Desert Bounty: Freshly Picked Prickly Pear Jelly

Inspired by the dark pink fruits ripening on the prickly pear cactus growing in the median of the road that leads to my parents’ house, my mom decided that after 20 years of living in the desert it was time to see what she could do with its bounty.  And so she conscripted my aid to brew up a batch of prickly pear jelly.  Jelly is one of those adventures in the kitchen that I had never undertaken and so I eagerly agreed to be party to the event.  There are so many skills such as this that I somehow failed to acquire during my childhood years.  My mom learned all this as she grew up in Oklahoma.  As a kid, I was too preoccupied with riding my bike, swimming, playing pretend and hanging out with my friends to worry too much about how to make jelly.  After all, why make jelly when you could go to the store and find rows and rows of all the jelly varieties you could ever want?!  As an adult I can see the value in learning the ins and outs of home-making; economically and health-wise it makes good sense to purchase ingredients as far down the processed scale as possible.  Also, there is so much pleasure to be had putting time and effort into the food you eat.

Our first task was to go out and harvest the prickly pear fruits.  While removing cactus fruits from the state trust land that surrounds my parents house is a bit of a no-no, we did not see any issue in removing them from the landscaping in the median.  After all, the rotten fruit would be bagged and tossed at the end of the summer and at least this way some of it would go to good use.  To harvest prickly pear fruit all you need is a pair of tongs and a paper bag.  Clamp the fruit gently with the tongs, give a little twist and the fruit comes off easily enough.  My first attempt was not so very graceful and went something to the tune of “death grip on fruit, pull.”  Half the fruit stayed attached to the plant and the other came away smooshed between the tongs.  My mom raised her eyebrows at me.  “Well, that one is no good.  Do we need to switch tongs?”  I gave a good-natured grumble; if I thought it was anything other than user error, I may have taken her up on her offer, but I was pretty sure a different set of tongs would have made exactly zero difference.  I watched her execute the picking procedure and gave it another try.  Success! Between the two of us, it did not take more than 10 minutes to harvest enough of the fruit (although in hindsight, in order to avoid a little mishap with fractions, we should have kept going another 5 minutes). We triumphantly paraded back to the house, desert bounty in tow.

The first step done and over with, the fruit of the cacti then sat in my mom’s refrigerator for several weeks.  There is no real need to let the fruit sit for any length of time other than the general hectic nature of life.  But finally a day came about when we had the time to devote to the project.

Like I said, I had never made jelly before and so I was amazed at the simplicity of the process.  (Though I’m informed that the use of packaged pectin was to thank for much of that ease.  Maybe next time I will learn how to use apples for the pectin.)

Before you start in on the actual jelly prep, I would highly recommend starting the sterilization process on the jars.  The following recipe makes about 36 ounces of jelly; plan accordingly.  Place open jars right side up in a stock pot and fill until the water is one inch above the lips of the jars.  Place the lids in a separate pot and fill with water.  Put both pots on to boil.  They will take a while to reach boiling so go ahead and start with the jelly prep.  The jars must be at a full boil for at least three minutes, so take note of when they start to boil.  After they have boiled for three minutes, take them out of the water using a pair of tongs and place mouth down on paper towels laid out on the counter.  After a few minutes (perhaps while boiling the jelly concoction) flip the jars over so that they can finish drying out and be ready to receive the jelly.  Leave lids in the hot water.  Leave both pots on the stove, turn the heat on the large stock pot down, but not completely off.

So here it is, the making of the prickly pear jelly:

Recipe:

2.5 cups of prickly pear juice

1 1&3/4 oz package pectin

3 Tbs lime juice

3.5 cups sugar

Also: Blender, cheese cloth, strainer.

First, make the fruit puree.  Ignore whatever else you have read, because this is the easiest way to prepare it (if you don’t believe me, Google agrees).

Using leather gloves and a sharp knife, peel the skin from the prickly pear fruit.  I found this very reminiscent of peeling a kiwi; a very spiny kiwi.  (I recommend having a pair of tweezers present.  The tiny spines ended up on my shirt and from their transferred to my elbow and forearm.  Although my mom didn’t have that problem.  Maybe I’m just less graceful.) The fruit should be a beautiful deep pink.  Put it in a blender.

Once you have peeled all the fruit, puree it.

Bust out the cheese cloth, strainer and large bowl.  Line the strainer with cheese cloth and place a bowl under the strainer.  Pour the puree over the cheese cloth.  To get all the juice from the pulp (there really is no way around this part) bundle the cheese cloth over the top of the puree, give a twist to seal and squeeze.  Delight in getting the sticky juice all over your hands.  Take a moment to ooo and ahh over the absolutely beautiful fuchsia color.  I love it when cooking is this pretty.

Pour the juice into a measuring cup.  Hopefully you have about 2.5 cups.

We had 1.75 cups.

So here is where we took a break to argue over fractions.  This really should not have been difficult considering the number of degrees represented in the house, but I quickly abandoned the attempt to do it by hand and broke out the calculator on my smart phone.  As my mom declared that we needed to multiply everything by 7/18, I declared, “.7″ and my dad said “7/18 isn’t .7.”  This went on longer than I care to admit when I finally, exasperated, said, “You guys are not listening.  All we have to do is divide 1.75 by 2.5 to get the conversion and it’s .7!”  Sometimes what you really need to do is stamp your foot and throw a little tantrum.

Having agreed on the conversion, we got the rest of the ingredients together.  I stared at giant measuring cup full of sugar and tried not to be a little aghast.  I stuffed my objections to mounds of white sugar underneath the joy I got from making jelly from scratch.  Cooking from scratch means actually facing up to what goes into the final product, a truth which can simultaneously be a luxury and an inconvenience.  No preservatives or additives but, wow, that’s a whole lot of sugar.  You catch my drift.  But pure pleasure came from the simplicity of the ingredients: prickly pear fruit juice, pectin, lime juice, sugar.

The next steps mirrored the simplicity of the components:

In a saucepan, bring prickly pear fruit juice and pectin to a boil, stirring constantly.  Again, admire the deep, rich hue and texture of the mixture, which should now be giving off a delicately sweet aroma.

Add lime juice and sugar, stir and bring to a hard boil (one that cannot be stirred down).  Boil for three minutes.  Be sure you have the mixture at a hard boil for three minutes so the jelly sets properly.

Pour or ladle jelly into awaiting glass jars.  Seal.

Place sealed jelly jars into the large stock pot and turn the heat back up.  Boil the jars for 10 minutes and then remove the jars from the heat.  Sometime in the next 30 minutes you will hear the lids POP, which means jars are sealed and safe to store.

When the jars have cooled off enough, label them.  Be creative…or at least give it your best shot.

Before I was ever born, my mom tasted a delectable combination: prickly pear jelly and brie.  When living in Houston, my dad had a colleague who would arrive to staff potlucks bearing the delicious dish.  With this in mind, my mom had picked up some brie from the grocery store that same day along with some strawberries.  Looking at the strawberries and brie my mom commented, “If only we had some champagne.”  My palate agreed with her lament.  ”Oh, I wish you hadn’t said that.  I would love some champagne.”  She looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “You know, we actually might have some.”  Sure enough, in the back of the beverage refrigerator she found a chilled bottle of champagne left over from some special occasion, possibly New Years.  The cork gave a loud pop, and our evening was complete.

Warmed brie on crackers topped with prickly pear jelly complete with fresh strawberries and champagne to drink.

Celery Camouflaged Cilantro

I must be spending too much time in the kitchen and not enough time out on the water.  This afternoon I will remedy that, having finally realized that I need saltwater, and not just sweat and tears, to keep my sanity.  I have been out of the ocean for almost four weeks and that, of course, is unacceptable.  To be fair, I have been preoccupied with getting my Bikram classes started and beginning my running routine again.  And when I was not emailing and facebooking about yoga or running along the roadside toward the beach then I was probably pouting that people are not yet flocking to my classes to find wellness in the form of a 90 minute hot yoga session.  I have decided to keep the Bikram time and the running time and nix the pouting time.  In its place I will make diving time.  I can run and work in the afternoons four times a week and dive a couple days a week.  No time for pouting and more time enjoying the Bahamas.
Back to why I must be spending too much time in the kitchen:  I have another cooking tale for you.  This one is actually a few weeks old, but the story is too fun to keep to myself and the recipe is absolutely delicious.  That’s right, you get a story AND a recipe today.  We’re coming into summer, but we haven’t left the cold weather completely behind and so now is perhaps the last opportunity to share this soup with you during an at least semi-appropriate season.  I am not opposed to soup in the summer, but let us be honest, it just is not the same as soup on a chilly night after a cold day in the water (or snow or whatever brand of winter your home offers).  Sitting, in fact, exactly in the spot I now occupy in the Starbucks in Cable Beach, I had the pulled chicken epiphany.  The brainstorm spawned two fantastic dishes:  chicken chili and chicken tortilla soup.  The latter is the subject of the day.  There are a multitude of renditions of tortilla soup, but all share some common elements.  To make a successful soup, you need tomatoes, onion, garlic and cilantro.  Ingredients and spices vary from this point, but I maintain that without those four you may as well not make the attempt.  I may seem rigid on the matter and in theory I remain so, although my steadfastness was shaken when push almost came to shove.
The day I made the soup, Chris and I went shopping for ingredients only to find everything except the cilantro.  Choosing not to despair, we headed to another market a little down the way.  One danger, living on an island this small, is that one store being completely out is often a harbinger of all other stores also being completely out.  Such was the case and in the basket where the cilantro should have been, we found only parsley.  The next best option was to investigate the spice isle and look for dried cilantro.  I was not nearly as excited about this prospect, being a firm believer in fresh herbs whenever possible.  We found the dried cilantro, but the only brand available cost $5.50.  Since I 99% of the time opt for fresh cilantro over dried, I could not see the logic in spending that amount.  Fresh cilantro is only $1.87 per bushel.  I shook my head and told Chris to put the dried stuff back.  I would make the soup sans cilantro.  Thankfully, Chris was scandalized by the suggestion and so led us back to the produce section to make one last sweep in our search.  We lifted bushels of parsley but found only rogue sprigs of cilantro.  Rogue…sprigs…
“How much do you need?” Chris asked me, pulling the sprigs from the parsley.  I only needed 1/4 cup to make the soup and so we delved in, searching for more cilantro.  And we found just enough cilantro to give that oh-so-important flavor to the soup.  But now we had another dilemma because cilantro was not priced by the pound, but by the bushel and we had far less than that.  We did not want to pay full price for a tenth of the product and we also did not want to try leaving the store pinching a few stems of herbage.  Luckily, celery has leaves that camouflage cilantro quite nicely.  We bought the celery after tucking the cilantro in amongst its leaves and left the store with the conviction that we had found a mutually beneficial solution.  We got our cilantro and some celery and the store made a sale and did not lose anything since no one else was going to pay for that cilantro anyway.

And so here it is!  The priceless ingredient for the soup!

To go along with it, the recipe:

Ingredients:

1/2 bag black beans (actually a little less) – precooked; a can of black beans rinsed and drained would suffice, but the fresh ones make a big difference I think

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
14 oz whole peeled tomatoes
1/2 onion chopped – divide into 1/3 and 2/3 portions
1 red bell pepper chopped- divide in 2
3-4 corn tortillas (more for thicker soup) roughly chopped
1 can corn, drained
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
3 cloves garlic chopped – divided in 2/3 and 1/3 portions
4 cups chicken stock
3 TBS oil
1 bay leaf
1 Tbs cumin
1 Tbs + 1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne (how much you use depends on taste)
1 lime
salt

cheese of preference topping

Method:

Of course, first you need to prepare the black beans – I did this the day before so that I didn’t have to worry about timing.

Boil enough water to cook the chicken in – boil the chicken breasts 15-20 minutes or until done

While the chicken cooks:

Puree the peeled tomatoes
Heat 1 Tbs oil and saute the 2/3 garlic, 2/3 onion, 1/2 bell pepper and tortillas about 5 minutes
Add the pureed tomatoes, stock, cilantro, bay leaf, cumin and chili – Bring to a boil, reduce and let simmer for 20-30 minutes

The chicken should finish cooking while the broth boils.  Take the chicken out of the water and using two forks, shred the chicken.

Remove the broth from the heat and the bay leaf from the broth and puree the mixture – a hand mixer works well if you have one, but so does a blender.  Return to pot but do not place back on the heat quite yet.  At this point if the soup looks a little thick you can add a bit of water to thin it out to your liking.

Heat 2 Tbs oil in a large pan – I used a little hot oil, a nice addition if you have any – and saute 1/3 garlic, 1/3 onion and 1/2 bell pepper for 1 minute.  Add shredded chicken.  Spice with cayenne and 1 tsp chili powder.  Squeeze the juice of 1 lime onto the chicken.  Cook for about 3-5 minutes, stirring frequently.  Add the beans (drained) and the corn (drained).  Cook for five minutes, stirring frequently.

Put the broth back on the heat and add the chicken mixture.  Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.  Don’t simmer for too long or the soup will get very thick.

Enjoy topped with shredded cheese

Other toppings you might consider: avocado, tortilla chips, sour cream

Here’s another special tidbit about the soup:  Chris made the corn tortillas from scratch.  Since he rarely writes down or tells me his recipes, I don’t have that to share with you, but a recipe should not be difficult to find. I highly suggest that whenever you have the chance to do so, make things from scratch.  Store bought tortillas, pita and bread are quite convenient, but also packed with sugar and preservatives to guarantee a long shelf life.  Making them from scratch is also cheaper than buying them packaged.  If you have the time, save yourself the money, a few grams of sugar and compounds you were never meant to consume and whip up these corn tortillas yourself.  You can even add some salt and bake them crispy for the tortilla chip topping!

Enjoy!  (And don’t forget the cilantro!)