Why putting cactus in your mouth isn't the worst idea ever

Emilia’s Restaurant serves nopalitos in a broad variety of ways.

One of the more popular dishes, says Silvia Contreras, manager of the restaurant at 605 West Elizabeth Street, is fajitas Guadalajara, prepared with spicy peppers, onions, melted cheese, avocado, plus the ubiquitous nopales, or nopalitos, a type of cactus.

The use of nopales in the Mexican culinary tradition predates the arrival of the Spaniards, said Juanita Garza, lecturer and academic advisor for the history department at the University of Texas Pan-American in Edinburg. Indigenous people in pre-Columbian times didn’t use nopales in festivals or religious ceremonies. Instead, the cactus pads were a mainstay of the daily diet just as they are for many people today.

“Nopales is a native food that the Spanish picked up when they came,” Garza said. “Then it has remained in the diet ever since, especially during the spring season when the nopalitos are nice and tender, and also when it’s Lent season because of the non-meat diet.”

Garza said the most important change in the use of nopalitos since the arrival of the Spanish about 500 years ago is the addition of meats. The indigenous people prepared them only with onions, tomatoes and other vegetables and spices.

Tony Zavaleta, professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, said the earliest manuscripts written by Spaniards in Mexico in the 1500s describe the use of nopales.

“This particular form of cactus was cited as one of the staple foods,” Zavaleta said. “So, it has been around as long as Europeans have been observing Mexican and Native American practices. It is what is called a cultural super food of Meso-America.”

He compared its importance to that of the corn tortilla.

“I think it’s ditto,” he said. “It’s the same thing. Beans would be the next one. Those are the cultural super foods of the indigenous Mexican population.”

However, not all Hispanics like nopales.

“Many people would look down their nose at it,” he said. “Most of the Mexican Americans that I know, unless they grew up eating nopales, with their mothers preparing nopales, they don’t eat it. So when they see it in the buffet line, they just go right past it. It’s seen as something that is just too simple. But for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people throughout Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, it’s used as an essential staple food.”

Although indigenous people combined nopales with other vegetables and also with spices, people like the cooks at Emilia’s now prepare them with meats.

During Lent, Garza said, people prepare them with either salmon or tuna croquets. At other times of the year, they can be prepared with pork, hamburger or turkey meat. “And then of course you add all the spicy kind of ingredients like tomato, onions, chiles,” she said.

For breakfast, Contreras said, nopales can be prepared with scrambled eggs with a side of beans.

Emilia’s menu also includes the more traditional nopales a la Mexicana: fried nopales with onion, tomato and chile peppers, with rice and beans on the side.

Nopalitos are also believed to have medical uses, Garza said.

“They are used for diabetics,” Garza said. “It really helps to bring down the sugar levels.”

First and foremost in Contreras’ mind, however, is their culinary value. Her mother in Matamoros keeps a large nopal cactus from which she regular cuts pads for use in cooking.

“There’s a lot of plates,” she said. “My mother, for example, prepares nopales with ground beef and mixed vegetables. She cooks, boils them and serves them with rice and beans. She cuts them in the little pieces and puts them on the grill and puts salt and black pepper. Other people sometimes prepare nopales with little pieces of chicken and green beans, and on the side, some pasta, like Alfredo or fideo. I think there’s an infinity of plates where people use nopales.”

There’s a correction for the story. The manager of Emilia’s Restaurant spells her name Silvia, not Silvia.

PREPARING NOPALES

Dalia Carr has her own favored recipe for preparing nopales, and several variations of it.

The manager of El Fenix Cafe at 126 N. Texas Ave. dices about two pounds of nopales and boils them with two or three cloves of garlic and a little salt. Then, in a separate skillet, she cooks more garlic, plus onions, bell pepper, cumin and black pepper in two tablespoons of oil. After she adds a small amount of red chili powder, adds the nopalitos and cooks the entire mixture together.

“You can get six servings, more or less,” she said. “We can add two eggs to it, that’s optional, mix it up there just to give it a little bit of spice and that’s it. And then you salt it.” She said at the customer’s request, she can add a little flour to thicken the mixture.

“Actually that’s a lunch,” she said. “That’s just the way we prepare it. You can add some pork to it. Just cook your pork, whatever kind of pork you want, just add that to that mixture, makes it great.” She said she can also add chorizo instead of pork.

In another variation, she leaves out the red chili powder but still adds the tomato, onion, and some hot pepper, plus a tablespoon of chicken stock, or consommé. Red chili powder is actually red bell pepper that has been dried. It adds color and a little spicy flavor, but it is not hot. Hot pepper is much hotter.

“You can add the consommé, without any egg, you can just cook it like that, like a stir-fry,” she said. “And it’s just delicious like that. Oh my God it’s just delicious.”

FAJITA GUADALAJARA

This is a recipe from Emilia’s Restaurant provided by manager Silvia Contreras.

• 1 pound of cut fajita
• 2 packages of cut nopales
• 2 avocados
• comino, black pepper, garlic, salt to taste
• Monterrey jack cheese

Fry the fajita with the spices. When it’s almost ready add the onion, tomato, slices of jalapeno, and a little soy sauce. Fry everything together until it comes to a boil, then add nopales. Spread cheese over the entire mixture and put the dish in a microwave oven for about two minutes to melt the cheese. Add avocado. Serve with beans and rice if desired.