Annotations for Artistic Medium: Recipe

Latino USA caught up with Susana Trilling in Austin, Texas at Manuel's Restaurant, where she shared with us her recipe for ensalada de nopales asados, grilled nopales salad.

Let's just do the ensalada nopal.

Okay so you take a cactus and you clean the spines off.

And when you have the whole petals, you wash them well.

And then you grill them in a cast iron frying pan or on a griddle or a comal.

And then you cut them up in little pieces, cut up some tomato, some green onions, some cilantro.

And then you roast some garlic and chop that up fine.

You mix that all together.

And then in a molcajete, you grind up some star anise, maybe one star, and then about half a cup of vinegar, half a cup of olive oil, and the juice of two limes.

And you mix that in and then you cut up some avocado and you fold that in.

And that's called ensalada de nopal asado. It's really good for you.

And in case you didn't catch all of that the first time, here's the recipe.

One pound of fresh nopales, nine garlic cloves, a quarter pound of tomatoes, three cebollitas, or green onions, two avocados, half a cup of chopped cilantro, or coriander, one star of anise, ground, a third of a cup of red wine vinegar, two tablespoons of lime juice, salt and pepper to taste.

I serve them on totopos or like tortillas that are baked in the oven with a little bit of queso fresco on top.

The recipe for Ensalada de Nopales Asados can also be found on our website at latinousa.org.