SOCAL STYLE / Entertaining : Caution: Thorns Ahead : Handled with Care, Prickly Pear Adds Green Crunch and Tang

By NANCY SPILLER

Sept. 5, 1999 12 AM PT

Nancy Spiller last wrote about ketchup for the magazine

The California golden poppy is easy to love. It’s an irresistible orange sashay on the breeze, looks great next to blue lupine, is drought-tolerant and the official state flower. I could go on. But what has it done for us lately? On the other hand, our resident prickly pear cactus is a virtual convenience store--a source of fruit, vegetable, water, fiber and fencing. It even comes with its own razor-sharp security system. Known in botanical circles as Opuntia ficus-indica, O. megacantha or O. littoralis, the prickly pear is found throughout Southern California, a scrappy remnant of our desert past. The Navajos honored the plant’s spirit by plucking a human scalp hair before harvesting the plump, sunset-colored fruits.

I revere the prickly pear as well, but for its sculptural qualities. The ancient specimen in my backyard is an extravagant green eruption of thick, arching corpuscular shapes that look like mutating cells. For years I ignored the admiring murmurs of gardeners who wished to clip a few paddles, actually the plant’s stems, to make nopales, a popular ingredient in Mexican cooking. I had had nopales before, but either out of a jar or spines pre-stripped and fresh from the farmer’s market.

After several years of living in its company, though, I realized my cactus’ fresh buds would mature, yellow with age then drop to rot on the ground. The sculpture was always changing. The cactus could afford to lose a few paddles to the kitchen.

But I still wasn’t sure of the best way to remove the stickers. So I decided to visit a few cactus aficionados, starting with Christopher Nyerges, co-founder of the Eagle Rock-based School of Self-Reliance (“Where there is no struggle, there is no merit”). I joined one of his wild-food outings along the untamed edge of a Pasadena golf course. Nyerges harvested a few fresh cactus paddles, then scraped off the needles with his hunting knife, trimmed away the spiny edge, diced what was left and tossed it into a salad bowl along with the collected leaves of lambs’ quarters, wild mustard, sow thistle, chopped fennel tops and the tender, white inner stalks of cattails (a wild version of palm hearts). The cactus stood out for its tart green taste, kind of like a thick, moist and crunchy sorrel.

Some people are offended by cactus’ slimy, okra-like tendencies. Boiling the diced nopales, which is how chef Ric Leczel of Barbara’s at the Brewery serves it, will get rid of that. With boiling, the color dulls and the flavor goes green bean mild. On a recent visit to the kitchen at Barbara’s, I watched as assistant cook and resident nopales expert Fermin Carreon threw a paddle on the grill. The flavor mellowed but retained more tang than boiling allowed.

Back home, I fearlessly took a knife to my backyard art. I scraped and diced and boiled one paddle. The other I cut into strips, leaving it whole at the base, and slapped it onto the grill. Both worked well in the nopales salad recipe offered here. The leftovers went into scrambled eggs and quesadillas.

Standing at the grill, just steps from the twisted prickly pear’s presence, I thought about it as the perfect metaphor for Los Angeles: much-maligned, difficult to appreciate, but once its secrets are revealed, the possibilities are infinite.*

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Nopales Tostadas

Adapted from a recipe by Barbara’s at the Brewery

Serves 4

1 pound (about 2 paddles) cactus, cleaned and diced

1/2 onion, cut into 2 wedges

1 bunch cilantro

3-4 tomatoes, diced

1/2 onion, diced

Juice of 1 lime

1/2 teaspoon cumin (or to taste)

2 Jalapenos, diced (optional)

2 cloves garlic, minced

Salt and pepper

Mixed greens, rinsed and dried

1 lime, cut into 4 wedges

Canola or other vegetable oil

6 ounces queso fresco, crumbled (or feta cheese)

1 bunch radishes, sliced

1 avocado, sliced

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

4 tostada shells, flat or cup-shaped

Place cactus, onion wedges and handful of cilantro into saucepan filled with water. Boil until cactus is olive green in color and tender in texture, 5 to 10 minutes. Drain and cool cactus; discard onion and cilantro. Mix cactus with tomatoes, diced onions, lime juice, cumin, jalapenos, garlic, salt and pepper.

Top each tostada shell with bed of mixed greens. Over each tostada, squeeze 1 lime wedge, drizzle oil and salt and pepper to taste. Then add cactus mixture. Garnish with queso fresco, radishes, avocado, cilantro and more jalapenos if desired. Serve.

Note on cleaning cactus: While wearing gloves, scrape or dig stickers from flat sides of cactus with paring knife. Trim off sticker-studded edges.