Prickly Pear - As i was out walking - day 4

In the space of a few hours walking in Spain this morning I came across produce that does best in the warmer and more tropical climes of Spain.

As I walked out this morning I came across several women wearing gloves and carrying buckets.

They also each had implements for grabbing what was growing on a collection of a certain tree. And that was the opuntia.

Known to you and I as the prickly pear. And it's called that for a reason. It's prickly by name and prickly by nature.

But these women came prepared. They wore protection and clearly they had done this job before.

But what were they picking them for? To eat of course, but how when they are covered in all those seemingly lethal spines?
The many buckets of prickly pears are taken home at which time the outer skin is very carefully peeled away.

Why do they pick them so early in the morning?
It seems that the spikes are less likely to cause harm when there is an early morning dew. It softens them.

Commonly referred to in Spain as the tuna or chumbo, this tropical fruit grows wild and in vast quantities in Andalucia and further south in Spain. It is also everywhere on the Canary Islands.
The conquerors of Spain brought the opuntia with them from the New World as an ornamental plant. Christopher Columbus himself may even have brought it to Spain.

In times gone by, down here in Andalucia, times were tough. The people were very poor and food was thin on the ground. In those days people gently fried the outer green pads and ate them as vegetables.

The fruits have been, and continue to be eaten in a variety of ways. Some people crush them with ice and keep them in the fridge for cooling down on the hot days.Others turn them into a refreshing drink.
I’ve seen men on the street corner peel them expertly with a knife and eat them raw. More often than not though, the fruit is cooked.

The flesh is often used to make jam, jelly, sorbet or something called a cactus candy. The seeds can be eaten but, be careful, they can break your teeth. Best to do what some in my village do and soak them and serve in a soup.

Size, shape and colour of the fruit varies from country to country. Some types in Spain have a raspberry taste to them and make for a good soft drink.

They can be bought fresh or dried but there is another use for the plant.
It is used by some as a host for the cochineal beetle, from which the sought after carmine red food colouring is obtained.

In the early to mid 19th century the Canary Islands were awash with the opuntia. The production of cochineal became the main source of income on the islands off mainland Spain. The then thriving textile industry had a great demand for the colouring. That was until, around 1880, the demand fell away when artificial colouring came to the fore.

Today cochineal is used to manufacture lipsticks with purely natural colouring. Also it is used in lemonade, candy and a particularly potent liqueur that is made on the Canary Islands. In my experience, that drink is every bit as dangerous as handling a chumbo without gloves.

The young of Spain think their parents and grandparents are a little crazy for going out at dawn to pick the prickly pear fruit. But they didn’t live in this country when eating what was growing on the trees was the norm. A necessity

I have found the fruit of the opuntia to be best served cold on hot summer days. It is as refreshing as a watermelon.

The next time you walk around southern Spain and see the chumbo growing en masse like a scene out of a spaghetti western; don’t expect to see Clint Eastwood emerging from them.
More than likely it will be half a dozen women of a certain age wearing gloves and carrying buckets.