My husband and I recently took a trip to Arizona. I was delighted and fascinated with the abundance of life in the desert – both plant and animal – that’s uniquely adapted to a sere and challenging environment.
What Arizona really demonstrated to me was how delicious eating locally is. We tried local foods that were fresh, original, and delicious.
One meal in Sedona especially stands out. We tried rattlesnake sausages, bison brichotte, nopales (where fuschia-coloured prickly pear fruit comes from) and elote (a corn dish).
The bison brichotte were fine but not a favourite of mine. Bison tastes a lot like beef only gamier and is so lean it can be tough.
The rattlesnake sausage however was tasty, I have to s. It was mild and lean and it tasted like chicken.
The nopales are the green, flat oval parts of the prickly pear cactus with the spines scraped off. The nopales we had were cut into strips, breaded and fried, and served almost like french fries. The cooked cacti’s flavour is mild and it has a consistency of cooked green beans. Nopales are also served cooked and cooled in salads and in fajitas or eaten on their own as side dish.
This distinctly desert vegetable is an excellent source of vitamins A, C and K, manganese, calcium, magnesium, potassium and fibre! It’s touted as being good for gut health and for its anti-inflammatory, anti-viral and anti-bacterial properties.
Last we tried elote. Elote is delicious and indulgent dish of grilled corn on the cob smothered in a mayo-sour cream mixture then sprinkled with lime juice, chili powder, and queso fresco (a fresh, mild cheese almost like a ricotta). Elote is usually served as street food right still on the cob. Ours was served with the corn kernels removed from the cob and all the toppings added to the grilled corn in a bowl. So good.
And last we discovered prickly pear margaritas. These drinks are made from prickly pears that are boiled to make a simple syrup that tastes light, fruity and floral. This syrup gets added to a traditional lime margarita and the result is a brilliant pink, delicious new cocktail.
You can also add prickly pear simple syrup to lemonade or sparkling water for a refreshing twist.
Here’s recipe for making prickly pear simple syrup.
And what about the dates? Smart farmers in Arizona figured out that palm date trees grow beautifully in the Sonoran desert. We visited a date farm and saw how these sweet, almost creamy Medjool dates are grown.
I’ll be sharing more in a future blog about dates and other sweet things. For now, I’ve included a link to a recipe for a vintage appetizer called Devils on Horseback. The sweet, creamy and chewy dates are stuffed with a smoked almond, wrapped in bacon, coated in an easy sauce and baked. Often the old recipes are still the best.
Devils on Horseback Recipe (allrecipes.com)
Here’s a little substitution – if you don’t want to use smoked almonds to stuff the dates, blue cheese makes a wonderful alternative.
