Locomotoring

These are from Mexico, and pretty expensive at the local market. On the plus side, they are cleaned of the larger prickly thorns.

To eat, cut open and scoop out the flesh and eat. The color can vary, deep orange, purple or watermelon and matches the color of the fruit on the outside. Flesh is not too sweet, is subtly flavored and juicy. There are lots of small seeds that make for a nice texture – mouthfeel is like eating raspberries.

A dear neighbor recently gave us a large pail of prickly pear. He has the deep orange variety. These of course had the thorns unlike the ones from the store. I held each fruit using a tong, gave it a quick rinse in the kitchen basin to get rid of cobwebs and spiders, cut the fruit in half with a sharp knife on a cutting board, scooped the flesh out with a butter spoon and dumped the rest in my compost bin – assembly line style. I got about 6 cups from ~20 fruits.

I cooked the resulting flesh for about 45 minutes to release the juices, added a cinnamon stick at the end and let cool. Strained the resulting mass through a steel strainer to get rid of the seeds – if you just let the liquid drip, you will get a clearer jel but I let the pulp through. Finally, followed a low sugar jelly following instructions on Pomona pectin package for strawberries.

Made exactly 3 mason jars worth of jelly. Two of these will go to my neighbor who has a lot of grandchildren to share fruits of his labor with.

Enjoy with some plain yogurt.