Folks in cold places will have to excuse our temporary bout of Prickly Pear mania, but we've got a hell of a lot of cactus fruit to deal with this season. Next year we'll take a crack at making
a batch of
Tiswin, the sacred beer of the Papagos Indians of central Mexico (usually made with saguaro fruit but prickly pear fruit will do in a pinch). This August we're making jelly.
Here's how to do it:
1. Taking reader
Steven's (of the fine blog Dirt Sun Rain) suggestion, burn off the nasty spines by holding the fruit over a burner on the stove for a few seconds. Using the non-cutting edge of a knife held at a 90ยบ angle to the fruit, scrape off what remains of the spines (technically called glochids).
2.
Boil the fruit in a pot with just enough water to cover for 20 minutes.There are many methods described on the interenets for extracting the juice. The way we have found best is to slice the fruit (you need not skin it) into quarters and put in a pot with just enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. Mash with a potato masher and strain the juice and water through a colander with two layers of cheesecloth to remove the seeds and pulp.
3.
Mash the fruit in a colander over a pot and extract the juice. It took about 14 fruits to make 2 1/2 cups of juice. We've found that 2 1/2 pounds of fruit will yield a little over 2 1/2 cups of juice using the method above.
4. We use a recipe from the
Jamlady Cookbook by Beverly Ellen Schoonmaker Alfeld (note that the "Jamlady" has the same annoying habit as Homegrown Revolution of referring to herself in the third person constantly).
Here's the recipe:
2 1/2 cups prickly pear cactus juice
1/2 cup lemon juice
5 cups sugar
1 box of powdered pectin (18 teaspoons-note that not all pectin brands contain the same amount in a box, so measure it out to make sure)
Hard boil cactus fruit juice, pectin and lemon juice for 3 minutes. Hard boil means the point at which the brew still bubbles even when you stir it. Add sugar and bring back to a hard boil for 2 minutes or until the jell point is reached.
5. Put in 8 once canning jars, seal and heat process for 10 minutes. We followed the
canning
instructions on the Ball website for high-acid foods.
Unlike many other cactus jelly recipes on the internets that we have tried unsuccessfully, this one works. The proof is pictured above.
And a parting note on the
Ball company's website. We can just imagine the huddle of nervous executives trying to resurrect a "tired brand" with new products like plastic containers for "
no-cook freezer jam". Why go through the trouble of canning when you can pilot the minivan over to Wal-Mart to buy cheap Chinese jam? But elsewhere in the Ball company's new products category we were surprised to see the Bauhaus coming to the formerly fundamentalist
Christian/country kitchen world of home canning with the introduction of theIkea -like new "
Elite® Platinum Wide Mouth Pint" aimed, no doubt, at cynicalurbanites such as Homegrown Revolution. What's next a Richard Meier designed jam jar?
It's nopales (the pads of the prickly pear cactus for you Yankees) season at the Homegrown Evolution compound. Our prickly pear has thrown off so many leaves that a neighbor dropped by last week to ask for some. We filled a bag for her and declined the dollar she offered us.
One of the charms of the prickly pear cactus, in addition to the food it provides, is its ability to survive drought and fend off pests. Sadly, it's not as indestructible as it seems. The cactus moth, Cactoblastis cactorum was introduced into the Caribbean in the 1950s and has slowly worked its way to Florida and Mexico. It may soon reach Texas and California. The USDA is hoping to halt the spread by releasing sterile moths.
