (Brownsville, Texas)

[A variation is to add 1 Cup of Mashed Bananas.]

Joan’s Cactus Cake

1 Stick Margarine (½ Cup)
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
¾ Teaspoon Cloves – ground
2 Cups Cactus – cooked and diced
1½ Teaspoons Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon Allspice
1 Teaspoon Nutmeg
1 Cup Raisins
1 Cup Pecans
2 Cups + 1 Tablespoon Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda (Heaping)

Mix all ingredients. Pour into a greased 7” [18 cms] Angel food cake pan. Bake 40 minutes at 350°.

Joan Von Thun (Shelbyville, Missouri) [A 1st Place Desserts Category winner]

DRINKS

Prickly Pear Punch

4 Ripe Tunas [Prickly Pear Fruits]
6 Cups Water
1 Lime – juice
½ Cup Grenadine [syrup made from red currants and pomegranates]

Prepare prickly pear and let soak for 1 day in gallon jug with the 6 cups of water. After this, add lime juice and the grenadine. Add ice to cool and it’s ready. Leave the chopped fruit (tunas) to float on top.

Janie G. Raper (Kingsville, Texas) [A 1st Place Beverages winner]

Prickly Pear Wine

Prickly Pear Fruit
Sugar
Distilled Water

Place cleaned and cut up prickly pears [fruits] in a 10 gallon [40 litres] crock. Mash fruit well, cover crock with a cloth. Let fruit stand for about seven days until it ferments. The mixture will bubble during fermenting stage. When bubbling stops, strain juice.

Measure juice and add equal amounts of distilled water. Allowing 2 lbs [1 kg] of sugar to a gallon [4 litres] of the liquid. Mix sugar with part of the water to dissolve the sugar before adding it to the juice. Mix the juice and water with dissolved sugar together. (The sugar will not dissolve if it is added to the juice and water after they have been mixed.)

Pour the mixed juice into a jug to age. Place a tight fitting cork with a hole in the centre in the top of the jug. Place nylon hose through the centre of the hole. Do not let the hose touch the wine mixture. Seal around the cork with paraffin. Place the other end of the hose in jug with water. Secure the hose so it will not slip out of the water. Allow about a week or so then you can bottle the wine.

Gilbert A. Hinojosa (Benavides, Texas) [A 1st Place winner.]

For more great recipes, obtain a copy of The Art of Cooking with Cactus from the Texas Cactus Council www.texascactuscouncil.net for US$15 + postage.

USEFUL EDIBLE CACTUS

The choice of a lot of our food plants show the European influence on Australia and they may have been chosen from our cultural background rather than for our climate. One group of plants that may not get the recognition they deserve are members of the cacti family.

Hardy, often strikingly ornamental, at times useful and productive and with some of the lowest maintenance needs, cacti collections should be used far more by people trying to attain greater self reliance.

They are possibly one of the least appreciated group of useful plants by us Australians, and quite likely many cactus growers don't even fully appreciate their useful values. Plants grown for their ornamental value in Australia could be the same ones grown for fruit in their homeland.

Perhaps we should first look at the Australian experience with prickly pear. A number of species of Opuntia have been called "Prickly Pear" and two of these are proclaimed as noxious weeds, Erect Prickly Pear (O. stricta) and Drooping Prickly Pear, the main culprit. The latter, also known as the Desert Rose because of its beautiful flowers, was brought to Australia for a number of reasons, including for fruit, stock feed and as an ornamental plant. It took over large areas of southern Queensland and northern NSW forming a dense prickly impenetrable mass varying from 1-2m high. Cactoblastis cactorum, an Argentinean moth whose larvae bores into the plant, were introduced (ref 2), and were extremely successful in controlling the prickly pear in the hot dry parts.

Prickly pear may have taken over land mostly affected by over grazing, and when the cactoblastus destroyed it, the land was most probably more fertile than before it grew there. Figures of 500- 800 tons of cactus per acre have been given, a heavy wheat crop may only contain about 15 tones per acre of vegetable matter.

Different experiences have shown how different cultures have had different responses to the same plant species (ref 1). In 1768, French colonist, Count de Modave refounded a French Settlement at Port Dauphin on the south east coast of Madagascar . He introduced prickly pear to grow as a barrier to protect his fort. However the locals were still able to overthrow him and the prickly pear spread.

When the French returned in 1900 to recapture the area, prickly pear was a major part of the local ecology and economy, the local people using it as a living fence to contain their zebu.The fruit was eaten and the pads were a source of drinking water and with the spines burned off, a source of food for the zebu.

The whole landscape was like a maze of prickly pear and the French troops would find their paths blocked with a heap of prickly cactus and before they could remove it they were caught in a rain of spears from over the hedge.

In 1925 the French returned with cochineal beetles and by 1928 the beetles had a strong hold. Within a few years the prickly pear had nearly disappeared. This caused a massive famine in 1931 and the French then took control.

Prickly pears are growing in a number of locations in Victoria and don't seem to be the weed threat that they once were in the hotter, drier parts of Australia . However they shouldn't be allowed to grow unmanaged anywhere in Australia because of their weed potential. The importation of other species in the genus Opuntia as well as Cereus has been severely restricted to Australia as a result of the experience with prickly pear.

With the spines removed, the young pads come up really well in stir fries (and it's worth growing for this reason alone) and the fruit is tolerably edible, cut it in half and spoon out the pulp. Its main value to us being that it would provide fruit when there is little else through winter and spring.

Seeds of the prickly pear and Indian Fig can be ground to make a nutritious flour that can be used to make a thick broth (ref 1).

USEFUL OPUNTIA SPECIES

Indian Fig Opuntia ficus-indica
Originally from Tropical America, it has been cultivated and naturalized in many countries throughout the world. Probably the most widely cultivated cactus in Australia . This is because of its excellent flavoured fruit. It fruits into winter when there is less variety of fresh fruit about. Fruits are occasionally available for sale in the fruit shops.

The pads have very few spines, however there are fine hair-like prickles (called glochids) on the fruit which can often be avoided by cutting the fruit in half and spooning the pulp out. The juvenile pads can be stir-fried like the pads of the true prickly pear, however the prickly pear may have the best flavour. Glochids on the pads may also be a disincentive for the less adventurous (haven't been a problem with the true prickly pear)

There are 5 varieties listed (ref 3), these are:

var. alba. Fruits large, oval, white or white faintly streaked yellow or reddish.
var. rubra. Fruits oval or somewhat elongated and peduncled, crimson red.
var. lutea. Fruits oval, yellow, the sweetest.
var. asperma. Fruit oval, yellow.
var. pyriformis. Fruit, pear shaped and peduncled, large, 12 cm long or more, yellow streaked or reddish violet. Pulp nankeen yellow, few seeds.

We have a number of what appear different O. ficus-indicas and have given them a code as such- 01ab 01 is the year, ab is the second addition to our list in that year (aa-az then ba-bz and so on each year).

Opuntia robusta (useful weed!)
Varieties of O. robusta are grown for their fruit in Mexico . The spines make the large round pads quite attractive and it has a lot of ornamental value, particularly with its yellow flowers to 7 cm diameter (ref 3). Young pads eaten boiled or in coleslaw (ref 1) and the ease with which spines can be removed would make this an excellent variety to grow for the pads as well as for the fruit.

Burbank Spineless
A selection of O. ficus indica that developed by Luther Burbank as a stock feed for the dryer parts of America . Near enough to spine free, its pads are used for stock feed, particularly in drought when the water content could also be a benefit. The pads of Indian Fig can also be used as a stock feed, as can the pads of the prickly pear if the spines are burnt off.

Some of the Opuntias would be good for a living and productive fence, some members of the genus Cereus would also be good for this. These grow to perhaps 10m high with round spiny stems from 15-25cm thick. Some produce delicious egg shaped, egg sized pinky orange smooth skinned fruit (totally free of prickles) perhaps from June to October. They may need a pollinator but are well worth growing for their fruit. We are keen to get more info.

Cereus peruviana
Large round columns growing to perhaps 15m with excellent flavoured prickle free fruit, eat the skin and all. Fruit ripen from June to Oct, depending on location and variety, needs a pollinator.

Pitayas Also known as Dragon Fruit these Hylocereus species have large, attractive delicious fruit. They are climbing cacti that are tolerant of shade but fruit better in open sun. They are only moderately frost tolerant.

Daley's Nursery in Kyogle have red fruited Hylocereus undatus and H. polyrhizus for sale and also the yellow fruited variety of Selenicereus megalanthus. Both the red and yellow fruited Dragon Fruits have a very pleasant, mildly sweet flavour, the yellow being slightly sweeter. They fruit sporadically if planted independently with significant increase in production if more than one variety is planted to allow for cross pollination. Their website is www.daleysfruit.com.au

PROPAGATION

Most cacti varieties are very easy to grow, break off a pad, leave it a few weeks in a well ventilated dry place to callous then plant it. Avoid poorly drained soil. Andrew, from Diggers Seeds passed on his way of getting more plants started with a limited number of pads. He cut the pads of the opuntias into sections and left them until they had calloused, each section was then planted in pots. Suggest you cut the sections from top of the pad down and mark the top with an arrow up. Plant with the arrow pointing up.

Because of the hardiness of many of the cacti varieties it isn't often expected that they would respond to water and fertility like they do. The fruiting varieties of cacti we are growing grow much quicker and I expect will be more productive with mulching and regular watering in the hotter months.

REFERENCES

1. "Permaculture plants Agaves and cacti" by Jeff Nugent
2. "They all ran wild" by Eric Rolls
3. "Cacti" by J Borg
4. "A million wild acres" by Eric Rolls
5. "The Cactus Handbook" Erik Haustein
6. "Noxious weeds of Victoria " W T Parsons.
7. Daleys Nursery Catalogue

If you can help us with info, would like to be involved in swapping useful species of cacti, would like your club listed as a contact for cacti folk or your cactus nursery listed as a place where people can buy plants or whatever, please contact Neil Barraclough C/- P.O. Briagolong 3860; neilb@vic.australis.com.au

Appreciation/acknowledgment: Joylene Sutherland, Gavin Hart, Ian Hay.

In the Western District of Victoria, some very nice fruit bearing cactus can be grown successfully. The main type being Opuntia ficus-indica.

I have a plant that has masses of fruit, ripening in winter. An almost exotic, tropical taste in winter, is quite special. I have two different clones with orange fruit, there are yellow and red fruited clones available of O. ficus-indica too.

The one draw-back of O. ficus-indica is that the fruit is extremely spiney, covered in glochids. These can be rubbed off in wet newspaper or singed off over a flame. This needs to be done before any attempt to peel them, the glochids will get you, no matter how careful you are!

An almost spine and glochid free plant is Opuntia 'Burnbanks Spineless'. This majestic plant has large ruby red fruits that are much more 'user friendly'. The flavour is completely different to the O. ficus-indica fruit and ripens earlier in the season.

Some Cereus species have excellent eating fruit too. Very sweet and luscious. They are spineless. Cereus fruit is best eaten fresh, whereas the Opuntia fruit can be cooked as well.

Like growing any fruit bearing plant, some care is needed for success. They need water. Not a lot but when the plants are flowering. If there is no moisture, either they don't flower at all, or the flowers just drop off afterwards. I also mulch and feed them up to flowering too. Some straw over the root area with rotted animal manure or dynamic lifter is good.

Cooking

I have used Opuntia fruit in several different ways.

The peeled fruit can be cooked down and strained free of pulp and seeds, the liquid can then be set with artificial packaged pectin to make a jelly, similar to quince jelly, but with it's own unique flavour.

I have also made a sweet syrup with the Opuntia liquid, this can be used as a flavouring over icecream or in drinks.

Another thing I did once was use the syrup in a 'sweet and sour' recipe. Used the syrup instead of sauce with vinegar and ginger added. Very tasty with duck, pork or chicken.

ballarat cactus & succulent society/recipes