Cooking

Delicious!
This is a kind of cactus called Nopal. It's eaten in many different ways - raw in a salad with tomato, chili and onion. (Add salt and corriander to taste.) This is probably the easiest way to do it. It can be grilled and cheese melted on the top of some chili (chili largo is rather tasty with Edam cheese.) It also tastes great fried and then eaten in quesadillas.
As well as the actual cactus you can eat the fruit, which are called tuna in Spanish (much to my initial confusion.) You have to be rather careful peeling them because of the spikey bits but the fruit itself is well worth the effort. It's delicious. Mexicans often eat the fruit with salt and lemon, quite often sprinkling chili powder on them. Tunas also make great flavoured water - just liquidise some with water, adding sugar to taste.