Kitchen Experiments - The Good, The Grand & The Ugly!!!

Hello all!! Had some fun experimenting in the kitchen lately, and wanted to share my endeavors!! Some turned out fantastic...others, not so much!! I was getting all kinds of creative last weekend, took pictures of the good stuff to share and will fill you in on my experiences with the bad stuff.

First things first, THE GOOD:
I LOVE all my cooking shows...mostly I end up coming by all the episodes I want to see by way of re-run, but I don't mind! I've been totally glued to Restaurant Impossible!! I love watching Robert Irvine and his team completely transform these restaurants that are in serious trouble! So uplifting to see the dramatic changes being made!! On the episode that he revamped Scrimmages, he presented them with a delightful appetizer he called Re-Stuffed Potato Skins. My husband and I thought it sounded and looked SO tasty, that I made them last weekend. OH YUM! Insanely satisfying and a wonderful Sunday Afternoon Football food!! I didn't use the recipe, and the potatos I had were too long to split the way Robert did on the show, but what matters is that they REALLY hit the spot!!!

Here is a link to the actual recipe, but I found it was just as easy to wing it!! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/robert-irvine/re-stuffed-potato-skins-recipe/index.html

Second, we have THE GRAND:
I saw Prickly Pears on sale at one of our local markets, so I got curious! Looked around online to see what the general concensus was on taste, and decided it was certainly worth a try!! But what was I going to make with them? OOH...I needed to break out my Ice Cream Maker...Prickly Pear Plum Sorbet...sounds delightful!! I haven't used the Ice Cream Maker since we moved; in the words of Rafiki..."It is time" (We just introduced Sissy to The Lion King). I picked up a dozen prickly pears and a few plums, both red and purple. I discovered a few things in my preparation phase.



First, the color of the skin is not indicative of the ripeness of the fruit. Good to know...the only color of prickly pear available to me at the market was green. I love green, so I can live with that!





Second, the fruit inside is VERY seedy. If you thought watermelon was seedy, there is absolutely no comparison!! Although the seeds are edible, they're super crunchy and neither my husband nor I appreciated them. 




Third, if you like kiwi, you'll like prickly pear. As soon as I skinned the first fruit, smelled and tasted it, my mind instantly went to kiwi! Love it!!

Preparation of the Prickly Pears: Disclaimer: please be careful when extracting the fruit. Some of the prickly pears do NOT have all the cactus spines fully removed...they can hurt!! There are various suggestions of using gloves while cutting and peeling, as well as using a kitchen torch to singe off remaining "hairs". Use whichever method you feel most comfortable with, but if you do get poked, stop and make sure you've completely removed the little "hair"...they are small, fine and hard to pick out...not fun!

I cut off the top and bottom of the pears and sliced lengthwise down the fruit, and peeled the skin off from the fruit.


I peeled all my prickly pears this way, and then attempted to figure out how to get rid of the seeds. Trying to squish it through a mesh strainer did not work for me, and I don't have a food mill, so I decided to try putting them in the food processor.


This worked pretty well. Some of the seeds were crushed up too, but for the most part, the seeds separated from the fruit so I could push the fruit through the mesh strainer. The 12 prickly pears gave me about 1-1/2 quarts of fruit.






I then peeled and pitted 4 of the plums and processed them as well, then mixed it all together (totalled about 2 quarts), and added barely 1/4 cup of sugar, just for good measure. I spaced off my camera and don't have pictures of the fruit mixture prior to putting it into the Ice Cream Maker, but I did have to use some food coloring, because this green and the pinkish color of the plums rendered a slightly horrific orangish-brown color that I was positive no one would want to eat!!
After the Ice Cream Maker did it's thing, this was the result.....and it was so good, that my husband felt the need to eat at least a quart of the sorbet on his own!!! (He's mostly an Ice Cream only guy...so I did REALLY GOOD!!!)

Third, we have THE UGLY:
Fried Stuffed Nopalitos...all I have to say about them is hmmmm. I thought they were worth a try when I saw a recipe for them. I don't have any pictures but the finished product (which actually looks pretty decent) but let me describe to you how crazy these little buggers are!! First off, they're cactus paddles...so you have to be sure to clean them up and clean them carefully. Secondly, they're fairly thin, so if you're going to stuff them, you have to almost filet them. Third, and here's the scary part. How many of you remember seeing the movie Gremlins? You know when they're transforming from the Mogwai to Gremlins and they get that filmy, sticky, slimy stuff all over them? That's what the insides of the nopalitos reminded me of...the slimy, sticky stuff. However, I persevered, looking to get past that, to experience them stuffed and fried. I sliced Monterey Jack cheese and placed inside the pockets of the nopalitos, and then egg-washed and floured them and proceeded to fry them on the stove. Here is a picture of the finished product with some salsa verde on it. It doesn't look too bad, but let's just say they're an acquired taste! (Or at least that's my opinion)

So there you have it, The Good, The Grand and The Ugly from my experimenting in the kitchen. It's just one of those things I like to do, and sometimes you get winners and sometimes you get losers...but in the long run, it's the experience you gain that counts!!