I admit, I don’t know why it got the moniker “tuna fruit,” just that tuna is the name of the fruit in Spanish.  In English, we usually refer to it as prickly pear fruit.  Prickly pear is a long-standing native food source.  The tender young pads of the cactus are often cut into strips and prepared a variety of ways in Mexican and Native American dishes.  They are known as nopalitos, and they taste somewhat like green pepper, though they are mucilaginous like okra.  The blossoms of the cactus are reported to have medicinal properties, one of which is to strengthen capillaries.  And this time of year, the fruit has a high profile around my corner of the desert.  The deep magenta teardrops stand out brightly against the pale green, oblong pads of the cactus, attracting the attention of all sorts of critters: desert tortoise, coyotes, a wide variety of birds, and even your friendly neighborhood Laurel.

The flavor is reminiscent of a fruitier type of watermelon, though the texture is closer to that of a strawberry.  The center of each fruit is packed with hundreds of small, extremely hard seeds.

Though I love the fruit, we have a rocky relationship.  Tuna is covered with superfine spines called glochids, which have a way of somehow remaining invisible while they inevitably wind up in your fingers.  Because they’re so hard to see, they’re next to impossible to remove.  (If you get stuck with some, try flattening a piece of Scotch tape over the spines and then pulling it off to remove the spines.  It might not get them all, but it does help.)  I decided to try some new processing techniques to see if there was a more user-friendly way to enjoy them.

I wandered around the area and scoped out the prickly pear, finally choosing a couple well-developed plants near a credit union.  (Disclaimer: I am a fruit pirate.  Anything on city property I consider public property–though you should never harvest more than 10% to ensure the wildlife have plenty–but I also have no shame about knocking on doors and making new friends with people who are willing to let me harvest prickly pear or mesquite from their landscaping.  It’s a heckuvah conversation starter, let me tell you.)  I gathered a bowl full of prickly pear–probably about a pound to a pound and a half–using tongs to grasp the fruit at the base and remove them from the cactus.  Once I had a decent amount, I set off for home.

I rinsed my pirated goods well, scraped off the few spots of cottony cochineal (the home of a harmless scale insect commonly used for making carmine food dye) with a knife, then immersed them in boiling water for a minute to soften the glochids.  Then I drained and peeled the tuna.  While the quick boil definitely softened the spines, I still wound up with about three glochids total in my fingers.  They’re still there.  It makes typing less comfortable than normal.  Ouch.  Jeez.  Ouch.  Anyway… it was a much better outcome than normal, and I’m sure building up a tolerance for glochid irritation will benefit me somehow in the future.

I decided to cut the tuna into chunks and cook them down into a syrup because I have plans for prickly pear cheesecake, among other things.  I put the fruits in a saucepan over medium heat and checked on them occasionally as they cooked down for about an hour, adding water as needed.

Once soft, I put them through the blender, then poured the purée through a mesh strainer to remove the seeds from the pulp.  If your syrup is too thin, cook it down some more until you are satisfied with the consistency and intensity of flavor.  Although I started with about a pound and a half of fruit, I wound up with only about 1/3 cup of syrup.

And that, dear readers, is one way of enjoying life as a prickly pear fruit pirate.  Another solution is to blend the fruit without cooking it down first, strain it, and pour into ice cube trays and freeze it.  The tuna cubes work great for adding to smoothies or for other projects in the future.  Not only is it a sweet and unique flavor for your recipes, but prickly pear nectar is believed to be helpful for controlling blood sugar and improving cholesterol levels.  More information about tuna fruit is found on page four of this pdf file from the Native Plant Project. Tasty, healthy, and here, about as local as it gets!  What about you?  What grows wild in your neighborhood, perhaps on biking or hiking paths that you enjoy?