Re: Fwd: [ranchos] More about Nopales

[rosario ellis <rosarioellis@...>]

Hi Fco.

Enjoyed your e-mail on nopales and tunas.  I am not crazy about nopales, but the tunas are definitely good!  Your recipes sound good and I might cook some for my Mom who is a guerita in color but Mexican down to the marrow.  She has to have frijoles or she misses them after a while.

Pacorro73@... wrote:

Just one more tidbit on the Nopales recipes.  Yes the nopal salad with queso fresco sounds really good, although in our family we never make it that way.  We'll have to try them that way.  By the way try to use the youngest and most tender PENCAS.  A "penca" is what you call an individual stem/leaf/pad.  See illustration.  That's the top one.  The old pencas are too tough, stringy, and inedible.  A nopal refers to the entire living organism.

 

Surprisingly, nopales are very versatile.  One way is the way every one has suggested.  Cleaning the pencas (dethorning them), chopping into cubes, and boiling with onions and cilantro.  Once their done, you drain the water and can be used for a variety of dishes.  One is a type of salsa, with chopped fresh red tomatoes, white onions, green chiles and cilantro (aka Bandera salsa, because of the colors of the Mexican flag-green, white, and red).  Sometimes we even make this variation with chopped avocado (NOT MASHED, that's guacamole).  With the cubed avocado, the avocado is still a bit whole and gives it a good texture.

 

The freshly boiled nopales can also be used to make an omelette.  "Nopales con huevos" are made by sautéing in butter or oil chopped onions, peppers, and tomatoes along with about...oh...half a cup to a cup of chopped nopales (You know...a little of this and a little of that) in a skillet.  Next, crack about 2 to 4 eggs into the mix and fold the cooked eggs in until thoroughly cooked.

 

There are too many recipes I could mention that use nopales: Costillitas de puerco en salsa verde con nopales, tortas de camarón con nopales, etc.  Like I said, very versatile.

 

Did you know you could barbecue your nopales too?  Well of course you can.  This is my favorite way to enjoy the pure flavor of the nopales.  Take a fresh tender penca de nopal and clean off the spines.  Rinse it off under running water.  Pat dry.  Then place the whole penca de nopal on the grill of your barbecue.  Let it grill on one side for about 5 to 7 minutes, then flip it over.  Grill it on your backyard barbecue until the edges begin to char just a bit, and the whole nopal has a grayish-green tint with plenty of grill lines across.  Make sure you do not overcook them or burn them.  "Nopales asados" can be enjoyed with carne asada, frijoles, arroz, cebollas asadas, and plenty of cerveza on a hot summer barbecue night.  ¡Buen provecho!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fruit of the nopal plant, called TUNA (not the fish, which in Spanish is called atún), has to be by far my favorite part of the nopal.  Frankly, I have a sweet tooth and love all kinds of fruits and desserts.  If you do too, then you'll love tunas.  They are quite good while they are still green, but are sweeter when they have some red color to them.  The skin of a tuna is also covered in spines, although finer and more insidious.  These small little spines, called ajuates are hard to see sometimes, and can be very irritating if you get them stuck in you.  So to enjoy the sweet flesh of the tuna you'll have to handle them with much care.  Use gloves if necessary.  Cut off both tips of the tuna with a knife, forming a cylinder of sorts.  Then cut along the length of the tuna, deep enough to go past the skin, which is about an eight to a fourth of an inch.  From that cut just peel the entire outer rind and discard.  Put your freshly peeled tuna into a separate dish or bowl.  They can be eaten just as is, right on the spot.  Or they can be cubed or quartered and mixed with other fruit (oranges, jamaica, watermelon, bananas, etc) to make a fruit salad.

 

Just beware: tunas have lots of hard little seeds you cannot crack or chew, like a Guayaba (guava).  There is a saying in Mexico, that if you have diarrhea (chorro), eat lots of tunas, becuase of the seeds.  Si comes muchas tunas, te vas a tapar.  Translation.  If you eat too many tunas, you'll get clogged up (constipated).  I prefer to see it as maintaining regularity in one's consumption of dietary fiber, don't you?

 

The Nopal and its fruit, the tuna, are a Mexican staple.  Along with beans, corn, and many other items, nopales are what make Mexican food and Mexico unique.  Which is where the saying "tienes una penca de nopal en la frente" comes from.  We are Mexican, and no matter where we go, our Mexican-ness comes along, no matter what some will do to hide it.  After all it's impossible, and a devastating shame to our culture, heritage, and ancestors, to try to hide the cactus pad on our forehead.  So have some nopales y tunas.  Enjoy!

 

Cordialmente,

Steven Francisco Hernández-López

 

 

> ATTACHMENT part 2 message/rfc822
To: "'ranchos@yahoogroups.com'"
From: Irma GomezLucero
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 08:38:10 -0700
Subject: RE: [ranchos] More about Nopales

 

    Alicia, I have thoroughly enjoyed your tidbits of "nopaleslore".  Your ensalada de nopales is very similar to my mom's, with the exception of the queso fresco.  I will have to add that next time I make this dish.  I love having this over frijoles del olla, and the queso would only make them better. 

 

    Joseph, ves lo que te has perdido.  Next, you need to try tunas if you haven't already!   

   

    I have also heard the _expression_ regarding un nopal en la frente.  My folks used it all the time to refer to someone who tried to hide their Mexican ethnicity.  My folks are both from Jalisco, but it seems that some branches (Lomeli--1600's) came from Nochistlan.  I'd love to visit Nochistlan some time.  My mom even recalls her dad visiting a cousin or two there.  I remember seeing a Nochistilan web page too. 

    Fortunately my folks "forced" us to speak Spanish at the table too.  Both of my folks are bilingual, but we always speak to them in Spanish to this day.  It seems strange to speak to them in English.

Irma

-----Original Message-----
From: Alicia Carrillo [mailto:alliecar@...]
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 11:06 PM
To: ranchos@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [ranchos] More about Nopales

Here's more on Nopales

 

My family originates from Zacatecas, specifically Tlachichila from the Municipality of Nochistlan. As we all know many people have migrated to the Norte or Los Estados Unidos or as many say El Otro Lado. I grew up in the US of A in San Jose Calif in an all Anglo community and one thing I didn't want to be was different from the rest of my class. However different we were. We had to speak spanish at home which for one who doesn't want to be different or admit to anyone that you're different this was a tough one to hide.

 

When we brought friends home we had to speak spanish to my parents and if someone stayed over for lunch or dinner we had tortillas, nopales, salsa, mole etc etc.( trying pretending that you're not Mexican). Our parents knew that we were ashamed and a famous saying was "what are you trying to hide, anyone who sees you can see the nopales on your forehead and hanging on your ears. Translation "De que to escondes, se te ven los nopales en la frente y los traes colgados de las orejas". When I was young I couldn't understand this saying having been raised here since I was two and not knowing what Mexico looked like. The first time I went in 1977 I finally understood what they meant by Los Nopales on the forehead. Nopales grew wild everywhere in that region. They even fed nopales to the cows when there was nothing else to feed them during the dry season. They would burn or scald off the thorns then feed them to the cows, how's that for a recipe for nopales.

 

Just a little Zacatecas family story.

Alicia

 

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