On Friday night, we were pretty wiped out from the week so we decided to make an old quick favorite: Ensalada de Nopalitos.
You might be wondering...cactus? I was a little hesitant when I first tried it. My my sister-in-law and her husband discovered this little tex-mex restaurant and passed on this gem to AC when he was interning in Virginia. We've gone there quite a few times despite it being about 25 miles away. Ever since my first visit, AC would order ensalada de nopalitos for appetizer. My dad grows cactus in his garden so I did realize that people actually eat it...but I never really thought I'd be the one voluntarily ordering it.
If you haven't had this dish, run out to your local tex-mex restaurant and get it...or try this recipe:
Ingredients:
1.5 pounds of cactus (fresh with needles removed) or jarred, diced
4 roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 small red onion, diced
1 - 2 medium serrano chiles, seeded and diced
2 bunches of cilantro, leaves only
1/2 cup of Cotija or Anejo cheese
1 avocado, diced
1 splash of olive oil
1 splash of red wine vinegar
Combine all the ingredients in a bowl except for the avocado and mix well. Garnish each serving with avocado. Serve with warm tortillas.
Ok, once again, we couldn't find the exact cheese we needed so we ended up using the leftover asadero cheese from last week's recipe. It ended up giving the salad a creamy texture. I need to find a good place that sells the usual mexican cheeses besides that Sargento bagged stuff - doesn't count. Although the recipe above does make a tasty dish, the cactus salad at Picante is untouchable. :)
4 comments:
It may work even better if you roast the cactus first (after taking off the needles). I think nopales taste like green beans personally.
Actually, a few of the recipes I've seen for cactus salad suggest substituting green beans for the cactus. I wasn't too impressed with this past batch of cactus so maybe next time I'll try out using fresh green beans.
Roasting tends to help sad batches of most things. For instance, if the tomatillos look sad, be sure to make a roasted salsa with them.
Hmm...were those tortillas out of a bag? If you haven't already, find out if one your local places that makes its own tortillas (Rio Grande?) will sell them to you. It's a huge huge difference!
Sadly we used store-bought torillas because we really wanted whole wheat tortillas. Big mistake, though. Whole wheat tortillas are totally not worth it - the health benefits do not nearly make up for the lack of taste and carboard texture.
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