Nopal Cactus Salad

First, if you haven’t tasted nopal cactus, it’s pretty easy going as far as exotic ingredients are concerned—a little crunchy like an al dente green bean but decidedly tangier. It’s the texture that has to be wrestled with. Cacti are succulents, which means they store moisture in a way that won’t easily evaporate. Specifically, nopal cactus (aka prickly pear cactus) stores it in a mucilaginous substance that begins to leak out as soon as the cactus paddles are cut, accelerating as they are exposed to heat. If you’ve ever cooked okra any way but deep-frying, you’ve experienced this sticky (dare I say slimy) stuff. But you can eliminate it in several ways. The most common approach in Mexico is to boil the cut up cactus in lots of water, usually with a piece of onion and a couple cloves of garlic, leaching out all that stickiness into the water. (There are quite a few cooks who advocate adding a handful of tomatillo husks to the water to help cut the mucilage, but I haven’t found it to be too effective. I’ve also heard people advocate that a little oil in the water will do the same thing.) Once tender, the nopales are rinsed until all the gunkiness is gone. I rarely cook nopales that way because I find boiled nopales bland and, besides, they usually continue leaching baba (as the sticky stuff is called in Spanish) as they sit. Instead, I either put them in a pan without water and cook them until all the leached out baba evaporates, or I grill the paddles whole, then cool them and cut them. With both these approaches, the sticky stuff is virtually nonexistent. Now, about calling this a cactus salad: I doubt most of you would recognize its saladness. It’s more like pico de gallo salsa with cactus added. But then, in Mexico, any vegetable-y something on the side of a plate is considered an ensaladita. One final comment: I’ve watched skillful cooks in Mexico boil nopales in unlined copper pots (like the ones used for cooking carnitas) or with copper coins in the water to preserve their bright green color. (Nopales, like tomatillos, customarily fade from limey-colored to olive as they cook.) As much as I’ve tried to replicate what I’ve watched them do, I haven’t been successful.