I have waited several years for my opuntia or prickly pear to bear fruit. They need to be of a certain age and size to do so and it looks like this season was that time. We didn’t get many – and some were purloined by a neighbor, I think – but these 9 made for a nice collection.

You must be careful when gathering and skinning the “pears” as they are covered with spines and almost invisible glochids or tiny, almost hair-like, spines that hurt like the dickens if you get them in your skin.

Thankfully I didn’t have any issues with this. I wore a garden glove to protect one hand and then sliced off the root end. One slice along the fruit then allowed the skin to roll off the fruit.

We have tasted prickly pear fruit when visiting family in Sicily, so I had a basic idea of what it would taste like. In Sicily, fico d’India is a protected agricultural product and you see fields of it all over the east side of the island. 

“Some varieties are recognized as “excellencies of the territory” by the Sicilian Region and two of them – the San Cono and the Etna variety – are actually enlisted as PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) products.” – Putia 

My fruits were quite fruity and tasty , and I sampled a few right out of the skin. Prickly pear tends to be quite seedy, though, so most are processed through a food mill and turned into a sauce or syrup. When done, mine was probably more sauce-like, as I left in a lot of the pulp after straining for seeds. I added only a bit of sugar as I reduced the juice as it was plenty sweet already. 

While I plan on using the sauce over pancakes and, perhaps, ice cream, I also made a prickly pear cocktail.

Prickly Pear Spritzer

Mix together…

1 oz vodka
1 oz prickly pear sauce/syrup

Splash of soda water to add some fizz

You could change the quantity of either ingredient depending on it you wanted a stronger or sweeter cocktail.

The taste of the prickly pear has a slight herbal quality which makes it very refreshing. I could see sipping this cocktail on a summer evening.

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