Prickly Pear Pie

Prickly pear cactus grow just about everywhere.  I'm fortunate to have neighbors with huge stands of them.  They've been there as long as I can remember and must be 15 feet high. Beautiful, ancient stands of them.

The fruit of the prickly pear is called a tuna.  And they are delicious.  They remind me a bit of a melon, but so very sweet.  

But like a lot of things, you have to work to enjoy the goodness.  The fruit and the pads are covered with spines called glochids.  There are lot's of sites that you can google to see how best to navigate the spines, but my advice is 'move slowly'.  When you get in a hurry, that's how you end up with a finger full of needles.  I use tongs, heavy gloves and fire.   You use what you're used to.

But once you have that wonderful fruit, here's a delicious pie you can make with them.  It's not a traditional pie.  It's more like a filled 'dutch baby'.  

Filling:

3.5 cups prickly pear pulp.  (The species near me has small seeds, so I don't worry about seiving them out.  If the species that you are using has large seeds, you might want to remove them.)

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

Mix together in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.  Simmer until sugar is dissolved.  Set aside.

Pie:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Place 1/4 pound butter in a 13" x 9" baking dish.  Put it in the oven while it is heating.  You want the butter to be sizzling, but do not let it brown.

While the butter is melting, mix together:

In a blender, mix 6 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 1/4 cup orange juice, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 tsp salt.  Blend till frothy.

Remove butter from oven and immediately pour batter into the butter.  Do not stir.  Quickly pour prickly pear filling onto batter.  Do not stir.

Place back into the hot oven for 20 minutes or until puffed and brown.

Serve immediately.

Mock Rhubarb Pie

As much as I complain about being away from my beloved Montana for a few years, I do have to say that California has a coupla' really good things going for it.

Take for example 'early spring'. In Montana, everything would still be under a blanket of snow. And February always seems to get those 2 weeks of 40 degrees below zero.

But here, in California, the beginning of February brings pussy willows, emerging buds and leaves, chickweed, mallows...and the glorious sun. Granted, there's no strength in the sunshine yet, the grass still doesn't hold a lot of nurients for the horses, but still! That's sunshine that's warming my back. (I've been accused of being part lizard, sunning myself on a rock.)

Another plant that's showing her green skirt is Rumex crispus, dock.
Dock leaves have a taste reminiscent of rhubarb. I'm a rhubarb lover and I just can't get past the idea of this being a 'rhubarb' pie. I keep wrinkling my nose and thinking 'this is not rhubarb...'. But if I think of it as 'dock pie', I like it much better. Especially with a big scoop of ice cream. Keep in mind, dock is one of those plants to eat in moderation because of oxalates.

Mock Rhubarb Pie

4.5 cups firmly packed dock leaves and stems
1/8 cup flour
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 dash of lemon juice
unbaked pie shell and top crust.

Chope dock into 1" pieces and add just enough water to cover. Steam untill leaves wilt. (You should have about 2.5 cups of cooked dock.) Drain and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well. Pour into shell, cover with top crust and bake at 375 f for about 50 min.