Prickly Pears

I don’t know how many of you have come across prickly pears before. Certainly they’re not the kind of fruit you see growing by the side of the road in England. But in Australia they’re not particularly uncommon – they were introduced in the late 1800’s and caused widespread ecological damage and undoubtedly pissed off many people with their prickly little spines. The cactus have great big succulent pads like beaver tails and at certain times of the year these are adorned with purple fruits similar to hand grenades in their appearance and the damage they cause.

So when I saw a big cactus one day, covered with these delicious fruits which taste somewhere between watermelon and bubble gum, I was pleased at the chance to grab a few and strike back at this delicious weed, and do a bit for the native ecology. But I wasn’t the only one who had plans to striking out.

My first problem was the height of the cactus. The fruits were well out of reach, so I had to jump and grab. There are a few things I didn’t know about the prickly pear cactus which would have come in handy at this point. The first is that the pads are quite delicately attached to the bulk of the cactus, so if you try and pull a fruit that is still well attached you are liable to pull a branch covered with the things down on top of you. And the second thing I wasn’t aware of is that the little bastards have two types of spines on them. Each fruit might have a dozen visible spines like needles which are easily avoided, but they also have hundreds of hair-like spines which are so small they will cause hours of irritation over any part of exposed skin they come in to contact with. It was shortly after gathering a handful of them and sucking the sweet juice from my fingers that this last fact came into painful focus.

Imagine if you like, coming across a piece of wood covered in splinters and honey – and being too preoccupied with nature’s delicious natural sugars to stop and think before licking up the honey, splinters and all. At first it was a vaguely irritating sensation in my hands which I tried to remedy by finding all the little bastards and either plucking them out or more often snapping them off. Trying to dislodge those in the roof of my mouth with fingers still covered in the pesky needles seemed to be very counterproductive, and so eventually I resorted to donuts to flush the things through my system. Lots and lots of donuts.

So it was a couple of days before I felt an urge for sugary goodness which justified the inconvenience of the prickly fruits. But this time I was prepared! Using tongs (genius!) I held them over the gas burner on the hob and burnt all the little needles off. I imagined them screaming, in a fleeting moment of vindictive vengeance. And it was good. Cutting the skins off, and not being prickled once, I felt ready to enjoy the bright pink bounty staining the work top in front of me. So after a few quick samples, I threw the rest in a pot and cooked them up! I strained the juice after twenty minutes, added a heap of sugar, and cooked until it was too hot to continue stirring. When it gets hot enough, the sugar molecules change and then when the syrup cools it solidifies. So after a few minutes in the fridge, I had my first ever batch of prickly pear candy.

Vaguely pleasant to the taste, criminally dangerous to the teeth, and damaging to anything it came into contact with during the cooking process which wasn’t already pink. Probably easier to stick with chocolate.

Tags: Australia, candy, cooking, food, prickly pears