Pedigree Chumbo

With their reputation for being hard to handle, and those all-over spiked collars, they're the pit bull terriers of the Andalucian fruit basket.  But just like that other maligned breed, the best of them are soft and sweet under their bristling exteriors.

We're talking higos chumbos; nopales in South America, tunas in Mexico, Indian figs, handiyyas in Morocco, Xian ren zhang in China, mission cactus or figues de barbarie.  There are dozens of names for the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, the opuntia ficus-indica.

Here in Andalucia, the sudden appearance of wiry old campesinos transformed into mountain goats with buckets signals the beginning of the chumbo harvest, and summer drifting into autumn.  The other day I watched an expert fill a bucket with the bright orange fruits, 'fishing' them off their knobbly mother plant with long-handled tongs.  Others wear rubber or leather gloves for hand-to-fruit confrontations.  "You can roll the fruits on the ground to get rid of the hairs," a chumbo-wife told me.  Other suggestions, (thank you Todd of Alcaudete on Andalucia.com) include  waving them around in an open flame, or shaking them in a bag of hot coals.  Or you could just open a tin of peaches. Don't do what I am doing in the picture here, staged for photographic purposes only.

Some say the red fruits are superior to the yellow and orange varieties; others keep them for feeding organically-reared pigs.  Either way, Todd recommends eating or preserving the fruits soon after harvesting, as they tend to start fermenting quickly. They are delicious as both a fruit and a vegetable, featuring in salads, jellies and jams, cookies and syrups, especially in American Southwestern and Mexican cuisine.   But don't go mad.  'Caroig' of Cabo de Gata, also on the Andalucia.com forum, warns: "I've also heard them referred to as 'sh-- eaters,'" advising that too many of the fibrous fruits can lead to severe constipation.

Sacred to the Aztecs, the Spanish brought the plant back with them when they returned from conquistadoring in the New World. Opuntia was historically grown in Spain to cultivate the cochinilla beetle, source of the heavenly red colouring.  Today it thrives in many Mediterranean countries including Spain, Italy and North Africa, as well as arid regions of the United States - in fact it can take over and needs careful managing if it is not to become a nuisance.

There are still chumbos to be had in our local campo.  So for a little while longer, next time you see a Spanish senior citizen clinging precariously to a steep terrace and waving wildly with a white stick, offer to hold his bucket.  He just might peel you a juicy chumbo, and soon you too will be hooked.

Comments

[Arpi Shively]

Thanks for the tip, Edith. My husband is diabetic, so that's good news, although we are eating a lot more figs right now, which probably has the opposite effect on blood sugar!

Thanks for reading Andalucid!

Arpi

[Edith]

Prickly pears are very healthy. Native people in Arizona have rediscovered them as an excellent foodsource which helps them regulate their blood sugar levels.

[Victoria]

El enlace opuntia ficus-indica no funciona.... Try again!

Love the way you talk.

Love you
Victoria