Cactus Fruit Delights

The other day I stumbled upon an odd delicacy, plucked straight from the garden of a green-thumbed friend and then peeled, sliced and placed on my breakfast plate: Cactus fruit.

Apparently, her breed of the night-blooming Cereuses had plumped up a bounty of small, strange purple globes that taste eerily like a more mellow and bland kiwi. The fruit inside was a fantastical white flesh pocked with tiny black dots (seeds) looking kind of like an ice white gelato studded with poppy seeds. Slightly sweet and great dipped in cold vanilla yogurt, I was thrilled to discover this new form of fruit.

The fruit is fairly soft and easy to cut and peel with a knife to get to the yummy center. Once peeled, it can be thrown right into the mouth, or sliced up an added to meals like fruit salads or granola. After telling someone about my discovery, they told me how to cut the fruit in halves and freeze to turn them into little individual bowls of refreshing sorbet for the kids.

Here’s a salad recipe I adopted for the occasion of my new fruit discovery that is perfect for our current torrid season.

Cactus Fruit Salad

2-3 cactus fruits
8 strawberries
8-10 blueberries
1 orange, segmented
1 tsp. honey
1/4 tsp. freshly ground cinnamon

Wash and clean all the fruit. Peel the prickly-pear cactus fruit. Chop into pieces. Peel the orange and segment. Place all the fruit in a bowl. Squeeze the juice from the orange over the fruit. Mix gently with clean hands. Drizzle the honey over the fruit. Sprinkle the cinnamon over the fruit and toss gently with a spoon. Serve immediately.