So you think that cactus plants are nothing but some desert plants. In fact, these plants can also be cooked into delicious and healthy dishes such as the cactus salad. The cactus salad is an easy dish to prepare. However, the dish will require quite a lot of time for its preparation. The preparation of the cactus will need 3 hours while the cooking itself would need only 10 minutes. Just like preparing the other types of salad, the preparation phase would require peeling and cutting all the ingredients.
This would take some time. Moreover, if you decide to cook cactus, this would mean that you need to master the art of removing its thorns as well as cutting them so that they are ready to be cooked into an edible dish. The dish will make you change how you see the cactus. They are no longer the plants that seem so dangerous with their thorns, but they have become the plant that is suitable for eating and friendly for human. This dish is rate four stars by those who have tried it.
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The cactus salad ingredient would include these ingredients:
1.5 pounds of fresh cactus. The cactus should be the paddles or nopales cactus, whichever chosen, the needles must be removed beforehand.
0.75 cup of olive oil
1.5 teaspoons of salt
4 Roma tomatoes which have been cored and seeded. They then should be cut into 0.25 inch in dice shapes
0.5 cup of grated Anejo or Cotija cheese
0.5 cup of red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon of black pepper that is freshly ground
4 to 6 cups of lettuce leaves
1 avocado that is peeled and seeded. It should then sliced for garnishing purpose.
0.25 cup of black pepper garnish, cracked.
To create the cracked black pepper garnish, you would need:
2 tablespoons of cracked black pepper
0.5 cup of olive oil
2 tablespoons of lemon juice which is freshly squeezed
1 teaspoon of salt
Preparation Method:
Preheat the broiler or grill and the place the cactus paddles inside a medium size bowl. Toss a quarter cup of olive oil and half a teaspoon of salt into the bowl as well. Broil or grill the cactus paddles until the marking of the grill can be seen on either sides or until they turn into dark green with dark black patches. Set aside to cool and then cover and refrigerated it for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Cut the cactus into pieces of half an inch and then take a large bowl to combine these pieces of cactus with onions, tomatoes, cilantro, chilies and cheese as well as the remaining oil, salt, pepper and vinegar. Toss everything until they mix and the serve with lettuce leaves and put avocado slices on the top as garnish then sprinkle with cracked pepper garnish.
